Re: Muriel

AntiUtopia@aol.com
Mon, 29 Nov 1999 13:23:26 -0500 (EST) 

In a message dated 11/29/99 10:02:08 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
cbaader@casecorp.com writes:

<< Several people put the blame at Muriel's door for Seymour's suicide, but I
 don't think that anything can possibly be that simple.  We have a
 shell-shocked man in the midst of a spiritual crisis who has the added
 difficulty of being a hero for everyone who knows him.  Muriel may not have
 helped him, but I'm not so sure that she hurt him either.
 
 Regards,
 Cecilia.
   >>

Ah...but haven't we fallen into a trap?  How ARE we supposed to read "A 
Perfect Day..."?  When it was first published (something Tim refers to) we 
didn't know "Buddy wrote it" (and what does it mean that a fictional 
character wrote the story?); for that matter, we don't really know anything 
about the Glass family.  At least I don't think so, the chronology of 
Salinger's publications is still pretty fuzzy for me.  

At any rate, how would you read Bananafish if you had nothing to go on But 
Bananafish?  

Next, since a fictional character wrote the story, what does this mean?  I 
think you're reading the story differently because of this.  Normally, we 
read stories thinking each story creates its own "world," in a sense, a world 
which has more or less in common with the "real" world, but is still 
independent of it.  The author is part of the "real" world, our world, while 
the fiction inhabits only its own world -- at least, the character and the 
actions depicted in the fiction does so.  

Now, running with the idea that Buddy wrote the story, you place the author 
**in** the same world as the story.  And this greatly skews the story.  You 
read Bananafish as if, for example, Buddy constructed the story the way I 
would construct the following:

Say you mentioned to me a conversation you had with your mother.  Maybe even 
give me some details and a few things actually said (as verbatim as 
possible).  From that I reconstruct the whole conversation -- which will have 
some similarities to the "real" conversation but which will really be 
something entirely different.  Different enough, in fact, that you wouldn't 
want anyone reading it as a "real" reflection of either your mother or 
yourself.

That's how you treat Bananafish -- you see it as a construct by Buddy, and 
you take this view of the text to the limit.  My question is, Do we really 
need to do that, and how justified are we in doing so?  Are the rules for 
fiction Fictionally "written by" a fictional character really that different?

Confused? :)

Jim