Re: Muriel
Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Mon, 29 Nov 1999 13:36:03 -0500
On Mon, Nov 29, 1999 at 11:39:37AM -0600, Baader, Cecilia wrote:
> I think that you're selling Muriel just the tiniest bit short, here, Tim. (I
> felt this overwhelming desire to start out this email with, "I don't think
> so, Tim..." but, since you probably hear that as much as I get drunk people
> singing "Cecilia" to me, I'll refrain.)
I don't get the reference (is there a song with my name in it?), but I
am delirious with the discussion spawned. I hope that this traffic will
satisfy people here who want more substantive content.
Cecilia, your analysis is wonderful.
> Muriel is a thousand girls the world over-- in love with a man she doesn't
> understand, protective of him, yet unable to give him what he needs. And
> she's elusive-- the only clear picture that we have of her comes in
> Bananafish.
And a man who could be around in 1998 as easily as 1948. I guess
sometimes we forget that.
> But, we've already heard from Buddy in S:AI that Bananafish doesn't exactly
> present Seymour in an entirely truthful light. So we have to question, as we
> know that APDFB is written by Buddy (someone whom we already know from RHTRC
> does not appreciate Muriel), how entirely true a picture that we have in
> that piece.
Ex-ACT-ly. Buddy's involvement as narrator has always bothered me because
of his conflict of interest. And we know that JDS has had to try to
square away details from the 1948 story with his later Glass work. I
suggest that one effective way to do it is to lay the whole body of work
out on a table, put the puzzle together, and rewrite, if you must, that
first story. Shatter it. Put the shards back however you need to do
and with whatever new details you need. There will always be a story
called "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," but in a future work it may be
incorporated in pieces elsewhere, the way Raymond Carver and Kurt
Vonnegut used to re-use and recycle some of their short-story material.
Just because it's locked up in type in the book called "Nine Stories"
does not mean the author is precluded from remolding it to suit his needs.
> they marry in RHTRC, so much so that he cannot trust himself. She, despite
> the description that Buddy has made of her as one who is over-concerned by
> appearances, marries Seymour even after he publicly humiliates her. I know
> a lot of women who would have walked away, but Muriel does not.
Great point.
> Three: Muriel will not let Buddy publish Seymour's poems. I get the
> feeling that one of the reasons that Seymour so loved her is that she,
> unlike his family, treated him as a normal man. Therefore, not letting the
> rest of the world canonize him when his family already does, is her last way
> of protecting him.
Here, we always take the "JDS couldn't publish them because no writer
could write so magnificently as Seymour is said to do" approach (something
John Irving wrestled with in The World According to Garp, with its story
[I'm sure I am mangling the title] "The Hotel Grillparzer"), but this
is another look through the prism at the Glass twists and turns.
> 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.
I've had many theories about Muriel, but I myself have never blamed her.
I have looked at Seymour as a doomed soul, and no spouse, friend, family
member, or partner could change that.
Thanks for tossing in your terrific analysis!
--tim