Re: Alsen's new book

--- "L. Manning Vines" <lmanningvines@hotmail.com>
wrote:
> Kim wonders if Alsen will still stand by the
> "laughable premise" that Buddy
> in 1965 wrote Seymour's Hapworth letter.
>
> I wonder if this is such a laughable premise as
> Seymour in 1924 writing his
> Hapworth letter.
>
> -robbie
>
>

i understand the problem of accepting that 'hapworth'
is the letter of a seven year old. but i think one of
salinger's points is that seymour is an-off-the-chart
genius, easily, perhaps, able to outrun mozart on any
new york city sidewalk. (jds writes a story about a
genius of ten--teddy--and he obviously wants to
out-teddy teddy with seymour.)

but this problem aside, the willing suspension of
disbelief. one comes to alsen's thesis that buddy
himself has written the letter, and is going to fob it
off on the unsuspecting reader.
 a central point of the entire enterprise is buddy's
intro. he tells us that bessie has sent seymour's
letter up after buddy has mentioned on the phone, 2
days earlier, that he is workng on a story about a
consequential party they all went to in 1926. he makes
the point that he has never read this letter until 4
hours ago. the 'marvelous' aspect of this is the fact
that seymour in the letter predicts the family going
to that very party two years hence, and more
importantly, has a future vision-glimpse of the
mature buddy writing about that very party after he,
seymour,is long out of the picture. the letter makes
no sense if one reads it as the 1965 buddy recreating
the 7 year old seymour. you then have the howler of
buddy faking the prediction, and hence the starting
point for the publishing of the letter. it would
baffle one's sense of reality even more for buddy to
fake one word of the letter. 'hapworth' as 'hapworth'
is crucial for the direct insight it gives us into the
mind, heart and soul of seymour. apart from the diary
entries in 'raise high' and the notes to buddy re
writing in 'sai', the letter constitutes the closest
we come to 'being with' seymour at any point of his
life.
though i agree it would be a whole lot easier to
swallow if seymour had bee circa 10...
--kim

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Received on Mon Oct 14 17:35:51 2002