Re: Alsen's new book

Kim said, quite a while back (this is a late response):
"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 a seven-year-old cannot write like that, off-the-chart genius or not. A
seven-year-old off-the-chart genius might compose mediocre music (and go on
to write great music when he gains the experience and sophistication of an
adult), or perform complex mathematical manipulations at a college level, or
even write pretty damn well. But genius is unrealistically deified, I
believe. I doubt very much that the seven-year-old Seymour of Hapworth can
exist, ever, under any circumstances.

You go on to give some reasons why it is absurd for Buddy to have written
the letter. None of them seem so plain and clear to me as they appear to be
to you, but I haven't read Alsen and do not feel qualified to argue for his
thesis. My only suggestion is that, however reasonable OR absurd it is for
Buddy to have written the letter, it cannot but be MORE absurd for little
Seymour to have written it.

-robbie
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Received on Sat Oct 26 07:10:59 2002