Re: Alsen's new book

From: Jim Rovira <jrovira@drew.edu>
Date: Sat Oct 26 2002 - 09:10:16 EDT

I have to agree with Robbie on this one -- the most off putting thing about
Hapworth to me is that we're expected to believe a seven year old wrote that
letter. I could accept it from a 14 or 15 year old Seymour and chalk it up to
genius. Not a seven year old.

Teddy was more convincing than Hapworth's Seymour.

Jim

"L. Manning Vines" wrote:

> 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 08:51:18 2002

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