Re: Hapworthless

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@hotpop.com)
Thu, 07 Oct 1999 13:55:51 +1000 

citycabn wrote:
>  All we ever see or hear of Seymour
> >is filtered through Buddy; we really can't trust anything he says, not
the
> >least the odd conceit of `typing out' a letter for us, word for word.
> 
> No, not always.  S. himself "speaks" via his diary in RHTRBC, his death
poem
> and Fat Lady parable are quoted in "Zooey", and even in Buddy's tour de
> force look-at-me solo act in SAI, the great, great Tyger letter appears,
> along with a few warmup tidbits.   Trust Buddy re the family.  It is
*not*
> meant as a sleight-of-hand trick.  JDS is deadly earnest re the Glasses. 
He
> gave *at least* ten years of his life to them (1955-1965).

No, I'd definitely disagree with this. RHTRBC is still ultimately narrated
by Buddy, which means that his many biases and ommissions may still be in
place. (Even Buddy admits that he is `transcribing' the letter of Hapworth
16 rather than `showing' it to us. He is an intermediatry force, the
official biographer). This is not a trick on Buddy's part, but you have to
admit that despite the fact that the whole Glass canon is Buddy's abject
struggle against hagiography, it is impossible for him to take a wholly
objective view of his brother, sincere and heartfelt as his efforts might
be. Hell, I lie to my own diary sometimes! (: The whole Glass world is
filtered through Buddy's consciousness. From what Buddy tells us in S:AI,
we can also assume that he is the `author' of `Teddy' and by implication
`Down at The Dingy', `Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut' and so on, as well as
APDFB.

I think also that while we should not as you say overemphasise the suicide,
it should also not simply be swept away as an oversight of the Salinger who
wrote himself into a corner with APDFB. We can't look at any aspect of
Seymour's life without taking into account that that is where it all led
to. I would say that not only Hapworth but virtually all of the Glass canon
(even `Teddy') are an attempt on Buddy's part to explore the mystery of
what led his brother to perform what Westerners see as the ultimate act of
despair (not that it's taken lightly by Buddhists, either. You'd be doing
yourself quite a karmic disservice. Maybe he came back as Joyce Maynard (:
) The interesting thing about studying the Glass canon is that so much of
it lies in speculation. In a way, the body of work in Salinger's safe is
just as studiable as the stories we have on our own shelves. I don't know
where these Reliable Close Sources from but I've heard about a minimum of
three `full length' manuscripts in there - although Salinger's statements
in court at the Ian Hamilton case - not to mention the evidence of his
later work - indicate that he long, long ago abandoned the mutually
exclusive concepts of Short Story and Novel. Who's to say he didn't abandon
the Glass family years ago? Who's to say there isn't a whole book in there
about what happened to Holden? Ah, too tempting, too tempting!!!

Hallelujah, I can feel my face again (just had a wisdom tooth out (*: As I
said to Bruce this must mean I'm now 3/4 less wise. Notice any difference?)

Camille
verona_beach@hotpop.com