Re: Seymour: A Continuation
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:25:51 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 10/11/99 2:35:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
citycabn@gateway.net writes:
<<
Jim,
I personally don't think JDS painted himself into a corner. Think the
critics, etc. alight on S.'s suicide and tried to beat JDS over the head
with it along the lines of how can S. be so great if he committed suicide.
To my mind, JDS/Buddy tells us why S. committed suicide in SAI. The entire
prelude is about this. And ends with the section re the cororner's report,
whether it is consumption, loneliness or suicide:
"isn't it plain how the true artist-seer actually dies? I say (and
everything that follows in these pages all too possibly stands or falls on
my being at least *nearly* right)--I say that the true artist-seer, the
heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by
his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human
conscience." >>
hmm...then I'm not sure I understood the following paragraphs:
<<Certainly S. exists. He exists in the books, and in the minds and hearts of
faithful Glass readers. I suggest not to overemphasize the suicide. JDS
has to deal with the suicide *because* that is where he started in '48.
Seymour, as Seymour presented in '55 to '65, did not yet exist. But since
he has, so to speak, painted himself in a corner from the outset, given the
fact of S.'s suicide, JDS does have to go back to it. The entire prelude to
SAI is an attempt to "correct" the status of the suicide in his readers'
minds. Someone commits suicide in the West and everyone is up in arms,
feeling it negates the person's entire life. --Bruce>>
See, here it seems like you're saying JDS has to go back to Seymour's suicide
to defend Seymour against the "little mindedness" of western critics who
think that Seymour isn't that great for committing suicide -- and in This way
Salinger painted himself into a corner.
So while you are saying essentially the same thing now that you did in the
earlier post, you did say in the earlier post that Salinger painted himself
into a corner with Seymour's suicide.
But the problem I think with the ideas presented is that you marginalize the
death, when I think it is indeed central to Salinger thematically.
The following paragraphs are from that original post too:
<<So Hapworth could be
>justified perhaps as part of Buddy's attempt to unravel the origins of
>whatever led Seymour to suicide. --Camille
Seymour himself mentions in the letter that he won't live longer than a
well-preserved telephone pole. It ain't a big deal. Hapworth, I'll say it
again, is to show the reader that Seymour grew, developed, and became the
Seymour of the poems, parables, and anecdotes. I imagine Christ Himself or
Buddha weren't great shakes at seven, and their Hapworth letters would be
flawed, too. -- Bruce>>
I don't think anyone's saying the Hapworth letters are flawed. My problem is
that they're not flawed enough. Too much light and brilliance for a seven
year old. Too mature a prose style, too well read, too too much of
everything **good**.
Jim