Re: Teddy and Booper
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@hotpop.com)
Wed, 15 Sep 1999 21:47:05 +1000
Lesley wrote:
> << I do not want to reopen the "who fell in the pool debate" but I'm
> interested
> in whether people think Booper hated Teddy. I've read and reread Teddy a
lot
> and I've never had a sense that there was much more than regular old
sibling
> rivalry. But I have a five year old son and one of my friends recently
> commented that it was lucky I hadn't had a Booper yet as my son is so
like
> Teddy and Booper despised him. I wonder what others think?
> Lesley >>
Hmmmmm. That's an interesting one. Booper seemed like one of those sour
little kids who doesn't really like *anyone*, but that could just be my
conjecture. I think the message is that she's ignorant rather than being
strictly evil. I sometimes find it productive to think of `A Perfect Day
for Bananafish' and `Teddy' at the same time, as one is in many ways
reflective of the other, sort of like a positive and a negative. It's
always interested me that in S:AI Salinger/Buddy admits that Teddy is a
fictionalised portrait of Seymour - because then, what prevents the events
of Teddy being a ficitonalised or at least revised version of the events in
Bananafish? (which as Buddy admits are already themself fictionalised).
There is a kind of bananafish-in-hell feeling to Teddy, Booper is a hellish
Sybil, the boat is a hellish beach, and of course both stories end with an
unexplained death. To draw these strings together - I think Booper hated
Teddy as much as Sybil loved Seymour. If that helps at all (:
Sorry about the long analytic posts guys. Guess I'm just in a waffly mood
..
Camille
verona_beach@hotpop.com