Re: Teddy = parts of Seymour ?
Sundeep Dougal (holden@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in)
Sat, 18 Sep 1999 15:26:06 +0530
> Granted, I might have missed what Camille and Jim are referring to.
Will,
> Sonny, Tim--please set us all straight.
Far be it from me to set anything straight, but I do think it helps if
one remembers that we are dealing with fiction, that Seymour is a
fictional character, as is Buddy, and that in S:AI in particular, JDS
is having one huge ball, and playing with his critics, and generally
indulging himself, as has been pointed out in various commentaries
(cf: all those cracks about rumors, 6 months as a recluse and so on).
Death of the author, or texts without contexts, intertextuality,
narratorial voices or identities and their submergence, po mo
deconstruction...I mean, it could be well be argued, couldn't it, that
the whole thing is a Zen koan or something (I dreamed I was a
butterfly...)
Or, Derrida, anyone?
I can just see this: But what is the essential core of S:AI but an
ideality construed as a presence? The next questions we should ask is
what is the precise locus, the material receptacle of this presence.
But since an ideality can never be captured, only tentatively
indicated, by the gross materiality of the sign, it operates in
textual discourse in the form of a trace whose function is
transcendent, in that it relies on a presumed metaphysics of presence.
The reliance on the transcendental rather than the material in
determining the role of the presence, pre-sense or pre-sceince should
not be taken as evidence against, but as a confirmation of, my claim,
for the generally understood purpose of counting the "dynamic" and
"static" presence is consistent with the traditional functions of the
transcendental presence vis a vis a presumptive presence. It is
therefore consistent with the presumed primacy of speech over writing
that it necessary to a metaphysics of presence. A sign denotes,
de-notes, points to a presence, pre-sense, that is, that which
antecedes its material expression in language. The sign, the allusion,
the reference, simulates but also contradicts, negates (and thus,
might we say, parodies) the ideal structure that it implies.
By and by, pretty soon you'll see that there is no Seymour (you will
'see more' and know there is nothing left to see. More is less. Or
less is more. The state of see-more-ness) there'll be a lot of
left-minded people who'll believe it. Man, perhaps I should write that
book. I'll call it _Or See More. Or Less: Deconstructive Readings in
the Salinger Canon_.