Re: Hapworthless
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@hotpop.com)
Tue, 28 Sep 1999 23:19:08 +1000
> Thor, I agree completely. I was really draggin' ass by the end of this
book
> and I only read it once. I think the real question is "who wrote this
story
> and put Salinger's name on it?"
> - Adam
Are *you* kidding? Salinger has always been, to paraphrase his own words, a
purveyor of the hopelessly flamboyant, a digressor of the highest order, a
waffler, a sayer-of-ten-words-when-two-would-have-done, an indulger of
indulgences, a man almost pathologically unable to pour prodigious fluid
into the unfamiliar vessels of traditional structure. Could Hapworth be
anything else than the product of the mind that produced S:AI and Raise
High the Roof Beams? In a word, no. As for the Childe Seymoure, he's just
another step in Salinger's deification of the child, from cute little
soothsayer (Mattie) to bringer of simple truth (Phoebe) to annoyingly
prescient seer (Teddy) to, well, Christ Incarnate. Hapworth simply couldn't
have come from anyone else's pen.
I was mulling over the case of the child in JDS's writings the other day
after having re-read `For Esme'. It occured to me that it's so strange - in
a lot of ways Esme is portrayed similar to Seymour in Hapworth 16 - she
tries to use big words and sound grown up, she is guilelessly
self-reflective and unsentimental - in short, a typical graduate of
Salinger's Kindergarten of Precocious Kids. Why then, do things come out of
her mouth so endearingly and from Seymour's so obnoxiously? Why do we
reject Seymour's adult voice and embrace Esme's? Why on the whole is
Seymour's character - be it adult or child - one that so seldom evokes
affection in the way Esme's does, or Phoebe Caulfield's? I feel that if we
had felt a greater affection for Seymour, Hapworth may have been a greater
success.
Gotta go now, 2 appointments and a rail strike to contend with, aaaargh!
Camille
verona_beach@hotpop.com