on to another piece of Holy Ground
Hotspur8@aol.com
Tue, 01 Jul 1997 05:06:34 -0400 (EDT)
(i warn you now.. this is a letter which anounces my departure from a series
of messages that i have been a part of since my induction in january.
if for any reason you you have had a heavy dose of mexican food, have drank
too much, or injested some type of drug that may make your stomach queezey
while engaging in a final farewell message from a guy who has a couple of
weeks to spare---- i suggest you cease reading this as you probably will
become disenchanted and throw it to the lions down below. it really isn't
worth your time, so please do me a favor and skip this one.
much thanks in advance.
well, i'm sure that we will all experience this moment of writing a note of
farewell at some point after being a part of this, at times, rather glorious
list of discourse (unless of course good ol' jd has some free time bubble up
after he decides that the right astrological alignment has occured for the
aforementioned current publication to be released [too many times to mention
actually-- what is it december of '97 now?!!] at which time he will
ultimately come to the decision to have an amendment ratified to the US
constitution which details his name and any likeness to such refrences,
infrences, and any of the such is in fact a federal crime punishable either
by lethal injection or a small secluded gas chamber where the offender(s)
will get no press while s/he /(they) go through the motions of the respective
sentences... which as a result you will all have been 'put to sleep' because
of you're aiding and abetting mr. foskett in his exploits to leave no
salinger stone unturned; so you will have missed out on this great experience
which lays on my desk before me...)
joining this list back in january after returning from a two and a half week
road trip from chicago to mexico and back again after having everything
stolen (except for the actual physical remnant of the car itself) has been a
rather interesting journey in itself... and now i am off again, moving
overseas to study on scholarship for three years. so, i thought it might be
interesting to leave you with a little story i thought rather interesting
regarding our favorite progdical son in search of the purity and clarity in
human existence-- that lovely seymour.
i received a card from my cousin of whom i've been having a rather arduous
love affair for the last two and a half years, in which we tend to spend a
fair amount of time in our correspondence discussing the finer points of
salinger's choices in relation to children and situations-- as she was an
english lit major at ohio state, later going on to get a masters in short
fiction, and then ultimately receiving her PHd specialization in postmodern
american short fiction.. i on the other hand in my rather limited scope have
just studied theatre and drama having just finished my studies in england--
so to say the least, her outlook regarding one of my favorite writers has
always garnered a rather large amount of fascination for me.
i told her back in february (while visiting that benvolent state of ohio that
contains that beautiful town of tiffin where boys bring the cows back from
the pasture when the sun hits that rather soupy point of the horizon where
magical things tend to make themselves noticed) that out of boredom i had
joined this list dedicated to the discussion of salinger and related topics
and was rather pleasantly surprised to find that there was some pretty
interesting discussions that would pop up every once in awhile. i asked her
to check it out.. alas she was to busy. so in an effort to clarify my qualms
with her regarding her firm assumption that seymour has a rather unhealthy
affection toward people of smaller faculties, especially children (she very
often attributes this firm assumption to the man behind the creation of the
character, the very secluded and extremely private writer who probably
himself has the same 'problem' and pecular fascination-- she usually goes
into her rather enlighting and often entertaining fact laden spiel of the
numer of children that mr salinger seems to write about and in the rather
descriptively ambiguous tone in which a large majority of the adults often
interact with them.. she always seems to get my fire churning at this point
when she begins to allude to seymour and jd as pedophiles but then i remember
it's all about personal interpretation and i just look upon it as a
fascinating way of looking at something cometely differently than i had
done..) so in an effort to understand her approach to this rather touchy
subject matter i asked her to write me a note clarifying her thoughts. i
thought you might get a kick out of the last letter she dropped so here it is
reprinted for your reading enjoyment...
1 june '97
i've started this letter so many times, both in my head and on paper.
first off, how are you doing? the operation? work? life in general?
well i guess i should get to the story... in essence the point of this
particular card.
in between classes, i read bananafish; i gave the story life again. so
although this obviously will be short, i hope my argument comes across as the
weight of these disertations in my backback are heavy and seem to be tugging
at my attention. here it goes, 'a perfect day for bananafish'.
my copy of the story is fifteen pages long. seymour doesn't actually
physically enter the flow of it's telling until the eighth page, if my mind
serves me correctly. so i was a a bit timid as the evidence needed probably
wouldn't be contained in those few remaining pages. but what i found was just
one word to prove my point and it is a word that comes directly from
seymour's mouth. but i'll save that for the end.
in seymour's relationship with sybil carpenter the only satisfying refrences
that present themselves are insinuations of interest in regards to a more
than the societal expectant 'child friendship' situation that one might come
to expect. what seymour declares to sybil, the young female-child,
throughout the short story was rather odd at times but nothing was
conclusive. when he discusses his relations with the other young girl,
sharon lipschutz (who had sat next to him) he mentions to sybil that "i had
pretended she was you." this to me is an odd signafier but still doesn't
scream out the evidence required of such a claim.
Even when they are in the water searching together for the infamous
bananafish (which in itself holds an incredibly large amount of symbolic
edification as to his approach-- but i refuse to elaborate on this as i still
believe in fairy tales and to partake in such a tasteless discussion on the
finer points of a madman's penis would go beyond the expectations of
tastelessness) seymour "...suddenly picked up one of sybil's wet feet, and
kissed the arch..." this could be simply taken as an over friendly
gesture between a young man and a girl-child. but with those actions aside,
there still is proof.
when sybil is talking to seymour about sharon sitting next to him sybil says,
"next time, push her off." seymour asks, "push who off?" After sybil replies
sharon lipschutz, seymour states, "ah, sharon lipschitz. how that name comes
up. mixing memory and desire."
he has his desire and i have my proof.
i love you kid. i really must get back to class as i am late as usual.
take care & much love.
after perusing this little note my mind thought just imperceptably and rather
differently about a story that i thought i knew as a result of my own
perception--the way that i had put all of the pieces together in order to
understand...
so in an effort to confuse myself even more on the subject i decided to spend
a saturday with my step-father gardening and hanging about the lounge chairs
in the back in an effort to probe that enormous brain of his. he is one of a
small fraternity of medical professionals in the city of chicago that is a
licensed psychoanalist, psychiatrist, and general provider of a rather large
amount of knowledge that essentially can tell you who you are.. so after many
beers while laying about in the sun-- with the fresh tempered feel of soil
under our finger nails-- i assulted him with a barage of information and
selected readings that i chose from raise high, an intro, franny, zooey,
hapworth, and finally bananafish where i tried my best to recreate the
concept of several shrink sessions that seymour and he might have had if
seymour were in fact a real person. after several hours of discussion and
many beers, he provided a rather lengthy diagnosis from which only this was
remembered: "Seymour has an acute, approaching 'major', depressive reaction
in a narcissitic personality disorder." supposively stemming from many
different facets from one's life; usually pertaining to position in one's
household/family structure and/or in one's community and/or the various
strains that accompany the situation of evolving into young adulthood. often
people with extremely probing & active minds while in their formative years
tend to experience an incredibly difficult transition from young adulthood
into maturity. he told me that seymour's suicide was an obvious outcome to a
person who spent so much time and invested so much of his energies in the
pursuit and understanding of the essence in human nature because the return
on such an investment often returns terribly empty and horribly malnurished.
i figured the few that have stuck it out this long and consumed this
mumbojumbo might find the story i've told to be an intersting one.
as it is my farewell.
there was one last question i asked him regarding seymour's rather strange
interaction with sybil. he phathomed that it goes back to this 'search for
the essential in the human nature' that he feels seymour is obsessed with--
the idea of the narcissistic persona.. "i know the essence of me is good" so
he searchs for this essential Goodness in others. the kissing of her arch is
his attempt at reflecting on this situation in the physical form. his
Struggle is this eternal hankering of the physical and the spiritual which is
realized in all of it's glory in the persona of muriel-- with her nail polish
and calf skin luggage which seem to radiate at the beginning of
'bananafish'-- she is in fact his symbolic struggle. strange that he should
marry that which he seems to be trying to rectify in his mind.
in complete contradiction to my cousin's belief, it is his professional
recommendation that seymour not be isolated in his interaction with children
but simply to "keep an eye on him and often probe him at length as to his
current state of mind", as it seems his mind is often overly reactionary and
subject to whims of fancy like kissing the feet of litlle girls while on
honeymoon in florida.
my. what a beautiful character-- thank you to jd for creating these little
joys of 'literate' heaven and to all of you who have engaged me in my whims
of desire to discuss his penchant for descriptive clarity. glorious glorious
glorious. (please excuse my rather obvious flight of enibriation-- it's been
a fun couple of months.
"The sage is full of anxiety and indecision in undertaking anything, and so
he is always successful."
--Book XXVI, The Texts of Chuang-tzu; from Seymour, An Introduction
one week and counting until i depart.
again, thank you-- i shall think of you few while i parade about in paris.
much love and squalor, owen