RE: Seymour's Suicide
Jaramillojp@kktv.com
Mon, 14 Jul 1997 23:12:46 -0700
Hey everybody
After all this talk on Seymour and Muriel I was thinking about The Long
Debut of Lois Taggert. I think that was Salingers first story published
and it is also about a sort of violent waking. Lois' husband Bill burns
her with a cigarette after she says rather babyish "Burny. Burny." when
they are cuddling. This whole thing is really violent and sort of dark
for Salinger. But what I was thinking was that maybe Seymour is doing
what Bill did like times a million. Maybe just maybe he is trying to
give a message of how phony she is and how she needs to wake up and how
it all just killed him.
Also I remember reading somewhere in Seymour an Intro that he married
her as sort of a service. Salinger makes it almost seem as it is his
duty to take her on and change her something like that. But also I
rememebr a part where he says that telling someone they love you on the
phone and have them not hear ( I am slaughtering this line) is the
saddest thing. SO I think that Seymour really loves this girl like maybe
he loves a religious challenge. Also maybe Muriel is sort of like Lois
in that they are on the inside or the phony but easy part of life. They
might represent selling out and being sort of apart of all the phoniness
and maybe marrying her was his chance to sort of give it a try as
similar to Salinger when he sent his babies to magazines that changed
the titles and cut them up.
Does this make any sense to anybody or am I reaching.
suerte
John Paul