Re: refreshing opp., hop, skip, jump!

jordie chambers (jordiekc@rocketmail.com)
Fri, 11 Jun 1999 10:48:44 -0700 (PDT) 

---Camille Scaysbrook <verona_beach@geocities.com> wrote:
>
> Catherine Marie wrote
> 
> > i have a lot of the same questions, but i have, after
a bit of 
> > consideration, come to the very surface conclusion
that maybe salinger is
> 
> > having seymour use his right hand to shoot himself for
simple
> consistancy: 
> > in Seymour: an introduction, at some point buddy says
that seymour was 
> > righthanded, and so it would follow that he would
naturally use that
> hand. 
> 
> On the contrary - it seems odd that Salinger would
deliberately enunciate
> that Seymour is right handed when you'd expect that only
if someone is
> lefthanded, which is more unusual. 

I agree.  I don't think it's a matter of whether he would
naturally use his right hand or left, Salinger used the
two deliberately as symbols.  The oddness of his
mentioning righties calls those differences to our
attention.

I think Salinger was using the left/right symbol as an
analogy for left brain/right brain processing - how people
use the right side of their brain 
for art and the left for math.  I don't know if
psychologists use that model anymore now except as an
analogy, but it still makes plenty of sense. 
Mathematicians vs. artists?  THe easiest way to sum up the
obvious defferences is by using left/right.  Recently,
researchers have dug up interesting findings on southpaws
and their differences from righties.  I don't know them, I
hope someone here does, but I'm sure they're interesting.

> I also wondered - perhaps, in a
> strange way, Seymour needs to embrace phonyism [I am so
glad you said that] to survive? 

Maybe it is impossible for a man to care for everyone, to
be vulnerable to everyone.  I love the word phonyism, I
think Holden would be better off embracing phonyisms. 
Phonyisms [feel free to change the def.]: to reject what
is irrelevant or threatening to our belief system and to
comfort ourselves by our own belief systems in the
rejection of others.

If Holden did what Seymour was, he would have a nervous
breakdown.  Of course, there are extremes of phonyisms,
some people can't accept another belief.  A Puritan might
be a trumpeting phonyist.  Jesus was more like Seymour,
vice versa, I don't want to offend anyone by saying that.


Did he *want* Sybil to rush off in great disgust; to
unknowingly
> fail the phony test? Seymour's response to having his
feet stared at later
> on suggests as much - the woman he berates passed the
phony test [never saw it that way]  too, and
> perhaps he plain didn't want her to. And as we all know
- where would
> Salinger be without phonies? He'd have a lot less to
write about (:
> 
Pucker up.  You've just added alot of dimension to what I
saw in the elevator, gracias mea kangarooias.  If the
elevator lady was a test, then he was dissapointed by the
empirical truth he'd gathered, [dissapointed is a bad
word, shattered, more like it], and ended it.  I don't
know if anyone else here believes in spirituality, and
this doesn't have a basis on any fact, but what happened
to the left?  I hope it escaped like a child's soul
[bordering on mushy here, I apologize to anyone and I will
pick up the drycleaning bill if it splashed].
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