Re: Hapworthless
bethany edstrom (bethanyedstrom@hotmail.com)
Mon, 04 Oct 1999 20:47:33 -0500 (CDT)
>From: Matt Kozusko <mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu>
>Reply-To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
>To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
>Subject: Re: Hapworthless
>Date: Mon, 04 Oct 1999 20:08:42 -0500
>
>Strikes me as maybe worth asking, given all the incredulity around
>here lately:
>
>Why should we assume that the fab boy Cornish is proposing a realistic
>situation in "Hapworth"?
>--
>Matt Kozusko mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu
Matt,
This is along the lines of what I've been thinking (hi, all--I've been quiet
for a while, but I've read the postings).
I'll admit it right off--I haven't read Hapworth. I know Seymour well from
the other works, and more to the point I know writers and am one, and I can
relate to the challenge of creating an unbelievable character--just to see
what he does.
Yeah, one of a writer's jobs (and challenges) is to mirror the world around
him, but there are many reasons why a writer would want to create a
character who is somehow super-human. To put his writerly abilities to the
test, to see whether he can somehow smooth and round the paradigm into
something recognizeably human, for one. To mirror the world by NOT mirroring
it, for another--to make us recognize qualities in ourselves because we
notice their ABSENCE in the young Seymour. Or, perhaps, because there ARE
people out there who defy belief. Right?
OK. Sometime in the next week or 2 I'll read the sucker, and maybe then I'll
have some more informed opinions.
Bethany
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