Re: Hapworthless
citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Wed, 06 Oct 1999 16:13:07 -0700
-----Original Message-----
From: Camille Scaysbrook <verona_beach@hotpop.com>
>Having just headed to the beginning of the Glass saga...
I think you are referring to APDFB here. I would say the beginning of the
Glass Saga is *really* RHTRBC. There the entire family appears on the page.
At the time of APDFBF and Down at the Dingy, I suspect the entire family did
*not* exist in the mind of JDS. Even in "Franny" we can't say *absolutely*
that she is a Glass member. I suspect one day in the Spring of 1955 JDS
had a literary satori and the Glasses emerged full blown from his meditating
head.
>again I wonder if Hapworth isn't another case of Buddy using Seymour as a
>kind of metaphor for the creative voice.
Not Buddy using Seymour, JDS being Seymour. Up to this point JDS felt
comfortable doing short solos in S.'s voice. But one almost feels him
holding his breath each time he is up, up there on *that* high wire. Each
of the characters is a performance, but a performance in the entertainment,
literary, and mystical circus tents. And of course Seymour is the ultimate,
challenging performance to pull off.
All we ever see or hear of Seymour
>is filtered through Buddy; we really can't trust anything he says, not the
>least the odd conceit of `typing out' a letter for us, word for word.
No, not always. S. himself "speaks" via his diary in RHTRBC, his death poem
and Fat Lady parable are quoted in "Zooey", and even in Buddy's tour de
force look-at-me solo act in SAI, the great, great Tyger letter appears,
along with a few warmup tidbits. Trust Buddy re the family. It is *not*
meant as a sleight-of-hand trick. JDS is deadly earnest re the Glasses. He
gave *at least* ten years of his life to them (1955-1965).
>Sometimes I wonder if Seymour `exists' at all or, at the very least, what
>we have of the Glass canon is Buddy's attempt to deal with Seymour's
>suicide in a combination of fiction and reality.
Certainly S. exists. He exists in the books, and in the minds and hearts of
faithful Glass readers. I suggest not to overemphasize the suicide. JDS
has to deal with the suicide *because* that is where he started in '48.
Seymour, as Seymour presented in '55 to '65, did not yet exist. But since
he has, so to speak, painted himself in a corner from the outset, given the
fact of S.'s suicide, JDS does have to go back to it. The entire prelude to
SAI is an attempt to "correct" the status of the suicide in his readers'
minds. Someone commits suicide in the West and everyone is up in arms,
feeling it negates the person's entire life.
So Hapworth could be
>justified perhaps as part of Buddy's attempt to unravel the origins of
>whatever led Seymour to suicide.
Seymour himself mentions in the letter that he won't live longer than a
well-preserved telephone pole. It ain't a big deal. Hapworth, I'll say it
again, is to show the reader that Seymour grew, developed, and became the
Seymour of the poems, parables, and anecdotes. I imagine Christ Himself or
Buddha weren't great shakes at seven, and their Hapworth letters would be
flawed, too.
Again, I would also cite the short story
>that Buddy mentions which, if it is exists - and it's fairly likely it does
>- may say absolute barrels about what Hapworth actually means. Ah,
>Salinger, giving us one half of the jigsaw puzzle - on purpose! Rotten old
>bastard (:
I really don't know if it *truly* exists. I would like to believe it. I
would like to believe those 15 finished manuscripts exist in that mythic
safe in Cornish and one day we *may* read them. Yes, in his Hamilton
deposition JDS talks about writing, he *always* talks about still writing in
those short snippets that periodically hit the news. But who is to say what
condition that writing is in? Fully worked-over manuscripts? Notes?
Sketches? Ideas? Isolated scenes? Lists of words? Only JDS and possibly
Mrs. JDS know for sure. For now, and perhaps all time, there are the one
novel and the 35 stories.
>
>I wonder also if when Salinger first came up with the idea of Seymour, his
>idea would be that he would be his surrogate for the Glass world. The first
>inklings we have of him in APDFB are fairly Salinger-autobiographical - a
>guy with a creative bent cracking up in the army (`and all', I'm tempted to
>add (: ) I wonder if Buddy Glass didn't evolve later, and Salinger decided
>to transfer his surrogacy to him. This would also explain *Buddy's*
>explaination of the Seymour of APDFB being more a portrait of himself
>rather than of the actual Seymour.
Yes, I agree with this. This is right on the money.
>
>Camille
>verona_beach@hotpop.com
>
with a salute,
Bruce