Re: Hapworthless
citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Thu, 07 Oct 1999 09:43:21 -0700
Okay, Holden has *finally* found the damn equipment and I'll put on a
clown's suit and ...
-----Original Message-----
From: Camille Scaysbrook <verona_beach@hotpop.com>
To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu <bananafish@lists.nyu.edu>
Date: Wednesday, October 06, 1999 8:57 PM
Subject: Re: Hapworthless
>citycabn wrote:
>> 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).
>
>No, I'd definitely disagree with this. RHTRBC is still ultimately narrated
>by Buddy, which means that his many biases and ommissions may still be in
>place.
Yes, I agree RHTRBC is narrated by Buddy. Of course, he tells the story.
And tells it well. Very well. In fact, after a very bad session at the
dentist in November of 1998 I picked up that very story to read after *not*
touching a Salinger book for 24 years. And if I may concisely add, that
very afternoon I whipped into SAI and was hooked *again* and about six weeks
later joined Bananafish. Yes, there are biases, and maybe omissions, but I
think I was making the point that Seymour himself, or Seymour the real
unfiltered Seymour, does poke his nose into that story via his diary pages.
Now, you aren't saying Buddy fudged the transcription of those pages?
(Even Buddy admits that he is `transcribing' the letter of Hapworth
>16 rather than `showing' it to us.
Well, yes, he has to transcribe it because his little cabin (cabn) in
upstate NY near the ski facility is quite small and though he would like
to--remember the old red carpet passage in SAI--have us all up there to
*show* us the actual letter Bessie sent up, that we may actually *touch* it,
he has to make do with transcribing it and putting it into the magazine.
(He even wants to show us snapshots at one point in SAI. Would love to see
them.)
He is an intermediatry force, the
>official biographer).
Yes, he is. And he is also meditating on Seymour. Seymour, in addition to
being his eldest brother, is Buddy's guru. Buddy's writings about Seymour
are his sadhana.
>This is not a trick on Buddy's part, but you have to
>admit that despite the fact that the whole Glass canon is Buddy's abject
>struggle against hagiography, it is impossible for him to take a wholly
>objective view of his brother, sincere and heartfelt as his efforts might
>be.
Buddy might have started out in APDFBF never thinking or realizing who/what
Seymour *really* meant to him. But by the time of SAI, Buddy is embracing
hagiography. And he doesn't give a fig what the readers or critics think.
I don't think Buddy is too interested in a wholly objective view of his
brother. He is interested in only re-connecting, being with, his brother
again. He, S. and Zooey have been brothers for, I think it was, 3
incarnations. Buddy wants to do a Proust: stop time, turn the clock back,
put down that Orteges. He wants to play ping-pong or tennis again with
Seymour.
> Hell, I lie to my own diary sometimes!
Young lady, I am shocked. Shocked!
(: The whole Glass world is
>filtered through Buddy's consciousness.
Yes, yes, most of it. But there are, among others, the quoted S. diary
bits in RHTRBC, the shirt cardboards in "Zooey", Boo Boo's wonderful letter
in RHTRBC, the John Keats and suicide poem, at least the snyposes of some of
S.'s poems, the great Tyger letter--read *that* before you write your next
novel in that secluded, sunny room and you might not need to tear it
up--and all of Hapworth *not* filtered through Buddy.
From what Buddy tells us in S:AI,
>we can also assume that he is the `author' of `Teddy' and by implication
>`Down at The Dingy', `Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut' and so on, as well as
>APDFB.
Yes, I agree.
>I think also that while we should not as you say overemphasise the suicide,
>it should also not simply be swept away as an oversight of the Salinger who
>wrote himself into a corner with APDFB. We can't look at any aspect of
>Seymour's life without taking into account that that is where it all led
>to. I would say that not only Hapworth but virtually all of the Glass canon
>(even `Teddy') are an attempt on Buddy's part to explore the mystery of
>what led his brother to perform what Westerners see as the ultimate act of
>despair (not that it's taken lightly by Buddhists, either. You'd be doing
>yourself quite a karmic disservice.
I agree. No, we can't overlook the suicide. Each reader must by her or his
own path come to it and its meaning. In an earlier post I offered the
flimsy idea that if Buddy/JDS could rewrite APBFBF after having written
RHTRBC, the Bananafish story would have had a different feeling or
atmospherics to it. I personally don't think Seymour shot himself out of
despair. Karmicly, it was simply time to GO.
> Maybe he came back as Joyce Maynard (:
No. That was his last appearance.
>) The interesting thing about studying the Glass canon is that so much of
>it lies in speculation.
Yes, and in very heartfelt, meditative, close reading. Or: just reading and
running.
> In a way, the body of work in Salinger's safe is
>just as studiable as the stories we have on our own shelves.
I think the mythic safe just clouds the issue. Who but JDS and possibly
Mrs. JDS can say *what that safe truly holds*. It might be reams and reams
of beautiful, 24lb. 100% cotton paper, all gloriously blank. (And those
might be the pages we might have to write on. Some day, far away, in the
future.)
>I don't know
>where these Reliable Close Sources from but I've heard about a minimum of
>three `full length' manuscripts in there - although Salinger's statements
>in court at the Ian Hamilton case - not to mention the evidence of his
>later work - indicate that he long, long ago abandoned the mutually
>exclusive concepts of Short Story and Novel.
Regarding JDS, there are *no* Reliable Close Sources. We have one novel, 35
stories of varying lenght and quality, and not more than a dozen
indisputable facts: No. 1: he *was* born Jan. 1, 1919. No. 2: ...,etc.
And not a whole lot more. If JDS invites me up to Cornish and lets me read
those 3 full manuscipts I'll then know *for sure.* Again, I would like,
love, to believe in 3 or 15; that it is going so well, he needs to buy
*another* safe to hold the overflow.
>Who's to say he didn't abandon
>the Glass family years ago? Who's to say there isn't a whole book in there
>about what happened to Holden?
Both of these are quite possible. I am personally hoping for more Glass
Saga stories: Seymour's poems, more about Walt and Waker, Les and Bessie's
pre-childbearing years, the vaudeville years in Australia, etc.
>Ah, too tempting, too tempting!!!
God bless Holden, but I say let him be. No sequels, please.
>
>Hallelujah, I can feel my face again (just had a wisdom tooth out (*: As I
>said to Bruce this must mean I'm now 3/4 less wise. Notice any difference?)
>
No, with one out, you would be 1/4 less wise (I sound like Scottie here).
Hope you are feeling better with each day.
>Camille
>verona_beach@hotpop.com
>
Namaste,
Bruce