I wonder if this will open the proverbial, though no more than potential (and rather unlikely, I think), floodgates of psychoanalysis, but I don't really care.
I am reading Salinger's "SEYMOUR -- An Introduction" for the second time, and I've come to the conclusion that either I was not the same person when I read it back then as I am now (an existential revelation that seems to manifest itself often during rereads of personally significant works), or I've just forgotten.
Two things.
One:
In "Introduction," Salinger, voicing Buddy Glass, speaks at length of his own writing and the writing and writings of his older brother, Seymour. I want to be a writer. I can't conscionably call myself a writer until I'm published. (At least that's what I tell myself, but even then, I expect I'll be too self conscious to manage it!) Yet I write. And write. And write. Yet I read Salinger. And what a stupid frickin' thing to do! Salinger who hales his characters as brilliant--ne' sublime; unapproachable--writers; Salinger who himself is so uncannily capable of making his lines appear (and maybe so they are) entirely "off the cuff" and yet bear such indelible brilliance. I feel extraordinarily inferior--especially as I tap this out with "Introduction" hanging open to page 183, and but a scant three inches from my left hand.
Two:
As an aspiring writer, I can't help but identify with Buddy, who is himself a writer--though, unlike me, really a writer. He has a similar, though certainly elevated, predicament. He doesn't have Salinger breathing down his neck (or over his left hand), but the even and ever superior Seymour himself, and not just when a book of his is open on the same desk where he's writing, but, while Seymour was yet alive, in his room while he slept, poring over his manuscripts, and now that he's dead, haunting him forever--if, that is, I read aright. On page 182, Buddy begins a transcription of a letter he received from Seymour in which the latter discusses at length his impression of one of his younger brother's literary attempts. (You know, I intended this to be a very short entry. Frustrating: I tried working on my novel today and couldn't squeeze out a single word that wasn't utterly false, and I deleted, trashed, and started again and again and again. Now, wanting to be brief, I gush. Argh!) Anyway, the letter from Seymour to Buddy, much like the elegy of "Roof Beam" by Buddy about his brother, makes me weep, much like certain chapters, poems, and passages of Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass does. (I'm a pathetically passionate reader.)
**pause : shaking off whatever's haranguing me!**
Okay. Deep breath. Here are the words that crossed my mind some hours ago and that prompted this entry in the first place (and may it be readily acknowledged that this is in no wise intended to slight my brilliant, beautiful, and much-loved siblings or anyone else):
I am reading Salinger's "SEYMOUR -- An Introduction" for the second time, and I've come to the conclusion that either I was not the same person when I read it back then as I am now (an existential revelation that seems to manifest itself often during rereads of personally significant works), or I've just forgotten.
Two things.
One:
In "Introduction," Salinger, voicing Buddy Glass, speaks at length of his own writing and the writing and writings of his older brother, Seymour. I want to be a writer. I can't conscionably call myself a writer until I'm published. (At least that's what I tell myself, but even then, I expect I'll be too self conscious to manage it!) Yet I write. And write. And write. Yet I read Salinger. And what a stupid frickin' thing to do! Salinger who hales his characters as brilliant--ne' sublime; unapproachable--writers; Salinger who himself is so uncannily capable of making his lines appear (and maybe so they are) entirely "off the cuff" and yet bear such indelible brilliance. I feel extraordinarily inferior--especially as I tap this out with "Introduction" hanging open to page 183, and but a scant three inches from my left hand.
Two:
As an aspiring writer, I can't help but identify with Buddy, who is himself a writer--though, unlike me, really a writer. He has a similar, though certainly elevated, predicament. He doesn't have Salinger breathing down his neck (or over his left hand), but the even and ever superior Seymour himself, and not just when a book of his is open on the same desk where he's writing, but, while Seymour was yet alive, in his room while he slept, poring over his manuscripts, and now that he's dead, haunting him forever--if, that is, I read aright. On page 182, Buddy begins a transcription of a letter he received from Seymour in which the latter discusses at length his impression of one of his younger brother's literary attempts. (You know, I intended this to be a very short entry. Frustrating: I tried working on my novel today and couldn't squeeze out a single word that wasn't utterly false, and I deleted, trashed, and started again and again and again. Now, wanting to be brief, I gush. Argh!) Anyway, the letter from Seymour to Buddy, much like the elegy of "Roof Beam" by Buddy about his brother, makes me weep, much like certain chapters, poems, and passages of Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass does. (I'm a pathetically passionate reader.)
**pause : shaking off whatever's haranguing me!**
Okay. Deep breath. Here are the words that crossed my mind some hours ago and that prompted this entry in the first place (and may it be readily acknowledged that this is in no wise intended to slight my brilliant, beautiful, and much-loved siblings or anyone else):
I wish I had an older brother
entirely--the good and the bad--
like Seymour Glass.
No analysis but context: I have no older brother. I feel that I fairly failed my younger siblings (ridiculous alliteration is unintended and coincidental), not that I was the oldest. She did great!
