"The mother is the end - a finger in all the arts and sees a good Jungian man twice a week..."
Much is made of Seymour's mother-in-law to be and her therapist.
In If You Really Want to Hear About It John Updike says:
"Few writers since Joyce would risk such a wealth of words upon events that are purely internal and deeds that are purely talk. We live in a world, however, when the decisive deed may invite the holocaust, and Salinger's conviction that our inner lives greatly matter particularly qualifies him to sing of an America where, for most of us, there seems little to do but feel." (Crawford, 122)
It's clear that Salinger's interest is in the internal and given his time and circumstance Jung seems a much more appropriate fit than Freud.
Showing posts with label Letters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Letters. Show all posts
Friday, May 22, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Letters Leave Lingering Questions
Picking up where I left off, not that this blog will make any sense to anyone but me anyway...
The next part of "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" is a letter from Boo Boo to Buddy. In it she tells Buddy that Seymour will be getting married, that no one else can go (mostly due to various and sundry duties related to the war effort) and relays her (unfavorable) opinion of Seymour's bride to be (who we find out later is a woman named Muriel).
Buddy notes that the letter is undated but does his best to give us an approximate date of May 22nd or 3rd.
Boo Boo says:
[Seymour] weighs about as much as a cat and he has that ecstatic look on his face that you can't talk to. Maybe it's going to be perfectly all right, but I hate 1942. I think I'll hate 1942 till I die, just on general principles.
Why does Boo Boo hate 1942? From the letter we get that maybe Seymour is sick (we don't know about his attempt at suicide until later...) but one gets the impression that there may be more going on with Beatrice as well. Will have to see what I might have overlooked in my first read that would tell me why she doesn't like 1942.
According to Wikipedia, here are some of the events which had occurred from January through May of 1942:
February
February 2 – WWII: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs an executive order directing the internment of Japanese Americans and the seizure of their property.
February 10 – In the early hours of the morning the SS Normandie capsizes at pier 88 in New York City.
February 22 – WWII: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as American defense of the nation collapses.
February 24 – Propaganda: The Voice of America begins broadcasting.
March
March 9 – WWII: Executive order 9082 (February 28, 1942) reorganizes the United States Army into three major commands: Army Ground Forces, Army Air Forces, and Services of Supply, later redesignated Army Service Forces.
March 28 – The Battle of Midway.
April
April 13 – The FCC's minimum programming time required of TV stations is cut from 15 hours to 4 hours a week during the war.
April 15 – WWII: King George VI awards the George Cross to Malta (from January 1 to July 24, there is only one 24-hour period during which no bombs fall on this tiny island).
May
May 15 – WWII: In the United States, a bill creating the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) is signed into law.
...to be continued...
The next part of "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" is a letter from Boo Boo to Buddy. In it she tells Buddy that Seymour will be getting married, that no one else can go (mostly due to various and sundry duties related to the war effort) and relays her (unfavorable) opinion of Seymour's bride to be (who we find out later is a woman named Muriel).
Buddy notes that the letter is undated but does his best to give us an approximate date of May 22nd or 3rd.
Boo Boo says:
[Seymour] weighs about as much as a cat and he has that ecstatic look on his face that you can't talk to. Maybe it's going to be perfectly all right, but I hate 1942. I think I'll hate 1942 till I die, just on general principles.
Why does Boo Boo hate 1942? From the letter we get that maybe Seymour is sick (we don't know about his attempt at suicide until later...) but one gets the impression that there may be more going on with Beatrice as well. Will have to see what I might have overlooked in my first read that would tell me why she doesn't like 1942.
According to Wikipedia, here are some of the events which had occurred from January through May of 1942:
February
February 2 – WWII: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs an executive order directing the internment of Japanese Americans and the seizure of their property.
February 10 – In the early hours of the morning the SS Normandie capsizes at pier 88 in New York City.
February 22 – WWII: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as American defense of the nation collapses.
February 24 – Propaganda: The Voice of America begins broadcasting.
March
March 9 – WWII: Executive order 9082 (February 28, 1942) reorganizes the United States Army into three major commands: Army Ground Forces, Army Air Forces, and Services of Supply, later redesignated Army Service Forces.
March 28 – The Battle of Midway.
April
April 13 – The FCC's minimum programming time required of TV stations is cut from 15 hours to 4 hours a week during the war.
April 15 – WWII: King George VI awards the George Cross to Malta (from January 1 to July 24, there is only one 24-hour period during which no bombs fall on this tiny island).
May
May 15 – WWII: In the United States, a bill creating the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) is signed into law.
...to be continued...
An Important Note
On page 8 of my copy of "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" Buddy tells us that he is pretty exclusively concerned with Seymour's story. This probably shouldn't be a shock as the book also includes, "Seymour An Introduction" but Buddy adds that Seymour was in the Air Force (then still the Air Corps) and that he was probably (emphasis Salinger's) the "acting company clerk." [Incidentally, this detail has some ambiguity as the Air Corps itself began to serve under the Army Air Forces in 1941.]
We also learn that he was not a prolific letter writer. Since later in the novella, Seymour's diary is such an important part of the story, I find this an odd contradiction.
Buddy says he hasn't had more than five letters from Seymour in his whole life, and he is speaking AFTER Seymour's death.
In fact the narrative time of the novella is 1955 after Seymour's suicide and the completion of the war. Unfortunately, this detail is omitted from the Glass Family Chronology
...to be continued...
We also learn that he was not a prolific letter writer. Since later in the novella, Seymour's diary is such an important part of the story, I find this an odd contradiction.
Buddy says he hasn't had more than five letters from Seymour in his whole life, and he is speaking AFTER Seymour's death.
In fact the narrative time of the novella is 1955 after Seymour's suicide and the completion of the war. Unfortunately, this detail is omitted from the Glass Family Chronology
...to be continued...
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