About the author:
Marlowe is the moniker of Tim Lieder - a 31-year old who's never held down a job for more than a couple of years in his life. He originally intended marlowe as his ebay user name, but that was taken so he contented himself with Marlowe1. He had just read Dr. Faustus, although you could say that it's also a tribute to Philip Marlowe. Tim Lieder is neither a fictional detective or a gay Elizabethan. He has never sorted out the dealings of a creepy complicated family with a notoriously dead limo driver. Nor has anyone stuck a knife in his eye and claimed that he was Shakespeare. Currently he works in a bank but he's planning on going to grad school.
About his bi-weekly column
This column is what happens when you allow children without fathers watch gory horror movies and drink cola products for breakfast.
View all articles by Marlowe, 2HC Columnist...
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Holden Caulfield and the Spiders from Mars
In "Seymour, An Introduction," Salinger's stand-in Buddy Glass ties the Glass Family into The Catcher in the Rye with the claim to a fictional novel containing a character based on his dead brother Seymour Glass. In other words, Holden Caulfield is a fictionalized version of Seymour Glass, brother to Buddy Glass, a fictionalized version of J.D. Salinger himself. Buddy doesn't extrapolate and "Seymour, An Introduction" is more about Buddy Glass's neurosis than the doomed brother. Despite its incoherence, "Introduction" leaves the reader with one of the best real life/fiction dilemmas. Is Holden Caulfield Buddy in disguise? Seymour through Buddy's eyes? Seymour and Buddy combined? Holden Caulfield has an older brother that he almost worships. The brother is a writer. Holden Caulfield has another brother whose death haunts him. Because Salinger is Salinger, it's very tempting to accept The Catcher in the Rye as Buddy's attempt to portray Seymour which fails when he only portrays himself.
Yet, I can't accept the Seymour Glass association. Holden Caulfield is more than an extension of the bloodless whitebread Glass family. The Glass Family stories are clever. Franny & Zooey has some great stuff to say about conformity, religion and being too smart for your own good. "Perfect Day for Bananafish" is brilliantly understated in its examination of Seymour's suicide. There's plenty of philosophizing, surprise endings and turgid character studies to please most literary critics.
Intellectually I can accept Seymour Glass and Holden Caulfield as the same person through the filters of fictionalization. Emotionally, I am screaming along with my inner teenager. The Catcher in the Rye is magic. I know that Salinger tried to write a clever novel about a disturbed teenager having a nervous breakdown. My 11th grade classmates' oral book report focused solely on Holden Caulfield's sorrow, his mourning and his constant cynicism. They said it was depressing. Maybe Salinger would agree. Salinger has a bit of the Seymour Glass in him. I was never so contemptuous. They just didn't get it.
Yes, Holden Caulfield is crazy, messed up, sad, angry and bitter; he's also the funniest most sarcastic assholes in literary history. I still contend that every adolescent is crazy, messed up, sad, angry and bitter most of the time. Adolescence sucks. At very least the amnesiacs no longer call it "the best time of your life." You don't see high suicide, drug and crime rates among 50 year olds. And that's just the surface of a swirling mass of bile that goes under the guise of growing pains (I apologize to everyone that has a flashback of Kirk Cameron calling Tracy Gold fat.) The question of Columbine wasn't why did it happen. Why didn't it happen more often?
Holden Caulfield gave me and millions like me a road map for dealing with high school. No, sarcasm that barely disguises an underlying pain is not a great way to deal with life, but when you're young it's the best you got. Salinger portrayed adolescence so completely that, decades later, teenagers that would never think of dropping out of school and wandering around New York (much less go to expensive Broadway shows starring the Lunts) can read The Catcher in the Rye and feel the shock of recognition. Consider how many teen magazines, teen movies, coming of age stories, shitty radio music, YA books, high school, teen clothing seem dated almost a week after their release. Just read any marketing trade magazine and read of the struggles to find the hip, happening, cool new thing for teenagers. Hell, just imagine anyone thinking that abstinence only education is going to prevent teen pregnancy. Yet somehow Holden Caulfield cuts through all the bullshit.
What about Seymour? Why can't he be an adult Holden Caulfield. He's the only Glass with any trace of irony. Note his attitude toward religion. Whereas his siblings view faith as a thing you discuss to impress the yokels, Seymour actually lives by whatever strange philosophy he's pushing. Couldn't that be the passion that we find in Caulfield?
No.
Would Holden Caulfield leave his bride on the wedding day because everything is too perfect? Only to elope after judging a Taoist imperfection? Holden would be the guest eating the food before the caterer can take it away. Would Holden Caulfield feel the sting of materialism and conformity and then shoot himself in the head? I don't think so. Seymour is this overly intellectual martyr - a Candide or a Billy Budd. He's terribly shocked by the world. By Holden Caulfield's fantasy of rescuing children from the deep chasm of the life you'd think he was a Seymour. Still no. Caulfield's cynicism might be a coping mechanism but I don't see him relinquishing it unless a better one comes along. Seymour Glass is a man that surrenders to his inner child and becomes a manchild - always living in some dream land. Holden Caulfield lives in the real world. It might be hard and it might be a big cliff but he's going to cope.
Or maybe it is just personal. I want to believe that the fictional character that sustained me as an adolescent lived a happy fictional maturity, because I grew up and live happy as a mature (semi-mature) adult. Besides, Seymour Glass is a whiner. Who the hell wants the hero of their adolescence to grow up to be an East Coast bloodless intellectual with just a little too much personality so he had to shoot himself?
Marlowe (Tim Lieder) has three cats and lives in a small place. |
