J. D. Salinger’s Seymour, an Introduction is poorly written. Though I’m yet to finish the novel, it seems all but certain to be the worst of his works. It has good, even great bits here and there, but they are buried under a thick layer of verbal dross. It’s as if Salinger were trying to fatten his prose to the point of buoyancy, inserting parentheses and useless remarks wherever possible. The windiness adds nothing to the story.
Salinger even warns us about the incoming blather (while subtly scolding the reader for wanting to read edited texts):
Worst of all, I think, [the happy writer is] no longer in a position to look after the reader’s most immediate want; namely to see the author get the hell on with his story. […] I’m aware that a good many perfectly intelligent people can’t stand parenthetical comments while a story’s purportedly being told. (We’re advised of these things by mail—mostly, granted, by thesis preparers with very natural, oaty urges to write us under the table in their off-campus time. But we read, and usually we believe; good, bad, or indifferent, any string of English words holds our attention as if it came from Prospero himself).
The author might be surprised to learn that his novel did not hold my attention “as if it came from Prospero himself”. In fact, it’s been a bit of a slog to get through.
I’m here to advise that not only will my asides run rampant from this point on (I’m not sure, in fact, that there won’t be a footnote or two) but I fully intend, from time to time, to jump up personally on the reader’s back when I see something off the beaten plot line that looks exciting or interesting and worth steering toward. Speed, God save my American hide, means nothing whatever to me.
He was not lying.
There are, however, readers who seriously require only the most restrained, most classical, and possibly deftest methods of having their attention drawn, and I suggest—as honestly as a writer can suggest this sort of thing—that they leave now, while, I can imagine, the leaving’s good and easy. I’ll probably continue to point out available exits as we move along, but I’m not sure I’ll pretend to put my heart into it again.
This is cringe.