Lunchtime read: Seymour: an Introduction

It’s great to see writers try different things but for me the introduction to this story just doesn’t quite work. Being addressed to the reader all the time and told what the writer is trying to do is slightly tiresome after four or five pages. Even when the story proper starts and the narrative concentrates on Seymour it is told in such a way that you start yearning for a more accessible style.

Highlights from the first half of Seymour: an Introduction

* A couple of quotes from Kafka and Kierkegaard start an introduction about writing, seeing and unsuitability as the narrator explains that he is the same character Buddy, from the first story, and he feels almost uncomfortable writing about his brother

* The first fact you find out about Seymour is that he committed suicide while on holiday with his wife in Florida at the age of 31

* After that you are keen to hear why he did it and what led him to go from the married man described in Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters but because there has to be an assumption that you are fresh to this story you get the potted history of Seymour as a child radio star

Hopefully in the second half the story will develop and the style will settle down. More tomorrow…