Re: the Hamilton book
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Fri, 03 Apr 1998 09:57:07 +1000
I'm not casting any aspersions on Hamilton himself, and, as I get older
Salinger becomes for me less like some sort of mystical, mythical Lord of
Shalott creating away in his ivory tower and more like a rather enigmatic,
perhaps even disagreeable old man. But I still do feel some sense of
loyalty to him, which, to me, Hamilton violated.
I've already talked on this list about the tendency to deify Salinger. Like
a god he demands our faith on the basis of what little we know of him, and
without his manifest presence. It is tempting to place him outside human
experience; it interested me that he refused to name any living authors
amongst his favourites as he `thought it wasn't right', because by his
seclusion he has made himself effectively a `dead' author - which, in turn
makes us even more eager for a resurrection, or even a sign, from him. But
that's beside the point : Salinger's reasons for his seclusion are his own,
and on one hand I resent all the hacks who try and leap over his wall for
National Enquirer pictures. But on the other hand, I am also the one who
dreams of slipping notes and manuscripts into his letterbox as a kind of
Wailing Wall from which I may or may not get a reply but can be satisfied
in the mere fact that I have done the best I can to get my message through.
Therefore I find my feelings over the Hamilton book mixed. Initially, I
believe Hamilton had this same basic fascination for wooing the enigma out
of hiding - and I'm sure all of us would like to take credit for being the
one who finally persuaded Salinger back into the world - but as the book
progresses and the mission goes sour, I become more and more convinced that
Hamilton oversteps his bounds.
It's Hamilton's methods and attitude that I found troubling. He seemed to
treat the Salinger hunt as a kind of game; if he could tease the animal for
long enough it would come out of its lair. It's as if he almost hoped it
would emerge with its fangs bared, yet he seems surprised when Salinger
goes to such lengths to maintain his privacy. He misconstrues his subject;
endows him with a persona, claiming that Salinger's warning letters were
initially a kind of `catch me if you can!' (when to me they seemed plainly
`GO AWAY!'). You cannot play games with another person's life, no matter of
their reasons for doing whatever they do.
I found Hamilton's bravado bothersome. He really wanted to be the St George
for this particular dragon-slaying; to make his name as the One Who Rescued
Salinger, it just seemed arrogant to me. That's not to say I found JDS a
particularly attractive character either - in fact, I think in some cases
he may have been wiser to actually let Hamilton use the quotes he wanted
to; to `speak' for himself. It seems very odd that an author would wilfully
abandon his own voice (if his voice of half a century earlier is still
his). But we all
find a lot of JDS's behaviour puzzling, that's not the point.
On a more personal note I found Hamilton's technique of giving himself a
pretend `partner' in research somewhat tiresome; whenever he spoke of
himself and this `companion' as `we', it reeked almost of the royal plural;
the absent,
editorial `we believe this'. I wish he had taken more heed of the
old adage `walk a mile in another man's shoes' (I would say it is one of
the defining axioms of my life) - he does not recognise the irony of his
alarm in finding a cache of his own letters in the Texas library in which
he is waiting to receive a similar cache of Salinger's letters.
As I said in an earlier post, you cannot confuse the author with his
character (`Ian Hamilton' in the book is still a `character'), and I can't
comment on what kind of person he is in real life. His firm, overweening
belief that it was his duty to tear down what protective layers JDS had
placed around himself just disturbed me on a humanitarian level. And that's
why I call it a `hatchet job', which I think now was the wrong term. I just
meant to express the unsettling predatory nature of Hamilton's study.
And let me clarify, I really, really did not intend to deliver any body
blows to you! I think you remain a kind of patriarch of the list (which is
why I made the Salinger comparison in the first place). I am in awe of your
experiences, which make my 20 years seem shorter and shallower still. The
enigma of JDS tantalises me as much as I'm sure it does (or did) Ian
Hamilton - I'm no longer even sure of my stance on him as I get older and
more cynical. All I can be sure of is that he wrote some stories that I
love, and like Santa Claus, I want to leave him some small plate of cookies
just in case he really does exist.
I still can't make myself believe Salinger is totally barren: the
cantankerous tyrant it is now fashionable to think of him as just doesn't
wash. It's as if he became Seymour; commited `suicide' all those years ago,
and all the rest of us are the Glass family, trying to figure it all out. I
don't know. I probably will never know, none of us will. We all hear the
rumours about his writer's colonies and myriad completed works. Maybe they
are masterpieces. Maybe they are rubbish. Who knows?
I think he describes my feelings on his enigma himself :
`Not wasteland, but a great inverted forest / With all foliage underground'
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
THE ARTS HOLE
@ http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
P.S. Thanks for sticking with me on a long and wordy post ! (If you did
make it this far) (:
> It's some years since I read the book & I don't have it by me
> for reference but her description - `self-centred hatchet job' -
> doesn't at all fit my memory of it. Nor does it fit with an even
> hazier memory of my one meeting with the man himself in
> a London pub almost 40 years ago. He was introduced as
> (I think) literary editor of (again, I think) the Spectator &
> part-time poet. He was so self-effacing that my dominant
> impression remains one of great kindness & courtesy to a
> young punk like me who had not the smallest claim on his time
> or attention.
>
> Surely one can express a little scepticism about what looks to
> some of us like contrived reclusiveness without being labelled
> an axe man ?
>
> Scottie B.