Subject: Re: Paul Alexander's book/images of bio
From: Will Hochman (hochman@southernct.edu)
Date: Sat Aug 11 2001 - 00:01:47 GMT
Matthew, your read of Alexander is pretty echoic of mine...I wondered
about the dust jacket cover...there's a double image of JDS...one is
the famous picture of him from the first ed of Catcher (I think the
photog was L.Jacobi? I'll bet Tim knows!) but it's a very blurry
image on the dust jacket and next to it is a sharper image of a much
older JDS sporting two wonderful, white and very bushy eyebrows. His
grimace in the second shot seems to be saying "F*** You" or "I don't
like you" or "You're wrong to be pointing that lens at me"...in
fact,I wondered if the second picture was taken during the Hamilton
deposition but I think they were taken by a NY Post photographer and
then superimposed to the same tie and jacket the young Salinger is
wearing. What cheap illusion! I'm also wondering is if you thought
the silliness of these photos (presenting a blurred young man and an
angry old man) doesn't echo the bias of Alexander? I've often wished
to know much more about JDS's childhood. We don't/won't since Doris
Salinger died. A recent BBC piece did have one of Salinger's prep
school buddies attempting to make his memories into some kind of
important insight...I only listened once but he claimed, are you
sitting down?, Jerry was Holden.
Clearly Alexander comes up empty on any new biographical info or new
insights about existing info. What good "David Copperfield kind of
crap" about JDS that we do have comes from Margaret Salinger but she
was not a source for Alexander because her book came out 3 years
later. Anyway, Alexander's main biographical source is JM and we
know what happens when gossip is used as fact...no one is really at
home in that world! Hamilton was also a primary source for Alexander,
and IMHO, remains a better biographer of Salinger. I didn't like
Hamilton's attitude toward Salinger, but his scholarship was
thorough, more advanced than anything previous to it, and useful.
Anyhow, when one removes the dust jacket of Alexander's book, the
white book's front cover has a very clear presentation of the young
Salinger picture, the spine says "SALINGER" and the back cover is
blank. God was he a handsome young man! I doubt there's a human
being alive who couldn't dive into his dark eyes with love and
squalor! Anyway, I don't know what the graphics are really trying to
do here (beyond tossing out pictures of Salinger that everyone knows
he'd prefer not to be seen) but I thought about how using pictures of
Salinger really cheapens any serious attempt at his biography.
In fact, I'm guessing that the only person who may have been able to
write Salinger's biography is Miles Davis. He may have been able to
play Salinger on his horn, but the sound would never be transcribed
into words and he's dead now.
Someone will write an authoritative biography of Salinger some day,
but the truth of it is an illusion...I do think Salinger's best
biographical truth is in his fiction. Who he is the moments when
he's helping me know Holden or Seymour is what we can know of an
artist and what matters most. Here's where I'm going in this too long
post.
What Carlos Baker did with Hemingway
was scholarly and helpful,
but what I get of Hemingway from Nick Adams
is a far sharper incision into the writer's soul
than any biographers with their facts can go
Despite my negativity, I'm really glad you made me take Alexander
down from my shelf.
Uncle Willy in Connecticut
-- Will Hochman Assistant Professor of English Southern Connecticut State University 501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515 203 392 5024
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