Re: concern

Prufrock33@aol.com
Tue, 04 Aug 1998 10:26:17 -0400 (EDT) 

(been awhile hasn't it?)

I didn't know if anyone had read this article, but I thought everyone may find
it interesting since the discussion is somewhat revolving around the question
of Salinger's personality and his character's. After I read it I was not
surprised, but I have to say I was a little disappointed. It just made him so
very human, a quality I had not yet attributed to him. I imagine the book will
be popular for curiosity's sake. 

All Love,
Angie


Author provides rare look into J.D. Salinger's life

	 
	    By Grant McCool
	    NEW YORK (Reuters) - In one of the most complete published
portraits of reclusive author J.D. Salinger, an ex-lover reveals
that he locked his manuscripts in a safe, obsessed about food
and strongly believes writers should not become famous.
	    Author Joyce Maynard, who had a 9-month affair with Salinger
26 years ago when he was 53 and she was 18, writes in her book
''At Home in the World'' that Salinger was moody and cranky, and
withering in his assessments of people he knew.
	    Excerpts published in the September issue of Vanity Fair
magazine reveal details about Salinger's private life as it was
in 1972 and 1973, a rare glimpse of the man whose 1951
bestseller ``The Catcher in the Rye'' turned him into a cult
figure in American literary history.
	    ``Publication is a messy business,'' Maynard reports
Salinger telling her. ``You'll see what it means one day. All
those loutish, cocktail-party-going opinion givers, so ready to
pass judgment. Bad enough when they do that to a writer. But
when they start on your characters -- and they do -- it's
murder.
	    ``It's just more of a damned interruption than I can
tolerate anymore.''
	    Maynard's intention to publish the memoir that would breach
Salinger's privacy of their affair was reported in November 1997
by The New York Times and the Boston Globe. The book is to be
published by Picador USA in October.
	    Maynard, 44, a divorced mother of three who lives in
northern California, said she had kept about 30 letters from
Salinger, whom she calls Jerry.
	    But in her book, she avoids quoting directly from the
letters, referring only to the ideas and thoughts. Salinger, now
79, sued his biographer Ian Hamilton in the 1980s and 90s over
the use of letters without permission. The legal battle went all
the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the
author's privacy.
	    The relationship began with an admiring letter Salinger
wrote Maynard after she had a cover story published in the New
York Times Magazine in April 1972 called ``An 18-year-old Looks
Back on Life.''
	    It was the first of many stories that Maynard has written
about her personal life, while Salinger has kept his silence,
living at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire. A novel by
Maynard, ``To Die For'', was turned into a Hollywood movie in
1995 starring Nicole Kidman.
	    When they began their affair, Maynard writes that ``He had
been married before -- twice. I had kissed one boy in my whole
life.''
	    Maynard said their relationship was never consummated. She
discovered that she was at that time physically unable to have
sexual intercourse.
	    She writes that they grew apart when he began criticizing
her in ways he had not before and that he ended their
relationship suddenly and cruelly during a trip with his
children to Daytona Beach, Florida, in March 1973.
	    ``You know, I can never have any more children. I'm finished
with all this,'' Maynard reports Salinger saying while they were
sitting on the beach.
	    She said he turned and spoke to her ``with a coldness'' she
had never seen before but always feared.
	    ``You'd better go home now,'' he told her. ``You need to
clear your things out of my house. If you go now, you can have
everything gone before the children and I get back. I don't want
them upset, having to witness all this.''
	    A typical day for Salinger at his New Hampshire house at the
time included practicing homeopathic medicine on himself and his
children -- and writing. In 1973, Salinger -- who has not
published anything since 1965 -- had completed at least two
books and kept the manuscripts locked in a safe as big as a room
in his house, Maynard writes.
	    He liked Jane Austen and vaudeville and as for movies, his
favorites were ``The Thirty-Nine Steps,'' ``The Thin Man,''
''The Lady Vanishes,'' ``From Here to Eternity'' and ``The Pink
Panther'' according to Maynard. He listened to Blossom Dearie,
Glenn Miller, the Andrew Sisters and Benny Goodman and enjoyed
''The Andy Griffith Show'' on TV and the neighbors in ``I Love
Lucy.''
	    ``The worse the television -- the more American -- the more
I love it,'' Salinger told Maynard.
	    She said Salinger preferred raw food and taught her how to
self-induce vomiting after an unhealthy meal.
	    ``You can't let this junk just sit around putrefying in your
intestine,'' he told her after an outing with Salinger's son
Matthew to eat pizza.
	    Maynard said that Salinger worked on his fiction for hours
every day. He kept stacks of notes and notebooks about the
characteristics of the Glass family from his novels and short
stories. Maynard believes he had a greater affection for the
characters than he did for his own family