Re: concern
Matthew_Stevenson@baylor.edu
Tue, 04 Aug 1998 11:14:37 -0500
angie--is this the whole article? and what publication was it in?
anyone--information on this forthcoming maynard book? i don't remember
hearing anything about it before (though that's hardly surprising).
me--hi.
you--bye.--matt
On Tue, 04 Aug 1998 10:26:17 -0400 (EDT) Prufrock33@aol.com wrote:
>(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