Re: the "Maynard on Salinger" article

Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Fri, 07 Aug 1998 09:18:20 -0400 

On Fri, Aug 07, 1998 at 12:31:48PM +0000, Andy Wishart wrote:

> Anyone got any clues as to what's causing the odd little additions to
> my messages?  I seem to be the only one who gets the figures and
> little equals signs.  Cute but unnecessary.

[I'm sending this technical answer to the entire list, in case anyone 
else has this problem, but keep reading for actual Salinger-related
content!]

It's your mailer, converting characters to "quoted-printable"; this is
from the headers of your messages:

	MIME-version: 1.0
	X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451
	Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
	Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable

See if your mailer has the option of turning off "quoted-printable" 
on a per-message basis.  Some do.  Some do not (except to turn it off
globally).

> Yes, but why do you feel that they wrote without ego?  Without wishing
> that someone would hear their word, would like their stories (like
> them?).  I'm not talking about riches.  I'm the poorest guy in
> Scotland (official figures pending).   I'm not talking about writing
> for the cash (though I do) but not since I used to stick poetry in my
> drawer, have I finished (to my satisfaction) anything that I didn't
> want to be read.  Actually, I pretty much bored people with the stuff
> I stuck in a drawer too.  

I don't know what was in their heads -- I know that Kafka acted as if
his work were a kind of private joke between himself and his small
circle of friends.  (As John Omlor said on this list a few weeks back,
Kafka would read his work out loud and crack himself up over it.)  But 
in writing -- at least as he has portrayed himself, and as his
contemporaries speak of it -- it was almost like a compulsive action, a
neurotic impulse.  The way some of us grind our teeth at night.  8-)

But no, I can't say that he wrote "without wishing that someone would 
hear [his] word."  He published a small bit of his work, and he amused
himself by reading his work aloud.

Emily Dickinson, though, seemed almost ... ashamed ... (that's the
closest word I can dredge up) of her work, when in reality she was
graced with a talent that most of us can only dream about.

> I'm just suspicious of writing that isn't intended to be read.  I
> question the motivation.  More than that, I question the -truth- of
> it.  
 
That's a fair assessment.  But when we talk about Salinger, it's not
entirely applicable, because he may genuinely be working with the
absolute intention of posthumous publication, and if that is so, it is
still arguable that he wishes to have the work published -- just that he
doesn't want to be around to see the aftermath.  

I think his advice to Joyce Maynard (as she reports it) is to focus 
less on puffy pieces about cheerleaders and Julie Eisenhower and more 
about what really matters to her.  At one point, according to her 
recollection, he says: "'That article you wrote for McCall's about 
your wonderful, perfect relationship with your parents,' he says 
quietly.  "Skillful.  Clever.  Eminently publishable.  And there 
wasn't one honest sentence in the whole damn thing.  Your father's 
an alcoholic, for God's sake.'"

Of course, to be fair, there is another side.  He proclaims, "A writer's
face should never be known."  But she counters, "If you hadn't seen my
face [in the NY Times Magazine], would you have written to me?"  [That 
is how they met.]  According to Maynard, "He doesn't answer."

I interpreted what he said, about ego, as this:  You've got the 
attention of the media.  Take it and run honestly with it.  Don't 
make up pretty false stories and pretend they're real.  Don't twiddle 
with things to make them more palatable (as Hemingway said, in A 
MOVEABLE FEAST, was what F. Scott Fitzgerald did to his magazine 
stories).  Write what you must write.  

But I agree with you.  It can be argued in either direction.  As someone
who is an eager reader, I hold out some hope and would like to find a
new Salinger book on the shelf some day.  I'll give the man the benefit
of the doubt and wait to see the results.

--tim