Subject: Unpublished Salinger Fiction. Part 1
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Date: Fri Jan 07 2000 - 19:53:06 EST
I've just gotten back from Princeton University's Firestone Library and I Am
Stoked (to use a good old Southern CA surfer word) about what I found -- four
previously unpublished Salinger stories. :) This is a very long post, but I
do describe the stories a bit so you may find it interesting.
But first let me tell you about the experience. Princeton U is beautiful. I
think my favorite building is the theater. But you have to realize...the
place is almost too perfect. I walk into the library, and turn right (as per
will's instructions) and go into their Archive area (I forget what they
called it). If you're a Hemingway freak, that's the place to go. I walk all
the way to the back (lost of wood, real nice wood, with marble baseboards) to
the office and explain to the woman sitting there (who looks and sounds like
an old Aunt) that I was a graduate student and wanted to read some
unpublished Salinger stories they had in their archives.
I'm first asked to hang my coat in "that closet," then "sit in this chair"
and fill out This form. With This Pen. And, also, to sign That guestbook.
With That Pencil. She calls another woman (a slightly younger, more genial
aunt who still has no sense of humor) who looks up the archives in a book
(after I tell her what I'm looking for), then directs me to a reading room
further back. She instructs me to sit in This chair (turning on the table
lamp for me), and a form is given to Another Secretary. Your grandmother. A
stern grandmother.
The More Genial Aunt tells me that the rules with Salinger's stories include
Not Quoting Any Of It without the Author's Written Permission. I say,
"That'll never happen." She doesn't notice.
The form is passed on to That Guy (one of your father's friends) who then
gets Said Box. Which I now, finally, after patient waiting, get to read.
Will was right, you don't need a card to get in there, and you can bring a
laptop, but that's it. No coats or briefcases or bookbags.
In two Salinger folders (#25 and #26 in box 14) I found quite a few
photocopied stories. Many of them are among the well known Underpublished
Fiction -- and they were photocopied directly from the magazines in which
they were originally published. Then we had the jewels. One of which was an
introduction Salinger wrote for Story magazine...very nice.
Ah...and now the stories. There were two war stories. "The Magic Foxhole"
and "Two Lonely Men." These were photocopied from typed text on 8.5 by 11
paper. They were 15-20 pagesish, and were very good reads. About on the
level of Sgt. Bilko. Not quite Nine Stories, but very close. I don't see
why they weren't published, being better than some of his other, better
known, underpublished fiction.
And then...the Real Jewels. For me. "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" and
"The Last and Best of the Peter Pans." Guess what? They were Holden
Caulfield family stories...very much along the lines of the Glass family
stories. It seems clear to me that Salinger, at one time, envisioned writing
a Caulfield Family Saga as he did with the Glass family. Here's the
Caulfield family as depicted in these two stories (and I may screw up the
facts a little bit, but I think I'm close):
The mother and father are both actors. Mother is a vivacious redhead named
Mary Moriarty. There are four children in the family -- oldest brother
Kenneth, who is a writer, younger brother Vincent (who owned a lefty
fielder's mitt, read voraciously, and wrote on the mitt quotations from his
favorite books, and has blazingly red hair), still younger brother Holden
(who is in summer camp during the writing of the stories, and sends a letter
home which, I believe, Vincent reads to Kenneth), and daughter Phoebe (who
was apparently just born while Holden was in Summer camp -- there is a
reference to her in a crib, and Holden asks what she looks like in his letter
as if he hadn't seen her before). Holden's letter was quite believable for a
boy his age, btw.
I would place Holden at about 7 or 8 years old, then. One brother says that
Holden's problem is that he won't compromise...commentary after reading
Holden's complaints about the camp.
In Ocean, Vincent dies. He had a heart condition, and apparently suffered a
heart attack after swimming in the ocean. Kenneth (the writer brother) had
written a short story about a woman who constantly kept her husband from
doing the things he enjoys -- except bowling. The man went bowling every
week. He dies, she visits his grave, comes on an off day one week and
inadvertently discovers another woman has been leaving flowers at her
husband's grave every week. She figures out he wasn't bowling, but seeing
another woman all that time.
So she throws his bowling ball out the window when she gets home. After
Kenneth has Vincent read this story, Vincent says he doesn't like it...don't
say such bad things about her...she didn't know what she was doing and he was
just doing the best he could. Write about good things. Later, K and V go to
the beach to go swimming (it was at this point that V read K Holden's letter
from camp), and Kenneth didn't want Vincent to go swimming, but he does
anyhow...K said the ocean looked like it was full of bowling balls. As V
walked out of the ocean, it hit him with a bowling ball. And V collapsed. K
rushes him home, calls a doctor, but it's too late. V dies later.
That's Ocean, basically. I loved the story.
"The Last and Best Peter Pan" is a conversation between Mary M. and Kenneth
after Vincent has died. It's powerful too, and sheds a lot of light on
Salinger's fiction....it adds dimension to his feeling about the issues dealt
with in his fiction that I hadn't seen before. Mary basically doesn't want
her son, K, to enlist in the Army. K says she's all heart and feeling and no
mind, but that he turned the last and best Peter Pan (his mom) into a
Svengali.
What I got out of that was that he was painting her out to be manipulative
(which she seemed...being an actress), when she just really wanted the best
for her boys. It was touching.
Both these stories were very good, in my opinion. They were equal at least
to the weaker of the Nine Stories. It's possible Salinger abandoned the
Caulfield Family Saga because it was too limiting...and I can see that.
After reading these stories I think Salinger was moving toward a
corner...while with the Glass family I feel he's opened wide up. But they
were wonderful stories, reminding me of what I love about reading Salinger
and short stories. The best reads I'd had in awhile.
And that, C., is why I'm a fisher, btw :) Where else could I take this?
Jim
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