Answered Prayers

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Mon, 25 Jan 1999 22:36:25 +1100 

I've mentioned the following extract before but I don't think I've heard
anyone else discuss it - including in Salinger biographies - so I thought a
lot of you may not have read it, so I've posted it here in full. It's from
`Answered Prayers', Truman Capote's last novel (or the three surviving
unfinished chapters thereof - you can also find it in a Penguin 60s called
`First and Last')

It's a bawdy, bitchy, gossipy mix of the real and the imaginary - and that
goes for this anecdote, which I for one have never been able to verify
or find in any other source and thus may or may not be true. The `Mrs
Matthau' mentioned is, for example, the real-life wife of the actor Walter
Matthau. But I've never heard that Mrs Matthau is the same woman mentioned
in `In Search of JD Salinger' who started sending William Saroyan - whom
she later married twice - the `lousy, glib' letters she copied from JDS.
Likewise I'm sure I've heard some of the quotes they use - `tenderer than
God' for example - but not coming from their mouths. As you can see,
whether they are real or Real - my guess is as good as yours. (p.s.Oona is
of course Oona O'Neill-Chaplin and Charles is Charlie Chaplin.)

-----

>From `Answered Prayers' by Truman Capote

     Mrs Matthau extracted a comb from her purse
   and began drawing it through her long albino hair:
   another leftover from her World War II debutante
   nights - an era when she and all her compares, Gloria
   and Honeychile and Oona and jinx, slouched against
   El Morocco upholstery ceaselessly raking their
   Veronica Lake locks.
      'I had a letter from Oona this morning,' Mrs
   Matthau said.
      'So did I,' Mrs Cooper said.
      'Then you know they're having another baby.'
      'Well, I assumed so. 1 always do.'
      'That Charlie is a lucky bastard,' said Mrs
   Matthau.

     'Of course, Oona would have made any man a
   great wife.'
     'Nonsense.  With Oona, only geniuses need apply.
   Before she met Charlie, she wanted to marry Orson
   Welles ... and she wasn't even seventeen.  It was
   Orson who introduced her to Charlie; he said: "I
   know just the guy for you.  He's rich, he's a genius,
   and there's nothing that he likes more than a dutiful
   young daughter!"'
     Mrs Cooper was thoughtful.  'If Oona hadn't mar-
   ried Charlie, I don't suppose I would have married
   Leopold.'
     'And if Oona hadn't married Charlie, and you
   hadn't married Leopold, I wouldn't have married
   Bill Saroyan.  Twice yet.'
     The two women laughed together, their laughter
   like a naughty but delightfully sung duet.  Though
   they were not physically similar - Mrs Matthau
   being blonder than Harlow and as lushly white as a
   gardenia, while the other had brandy eyes and a dark
   dimpled brilliance markedly present when her ne-
   groid lips flashed smiles - one sensed they were two
   of a kind: charmingly imcompetent adventuresses.
     Mrs Matthau said: 'Remember the Salinger
   thing?'
    'Salinger?'
    'A Perfect Day for Banana Fish.  That Safinger.'
    'Franny and Zooey.'
    'Umn-huh.  You don't remember about him?'
    Mrs Cooper pondered, pouted; no, she didn't.
    'It was while we were still at Brearley,' said
 Matthau.  'Before Oona met Orson.  She had a mysteri-
 ous beau, this Jewish boy with a Park Avenue
 mother, Jerry Salinger.  He wanted to be a writer,
 and he wrote Oona letters ten pages long while he
 was overseas in the army.  Sort of love-letter essays,
 very tender, tenderer than God.  Which is a bit too
 tender.  Oona used to read them to me, and when she
 asked what 1 thought, I said it seemed to me he must
 be a boy who cries very easily; but what she wanted
 to know was whether I thought he was brilliant and
 talented or really just silly, and I said both, he's
 both, and years later when I read Catcher in the Rye
 and realized the author was Oona's Jerry, I was still
 inclined to that opinion.'
    'I never heard a strange story about Salinger,' Mrs
 Cooper confided.
    'I've never heard anything about him that wasn't
 strange.  He's certainly not your normal everyday
 Jewish boy from Park Avenue.'

      'Well, it isn't really about him, but about a friend
  of his who went to visit him in New Hampshire.  He
  does live there, doesn't he?  On some very remote
  farm?  Well, it was February and terribly cold.  One
  morning Salinger's friend was missing.  He wasn't in
  his bedroom or anywhere around the house.  They
  found him finally, deep in a snowy woods.  He was
  lying in the snow wrapped in a blanket and holding
  an empty whiskey bottle.  He'd killed himself by
  drinking the whiskey until he'd fallen asleep and
  frozen to death.'
    After a while Mrs Matthau said: 'That is a strange
  story.  It must have been lovely, though - all warm
  with whiskey, drifting off into the cold starry air.
  Why did he do it?'
     'All I know is what I told you,' Mrs Cooper said.

Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST http://www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest