new book by Lillian Ross

Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Mon, 20 Jul 1998 12:49:25 -0400 

I recently finished a new book by Lillian Ross, HERE BUT NOT HERE,
which is a memoir about her relationship with The New Yorker editor
William Shawn.  The book is being hotly discussed because it is a 
kind of "kiss and tell" story, but one of the astonishing things 
is how often J.D. Salinger appears as a character.

There is a picture of him cuddling the baby Ross adopted in 1966.
Salinger also stood as the baby's godfather, along with Shawn; in 
addition, when Ross had been trying to adopt (the baby was from 
Norway), Salinger went to the Norwegian Consulate to attest to 
Ross's character as a prospective mother.

Ross and Shawn, in a moment of daring, had bought a Triumph sports car,
which they used to escape the city on weekends, and at some point when
they disposed of it, Salinger bought it from them.  (I don't know why 
I find this amusing ... it's enough of a stretch of the imagination to 
consider Shawn at the wheel of a car, and it's wonderful to imagine 
them all thinking of keeping the car in the family, so to speak.)

Finally -- and this is the die-hard reader in me finding something
delightful -- there is a passage about Shawn's son (the actor and 
writer Wallace Shawn) going off to camp, as a child, in 1962.  This 
should sound hauntingly familiar to anyone who has read "Hapworth":

	[Shawn] told me how Wallace had packed his violin,
	his typewriter, and an enormous box of books to 
	take with him to a summer sports camp.

and:

	[Bill Shawn] started telling me about Wallace in 
	my first years at the magazine -- about his 
	remarkable intelligence as a baby, when Bill kept
	a list of the words in what became a highly unusual
	baby vocabulary [and] about Wallace's volatility 
	at the age of seven....

Considering that many of us wonder about the genesis of Seymour
as a character, and about "Hapworth"'s hyperarticulate Seymour-as-
child, this book fires the imagination about real-life models.  

Salinger was quite often in contact; Ross mentions that he 
periodically came down from New Hampshire to visit, and that 
every time he was in town, the three of them would have dinner.  
She admires his sturdy resistance to publicity, and says, "On the 
human side, Salinger has, among other things, managed to do what 
so many (apparently necessarily) self-centered others have failed 
to do -- that is, to be a solid and responsible parent to his 
children."

I can't help feeling a sense of wonder about the connections
between what he was writing then and how he was living.  At a 
minimum, the book puts to rest the notion that Salinger 
completely walled himself off from the rest of the world, and 
the note about his approach to parenting is lovely, because it 
suggests that the concern for children in his work is more than 
a literary affectation.

It was a nice surprise to stumble upon.

--tim o'connor