Subject: Re: Holden is Number Two Fitzgerald and Salinger
Omlor@aol.com
Date: Fri Mar 15 2002 - 10:03:21 EST
Hi All,
I believe what Will was originally referring to is the fact, commonly known
among Salinger scholars but not mentioned much outside the university
(because of the threat of lawsuits, etc.) that J.D. Salinger and Scott
Fitzgerald were actually the same person. After his career had begun to
disintegrate, along with his health, Scott Fitzgerald tried his hand in
Hollywood, writing screenplays in the late 1930s. But his filmwriting career
was a complete bust and so Scott faked his own death from alcoholism with
help of his good friend Martha Graham (or maybe it was her sister, Sheila)
and returned to New York and set about writing a new series of novels and
short stories under the name of "J.D. Salinger." He hired a young actor to
play his "alter-ego" in publisher's meetings and around the New Yorker
building. Unfortunately, Scott was growing old and had only so much time
left, and by the time he was 70, in 1966, he could no longer write. He died
of natural causes in his early seventies, exactly at the moment when
"Salinger" allegedly stopped writing and disappeared from public life.
Unfortunately, the actor who played the "Salinger" role for Scott continues
to be hounded by fans and the press despite his having moved to a part of the
world where no sane person would ever live. It is only one of several
humiliations he has spent his lifetime enduring -- the most tortuous of
which, no doubt, was being forced to sleep with Joyce Maynard just to
continue his employer's public deception.
But I probably shouldn't be mentioning any of this. You'll notice, no doubt,
that no one has actually seen Ian Hamilton in a very long time.
Bye,
--John (on Spring Break)
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