Subject: The second letter
From: Sundeep Dougal (holden@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in)
Date: Sun Mar 09 1997 - 16:04:19 GMT
March 9, 1997
To
The Editor,
The Sunday Times of India Review
New Delhi.
Dear Sirs,
In continuation of my last letter on the deplorably bad "Catcher is Shy",
I just realised that I had failed to address Mr. Appleyard's following
rather ad-hominem and libellous remarks:
"All of which suggests a deeper more neurotic compulsion than is normal
in other, so-called-reclusive writers. Clearly, Salinger's New Hampshire
isolation amounts to a deeper pathology with ingredients of bitterness,
anger and some kind of conviction that the outside world is riddled with
an intolerable degree of falsity."
This is the passage that primarily induced me to sit down and respond.
While Mr. Appleyard's usage of psycho-babble may lend his remarks a
sembalnce of credibility to the naive reader, I wonder how many would
question his competence in being so categorically prognosticatory.
Somewhere in his article he mentions Betty Eppes's Interview with
Salinger. If he had bothered to read the story in Paris Review, hee may
have been able to see the situation with a somewhat different perspective
when Salinger mentions that "there was a certain peace in not
publishing..." "I want to bee left alone, left to my own privacy. That's
why I moved here. I moved here seeking privacy, a place where I could
lead a normal life and write. But people like you persue me. I don't wish
to seem harsh. It's just that I am a private person. I resent intrusions.
I resent questions. I don't want to talk to strangers. I don't
particularly like talking to anybody. I'm a writer. Write me letters if
you wish. But please don't drop in."
Does that sound like a pathologically sick man? To me it sound perfectly
normal. It is a different thing altogether if Mr. Appleyard's percption
of normalcy would mean appearing on Oprah. (Or the David Frost show?).
Yours etc.
(Sundeep Dougal)
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Sundeep Dougal (Sonny, to friends) Holden Caulfield, New Delhi, INDIA
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