Subject: Re: Salinger's reclusiveness
From: Suzanne Morine (suzannem@dimensional.com)
Date: Sat May 12 2001 - 18:51:27 GMT
Well, this was a very observant, thought-provoking note..
At 03:48 AM 5/12/2001 -0400, Jordie Chambers wrote:
>Many people think that Salinger betrayed his readership by refusing to
>publish any of his later works, and refusing to read the buckets of mail
>he'd receive. What strikes people as some kind of insult is he left
>without an explanation, which presupposes that he owed something to his
>readership after drawing them in.
I think people feel admiration for his ability and appreciation of the way
he touched them. If you admire someone, you want them to be around to soak
up that admiration. Hey, we appreciate you! Why'd you leave!? True, to
actually expect that he'd hang around, not just *feel* like he should, does
turn the feeling into a sort of pretentious demanding.
>[..] Holden wondered how a person can keep his instincts sharp in a place
>that ate the cream or the sludge of the phonies that rose to the
>top. Reference to the Indians with 'big bang' suggests some kind of
>parallel between childhood and the aboriginals. In contrast, he speaks of
>the stage as a sort of warped mirror that can only reflect the truth for
>Holden. The phonies have lost in the game Holden is trying to keep sacred
>to himself, and Holden is losing in the phony's game, causing him to feel
>lonely. However he is adamant in his will to stay young.
>[..] how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save
>guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do
>was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and
>congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters
>and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you
>weren't being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn't."'
I think that fame and accolades have to be very distracting. Some of the
things said can be out of synch with reality yet you can still feel *great*
about them being said of you. You have to keep tabs on what you think and
accolades can make it hard to even hear yourself think in the first place.
(Not that I've had tons of fame and accolades ;-)
>Furthermore, what seems like a preoccupation in Holden's hesitation to
>embark in a world of phonies is repeated in Ernie's bar. He's listening
>to this piano player that plays as if everyone's clapping, 'I don't even
>think he knows any more when he's playing right or not. I partly blame it
>on those dopes that clap their heads off -- they'd foul up anybody.'
Actually, being a fan of Catcher and not of Salinger's later stuff, I think
this may have happened to Salinger. I mean, he achieved fame and accolades
and then wrote books that in my opinion are a faint shadow of some of what
he'd written previously.
(But on the other hand, it's hard to generalize. I don't adore some of his
earlier stuff, either. Any artist is uneven. The Muse comes and goes. But
an an established artist can expect everyone to fawn over every effort,
like Ernie's phonies, while the artist starting out can expect criticism at
every turn.)
>[..]
>How about Kurt Vonnegut's later works or by a stretch maybe Salinger with
>Hapworth, so lost in his own iconoclasty that he publishes some esoteric
>whatever you want to call it. It's my opinion that an author's first book
>is usually his best, not in craft but in artfullness.
I've thought that about musicians.
>He was caught by literature. Then he was unbound because the catch was
>crucifying him.
The breathless question is: but did he jump out of the frying pan and into
the fire? Sure, writing alone in Cornish gets him away from Ernie's
problem, but does he get a new problem? Does he have a touchstone like
Phoebe? Is his writing now irrelevant to the specific struggles and
language of people today (or the date his stuff gets posthumously
published)? Art is cathartic for the creator but made better and made
valuable to others by relevance to those reading it, I think. Or maybe he
really did improve things for himself and has created a new sort of writing
or somesuch. I hope he's doing okay. I agree with Antolini that the
scariest prospect of falling is when you don't know you're falling.
Thanks for the interesting thoughts!
Suzanne
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