Re: Authors, critics, readers...

Andy Wishart (wishy@nettaxi.com)
Thu, 26 Nov 1998 02:38:15 +0000 (GMT) 

On Tue, 24 Nov 1998 04:00:22 -0500 (EST), bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
wrote:

Hello Camille

I'd already written out a reply to this.  Just about to save/post it
when a power drop caused by some builders working next door restarted
my machine and completely erased it.  Maybe you can imagine how
distraught I was at the loss.

Now I'll never make exactly those same points again.  My sturdy satire
and pithy observations (just go with me here, ok?) have wound up
forever lost in a virtual out tray and no-one we know will ever read
them.  Lost - like so much missing socks . . . 

See what I mean?  Socks.  Jeez, those builder guys really hack me off.

>Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 16:17:09 +1100
Camille Scaysbrook <verona_beach@geocities.com> says

>I'm sorry ... I'm a well known anti-fan of Hamilton's book.

S'alright.  Nothing wrong with disagreement. . .

I checked out the Bfish archives and came across a few messages
discussing ISOJDS including your own, so I knew what to expect.

>I simply found it extremely self-important. All his `Salinger's name and mine are linked
>forevermore, you'll never think of Salinger without thinking of Hamilton'

Well, he actually says that their names "will be linked in perpetuity
as those of litigant or foes. . ."   This is simply true.  Hamilton
doesn't seem particularly gladdened that this is the way things turned
out.  Saddened, disappointed.

As for self-important, I just don't agree.  

>Yes, Hamilton's book is factually very interesting, though not particularly
>scholarly

It wasn't really allowed to be though, was it?  I believe Hamilton
honestly wanted leave to write a serious work (with some humour) on a
writer he considers a master of his art.  His motivation wasn't, I
believe, to exploit Salinger, nor does it end out doing so.  It
remains closely within the brief he sets himself and turns ugly
through Salinger's resistance.  Nobody denies him that right, but
given how it all panned out and what of his privacy was really at
stake, It could be argued, though I won't, that the self-importance
card was in Salinger's hand.

> - I found it just a tad tabloidy - maybe I would find the book

Must be a higher standard of tabloid journalism available down under.
Should check out some uk stuff.

>more productive if it didn't even *pretend* to be a biography. It's more
>the story of the biographer than his subject, in the same way as a very

Again, given the difficult circumstances.  I found "How I didn't write
a biography of JDS" quite an interesting slant since I had a
particular interest in his proposed subject.

>I don't care that Hamilton portrayed Salinger as a cantankerous old
>bastard.

Don't you, though?  Not even a little?

There's sometimes a tendency here to canonize Salinger and I think
that it's maybe that faint whiff of incense which so irritated Michael
(if he's still here).

> What I object to is the way Hamilton seemed
>to regard Salinger as a small, bad-tempered animal who, if you waved a few
>leaves into his burrow, would eventually rush out, coughing and spluttering

Well, I reckon Salinger's old and angry enough to fight his own
battles and often seems to make something of a pantomime from it.
It's difficult (for me) to believe that given how easy it would have
been to circumvent the (understandable) media curiosity, that there
wasn't some fine method involved.

The strong parallels between/blending of the author and narrator tweak
our curiosity.  Salinger's attitude to writing, publication, and his
readership, his beliefs, reclusiveness and what we can garner of his
lifestyle, colours to some (large) extent our interpretation of his
work.

This, more than is usual with most authors, seems to be to Salinger's
(commercial and artistic) advantage.  We can't really know for sure
how enduring the power of his work would have been had he continued to
publish, had he showed up on Jonny Carson, had we not had to imagine
and conjecture and look at blurry snaps.  And how we took to that.

Recluse may as well have become his profession.  Salinger -may- still
write but he's more of a living curio than an author any more. 

In my mid-thirties and with twenty years of regular Salinger-fests to
top up the fix (the jolt of Seymour's death still as strong, the neck
hairs still rising when I find out who the fat lady is) it chimes
pretty close for me when in the final paragraph of Hamilton's book he
talks of the infatuation of a seventeen year old and his ability,
finally, to let it go.

>I've always found the Time article about Salinger much more interesting and
>well written than this book (you'll find it in `Salinger: A Critical and
>Personal Portrait')

Is this article easily available?

> As for Hamilton ... I see him as just another (albeit
>maybe a more ambitious one) in the hopeless line of grocery-queue and
>jeep-chasing photographers, all of whom are not at all worried about what
>they can do to or for Salinger, but what Salinger; what *illuminating* a
>little piece of Salinger, can do for them (did anyone say Joyce Maynard??)

Not having read it, I can't speak for Maynard's book but, again, I was
less than surprised with the vehemence with which it was received,
daring as it did to attempt to tarnish our man.  If Will writes a
best-selling portrait of Salinger's work (apologies for the example,
Will, I don't know your plans) lovingly crafted and with glowing
examples of nuggets of genius and so makes a fortune, will this be any
more acceptable or any less exploitative?


-- 
Cheers,
        Andy