Subject: Margaret and Brother
From: Jim Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 08 2001 - 13:35:27 GMT
I'm pretty sure you said "unfair" at one point, but I may be mistaken.
Either way, thanks much for posting the response from Margaret's
brother. Very interesting. I'm about 1/3 of the way through Margaret's
bio and I'm pretty annoyed with her voice already...half the time it's
grating...ugh. I tend to distrust the facts she presents because
they're not clearly tied to Salinger (he hated the academe because of
its anti-Semitism, not because of what it did to his fiction), and
because her asides tend to be pretty facile...
Jim
Paul Miller wrote:
>
> Jim wrote:
> Which of M. Salinger's criticisms of JD do you think is
> unfair? ------------------------------------------
>
> Subjective is what I wrote. It has been a year or so since I read her book.
> >From what I remember about it Peggy was very troubled and although I'm sure
> her father is far from perfect, so I think is her book. I wasn't there when
> these kids grew up with Salinger, Matthew Salinger was and here is what he
> said about his sister's book.
>
> Remembrance of things past -
> or not
> The Times, September 23rd 2000
>
> Matt Salinger, the son of the novelist J. D. Salinger was reported this week
> as having spoken out with some reluctance to oppose his sister, Peggy, in
> whose memoirs she had described their father as an intimidating and abusive
> man. Peggy's descriptions had resulted, allegedly, from her therapy, in
> which hypnosis and 'recovered memories' apparently had played a central
> part.
>
> Whereas Peggy had reported that her father was a man who was incapable of
> tying his own shoelaces, Matt described how his father had taught him how to
> tie his own shoes and even to close off the end of a lace once the plastic
> wore off. Matt wrote:
>
> "My sister had often told me Gothic tales of our supposed childhood, and I -
> In retrospect - made the very real mistake of allowing it, without actual
> contradiction...Her version of reality, her vision, no doubt was clouded by
> her own troubled mind". He added that he had grown up in, "..a very
> different house, with two very different parents, from those which my sister
> describes.", and also that, "Nor do I remember any instance of my father
> abusing my mother. The only sometimes frightening presence I remember in the
> house, in fact, was my sister"
>
> Paul
>
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