Caught by Catcher?

The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger

(Image from Wikipedia)

I thought that I'd already said enough about Salinger and his novel -- and possibly my readers would agree -- but a recent letter to the International Herald Tribune caught my attention and offered another positive plug for the novel as a revolt against phoniness. Under the heading "Today’s American man," a certain Mr. Richard Margolin of Hoboken, New Jersey wrote to say:

While on my way home a few nights ago, I stopped off at the local convenience store. While walking about, I noticed that the television behind the checkout counter was tuned to a local news station reporting on the death of J.D. Salinger.

After the report, the camera returned to the anchor who made a personal comment about how much "Catcher in the Rye" had meant to him when he was in high school. But then, this nice, scrubbed and smiling image of the successful, all-American male, ended by saying, "And now here I am, another phony in a suit."

This fellow really does deserve some kind of formal recognition.

Mr. Margolin is right. The 'phony' anchorman does deserve some recognition. I can offer merely informal recognition if some reader will offer the man's name. Perhaps Mr. Margolin has learned it by now? At any rate, I have to acknowledge that any novelist who can have that sort of impact upon readers and give them the courage to speak the truth as they see it is also worthy of recognition.

But that label of "phony" does raise the issue of what constitutes authenticity, which was something that I obsessed about during my existentialist phase, back when I was reading Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus, Kierkegaard and Heidegger. Ironically, that was around the time that I also read Salinger's Catcher, yet it still didn't speak to me even though authenticity is a central theme of existentialism . . . and by implication, phoniness.

Catcher was a revolt against phoniness, but perhaps Salinger got caught by his own book. Maybe Catcher was such a success that it threatened to make him a 'phony' . . . or made him worry that he was one, a man identified by the success of a single book:

Who are you?

I'm the author of Catcher.

He seems to have spent years on end searching through various religious and quasi-religious belief systems for an authentic identity, but that sort of shopping around leads to little more than an arguably inauthentic postmodern 'identity' as consumer of religious 'authenticities'. That's probably a fascinating and fervently debated issue in literary scholarship on Salinger, though I've never looked into the point. If I cared more about Salinger the writer -- and maybe I should, I don't know -- I'd probably care more about the answer to the question of who Salinger himself really was. Perhaps someone else can say if the man himself was a phony . . . or if he found his sought-for authenticity.

Requiescat in pace anyway, Mr. Salinger.

J. D. Salinger: Was I Too Harsh on the Man?

Cornish-Windsor Bridge

Photo by Gretchen Ertl

(Image froom The New York Times)

I may have been too harsh on old J. D. Salinger in my blog post the first of this month. Most of the comments ran in my favor in disparaging Catcher, and perhaps even went along with my negative view of Salinger himself:

[T]he Caulfield character didn't resonate with me. Growing up in the Ozarks, I didn't find the older generation "phony" at all. They fascinated me, the way that Mr. LeRoy Tucker's stories fascinate me . . . . [whereas Salinger,] as an individual, . . . seemed proud and self-centered, the sort of man who would order "his agent to burn any fan mail."

However, I received a dissenting vote on my negative view of the man himself, and I take the dissent seriously because it comes from a blogger whom I respect, Mr. Jeff Sypeck, who authored Becoming Charlemagne and who blogs at Quid Plura. He posted this comment on my blog entry about Salinger:

Given that he spent the past 50 years in rural seclusion, I suspect Salinger would have found your elders in the Ozarks pretty charming.

I hadn't thought of the man from that perspective, but I worried that Mr. Sypeck had a point.

And wouldn't you know it, the New York Times provided a corrective -- inadvertent perhaps? -- to the obituary (and to my prejudices) in an article by Katie Zezima: "J. D. Salinger a Recluse? Well, Not to His Neighbors" (January 31, 2010). From Zezima and the townspeople of Cornish, New Hampshire, one gets a far more favorable picture of the man:

Here Mr. Salinger was just Jerry, a quiet man who arrived early to church suppers, nodded hello while buying a newspaper at the general store and wrote a thank-you note to the fire department after it extinguished a blaze and helped save his papers and writings . . . .

Cornish, a town of about 1,700 on the banks of the Connecticut River, has two general stores, a post office, a church and miles of pines, oaks, farmland and rolling hills. The town has long been a summer haven for artists and writers, a solitary escape in the woods.

By all accounts Mr. Salinger loved the area. He would, until recent years, vote in elections and attend town meetings at the Cornish Elementary School, and he went to the Plainfield General Store each day before it closed. He was often spotted at the Price Chopper supermarket in Windsor, separated from Cornish by a covered bridge and the now ice-jammed river, and he ate lunch alone at the Windsor Diner. Mr. Salinger was also said to have frequented the library at Dartmouth College and to have attended the occasional house party.

But he still doesn't sound like an easy man:

Mr. Salinger was a regular at the $12 roast beef dinners at First Congregational Church in Hartland, Vt. He would arrive about an hour and a half early and pass the time by writing in a small, spiral-bound notebook, said Jeannie Frazer, a church member. Mr. Salinger usually dressed in corduroys and a sweater, she said, and would not speak . . . .

Mr. Salinger did not approve of all the trappings of a New England life. Generations ago, towns appointed hog reeves -- people who caught livestock that ran away -- each year at a town meeting. In Cornish, for fun, newly married couples are appointed honorary hog reeves each year. In the 1950s Mr. Salinger and his first wife, Claire, were given the honor, Mr. [Stephen] Taylor said.

"By all accounts, he was not amused," Mr. Taylor said.

But perhaps he mellowed in later years, for his townspeople seem to have accepted and liked him even if he was a very quiet man . . . and there's certainly no crime in being a quiet fellow. At any rate, the article generally gives me a rather different, more positive image of Mr. J. D. Salinger.

Maybe I ought to re-read Catcher? What do you all think?

Requiem for J. D. Salinger

J. D. Salinger

Photographer: Lotte Jacobi

(Image from New York Times)

I happened to notice that J. D. Salinger died the other day at the ripe old age of 91. Recalling that fact over dinner, I remarked to my wife:

"J. D. Salinger is dead."

"Who?" she said.

"J. D. Salinger. American author. Wrote Catcher in the Rye."

"Ah," she noted, a light coming on. "I didn't know he was still alive."

"He isn't," I said. "Not any more."

My daughter laughed. My son slurped his soup. I reflected upon Salinger's death . . . and his famous novel. It was supposed to be the voice of an adolescent generation in the 1950s, precocious baby boomers, I guess. Charles McGrath of the New York Times noted in an obituary (January 28, 2010):

With its cynical, slangy vernacular voice (Holden's two favorite expressions are "phony" and "goddam"), its sympathetic understanding of adolescence and its fierce if alienated sense of morality and distrust of the adult world, the novel struck a nerve in cold war America and quickly attained cult status, especially among the young. Reading "Catcher" used to be an essential rite of passage, almost as important as getting your learner's permit.

Well, we were told that it was supposed to be a rite of passage, so I dutifully read it as a teenager. It bored me to . . . well, not tears, but yawns. I found Holden Caulfield pretentious and unsympathetic, as one might expect in a character from the hand of an author who used to go "striding around campus in a black chesterfield with velvet collar and announcing that he was going to write the Great American Novel."

At dinner with my family, I suddenly realized why the Caulfield character didn't resonate with me. Growing up in the Ozarks, I didn't find the older generation "phony" at all. They fascinated me, the way that Mr. LeRoy Tucker's stories fascinate me. I'd rather read a novel by Tucker -- if he's written one -- than a short story by J. D. Salinger.

At the death of John Updike -- who once remarked on Salinger's "detriment of artistic moderation" -- I was saddened, and posted Updike's own proleptic poem on the sad passing, so here it is again:

Requiem

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
"Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise -- depths unplumbable!"

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
"I thought he died a while ago."

For life's a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

I had a reply to Updike's ironic humility, which I posted then there and now here:

Valediction

It struck me wrong to hear you say,
Were you to die (you did today),
No one would think you still so full
Of promised depths unplumbable.

Did any shrug with tearless eyes,
At putative past-due demise?
The wide response, I think I know,
Was hope you didn't really go.

Because your life and work are huge,
Your death is more the subterfuge.
Thus, enter in the register:
"Not here." That's best I can concur.

I thought that Salinger also deserved some sort of requiem, albeit one appropriate to my indifferent reaction at hearing of his death, so I borrowed from Updike again to compose some lines for an author who left me cold:

Requiem for J. D. S.

It came to me the other day,
Just when you died -- I had to say --
"Hmm, that's a shame. Not young, but full
Of unkept promise plumbable."

With that, a shrug, and tearless eyes,
I met your overdue demise;
My wife's response was just, you know,
"I thought he died a while ago."

Your life, a shabby subterfuge,
Your death, unreal, not dark or huge,
No shock of it to register --
Except but where it did occur.

I suppose that'll offend a few readers, but I have to be honest in my feelings about Salinger in his work and his life. I could be wrong, of course, about his work, for I never read anything else by the man than the Caulfield misadventure, but as an individual, he seemed proud and self-centered, the sort of man who would order "his agent to burn any fan mail."

Yet if he really has two novels stashed away in a safe, and they turn out to be great, I'll eat my words . . . some of them, anyway, for I can't imagine changing my opinion of the Caulfield story.