I knew J. D. Salinger. Well, not exactly, but I followed him around.
Those memories came flooding back to me when I heard a short time ago that the iconic (for once that word is applicable) author of The Catcher in the Rye had died. My encounters with Salinger happened when I was a Dartmouth student (1964). The already reclusive Salinger would appear on the campus occasionally, usually to make a stop at the Dartmouth Bookstore to stock up on books. (He lived some twenty miles off in the town of Cornish, N. H.)
When he was around, word would go out to the artier types at the college and we would slip over to the bookstore and, well, stalk the famous writer, I guess you could say. By then he had published Franny and Zooey, among other works, which we greatly admired. But many of us were puzzled that the majority of his purchases were mere mystery paperbacks – Dorothy Sayers was one of his favorites. Undergraduate snobs, we had expected Dostoevsky or Camus. (This was long before I was writing mysteries myself – or even considered it.)
Nevertheless, Salinger Fever increased among the bohos on the Dartmouth campus. This was before the college went co-ed and there wasn’t a lot of excitement up in Hanover N. H. A friend of mine even learned Salinger’s address from spotting it on a check at the bookstore cash register. He shared this find with the rest of our crowd. So one night another friend of mine named Ron Smith and I, after a few too many trips to the beer keg, drove up to Cornish on a snowy night in search of the great man. Though tipsy, we were pretty nervous because Salinger’s misanthropy was legendary. But we soldiered on, found the author’s house and knocked on the door. It was opened by a 21-year old “Cliffie,” who we had heard was Salinger’s wife or girlfriend. She stared at us as if we were a couple of kids, although we couldn’t have been more than a year or two younger than she was, and asked us what we were doing there. We told her we wanted to talk to Mr. Salinger. At that point we caught a glimpse of the author walking about in his boxer shorts. He looked terrified and signaled something to the young woman who, without another word, slammed the door in our faces and bolted it shut. I can remember feeling humiliated.
I can’t remember ever seeing J. D. Salinger again and that certainly was the last time I ever stalked anybody. Or even close.
I guess your mother was right: ALWAYS wear clean underwear because you never know…
Looks like Salinger was justified in living the life of a recluse.
Salinger was and is one of my most favourite writers. I believe his books will live forever.
An amazing coincedence happened just recently. Two days ago I noted on my blog that “Catcher in Rye” had an amazing passage that seemed to describe Barack Obama to a tee:
http://hyphenatedamericans.blogspot.com/2010/01/damn.html
And now, Salinger is dead. Could it be a mere coincedence? I don’t think so. Life reluctantly immitates art.
I sort of remember all that. Was the young woman Joyce Maynard, d’you think?
Yes, I think you’re right. Joyce Maynard. How quickly I forget.
The NPR host tonight said Salinger will be “missed”. How exactly does one miss a recluse?
Ref: Hyphenated American!! holy shit! You are right. I’d forgotten that passage. Reading it now, makes my skin (on my arms, not up my leg) tingle, or maybe itch, or perhaps crawl. At any rate the passage Suites Obama to a “T”; as well as most of his “inner circle”.
I should start this post by noting I’m a voracious reader. I’ve read almost 6000 books since high school (yes I keep track) including almost all of Roger’s; I especially enjoy private eye novels. Anyway, with that as background, I’ve always found it odd that I never even had a glimmer of interest in The Catcher in the Rye. Every time a fan tries to explain to me why the book is worth reading, etc., the explanation makes me even less interested in reading the book. It sound self-indulgent, self-absorbed, and just sort of pointless.
I was thinking about it a minute ago, and I said to my wife that rather than The Catcher in the Rye, I’d prefer the Pastrami in the Rye.
David, I like a good pastrami on rye too, but I remember loving Catcher when I first read it as a teenager. (Maybe that’s when you should read it.) I also loved Franny and Zooey, which I read about the time we were chasing Salinger. Maybe it was the era. It would be interesting to know how it seems now. Any takers?
It was Joyce Maynard who wrote a tell-all memoir about her life with Salinger.
So he was a Dorothy Sayers fan? That’s the most attractive thing I’ve heard about him yet.
Well, RIP. Doesn’t sound as though he got much fun out of life.
Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey were huge influences in my reading youth, probably even life altering for the development of my…worldview.
(later it was Hesse, Solzhenitsyn, Huxley and a lot of other writers that blew my mind out of the water
)
This summer, I picked up Franny at my stepmother’s house, anticipating being drawn in again. I got about 25 pages in before getting mildly bored.
I’d guess it was the age I was when I read Salinger rather than the times or era (close to yours) in which I read Salinger.
These days, I’d like to meet Gabriel Garcia Marquez or maybe V.S. Naipaul, only I’ve read that Naipaul isn’t too friendly
Somehow I doubt it was Joyce Maynard. In 1964, Joyce Maynard was 11 years old.
Likely it was Claire Douglas, his first wife.
tanstaafi, I did meet Garcia Marquez, once, in the elevator of Hotel Nacional in Havana. The story is in my book “Blacklisting Myself.” Marquez was accompanied at the time by Regis Debray.
It’s worth reading “Catcher” even if only to be able to appreciate the world’s funniest literary parody, a Salingeresque version of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” called “Catch Her In The Oatmeal”, by Dan Greenburg. It’s available for free on line. Well worth the pain of reading the original.
If the encounter took place in 1964, it probably wasn’t Joyce Maynard, who would have only been 11 years old at the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Maynard
Indeed you are right, Rick Z. It couldn’t have been Maynard. As you can tell from the post, I never really introduce to her and I am certain she didn’t tell me her name before slamming the door in my face.
I read “Catcher in the Rye” in High school (late 50′s). I thought it was okay but no basically a snooze. Then I read Danish author Lief Paduro’s “Kick Me in the Traditions”. Much better treatment of the theme and very funny. I’d like to read it again, but can only find a hardback copy at Amazon for $88. Guess I’ll do without.
Yes. I read Catcher In The Rye. But never knew why I suffered through it. It was not required. A bit too light for my school. Luckily Gamow and Frank Herbert came along.
Sounds like there are a few old Ernie’s in the house. I read Catcher the summer of 8th grade. Required reading. It influenced me and many other teenagers in a deeply profound way. RIP J.D.
Franny and Zooey is essential reading for anyone from semi-large families.
I am always amazed by the term “recluse”. In Hollywood, it seems to refer to anyone who does not live in LA or New York. In the literary field, it refers to any writer happy to live off a successful book, and not travel 300 days a year promoting something less-than-good.
Salinger seems to have had friends and socialize, would go to the bookstore and other shops, was a good neighbor, etc. Just because he didn’t want to tell millions of total strangers about his innermost thoughts in an interview doesn’t make him a recluse!
I was at Dartmouth in the winter of ’64, but a lowly Freshman with no access to a car. Last time I visited Cornish during my stepdaughter’s Dartmouth Reunion for which we were treated to/supplied light duty babysitting, we visited the St Gaudens Museum Homestead, which is more my taste now, than Salinger. Back then, it would have been Salinger, although it was always clear that neither Salinger nor Holden were Wah-Hoo-Wah kinds of guys.
Dwight
Heh. I wasn’t a Wah-Hoo-Wah guy myself in those days either, Dwight. I was headed the other way. My roommate was commuting down to Harvard to participate in Dr. Leary’s experiments – and I wasn’t far behind. As for Cornish, I can’t remember having ever visited it in the day time and I’ve certainly never St Gaudens Museum – don’t even know what it is. Net time.
I can report a Salinger sighting when I was visiting my sister at the Putney School, a progressive boarding school in Vermont, in 1963. We were standing in the lobby of the administration building and my sister pointed out a tall, dark haired man with his back to us. “Don’t say anything,” she warned. “That is JD Salinger. He is a friend of [the school's admissions director]. I should point out that the daughter of the director disputed this when I told her about it at a reunion years later. “My father didn’t know Salinger,” she said. So, either my sister or my classmate was misinformed. I prefer the version verifying the presence of an American legend fifteen feet away.
For what it is worth,
I read “The Catcher in the Rye”, in high school, and at the time I thought the book most unremarkable. I still do.
Here’s some 17 or so year old punk, mad at the world, and not getting laid. “So what”, I thought to myself.
The novel described my feelings toward the world at the time.
Then I found, Kerouac, ” On the Road”, “Visions of Cody”, “Dharma Bums”, etc.
Neal Cassady’s, “The First Third”, William Burroughs, “Junky”, and the writings of the “Beats”.
Then the War Poets, Sassoon, Blunden, Graves, Owen.
Then Hemingway, Steinbeck, Hesse, Grass.
Then Voltaire, Jefferson, Plato, Herodotus, et.al.
Salinger, a one shot wonder in my book. A quick read, and nothing more.
If you want to get a better take on a young man, read “Huckleberry Finn”, or “Kim”. Both are better reads. Thank you.
The readers here might like to see this opinion of Salinger’s work and “adolescent narcissism”.
“The proof is in the pudding, and the fact that Catcher in the Rye went on to inspire at least three celebrity assassins (Mark David Chapman, John Hinckley Jr., and Robert John Bardo), along with who knows how many “little league” psychos and suicides, speaks to its real power.”
http://tinyurl.com/yat3gf7
Interesting. I am an avid reader, I spend way too much mone and time at bookstores: although, I shop both used and new. A few years younger than Roger, started college in ’65; I could never read beyond a few pages of Catcher In The Rye. My friends, who were less avid readers, thought the book to be bawdy stuff back then and it’s mention was always good for evil snickers. Of course for a student who studied Shakespeare, Salinger couldn’t warm up a bawdy situation. Hemingway, Twain, Melville, Orwell, Huxley, Service, Shakespeare are all dear close associates; but Salinger held no magic for me.
Thanks for the reference ww, I would have written a better comment if I had read it beforehand.
Salinger is fun if you’re young and not that serious about great literature. I read Catcher in the Rye when I was young and not serious about great literature and thought it was really good and was really good serious American literature, and was proud of myself for having discovered it on my own. But if you read it again when you’re older you’re sort of embarrassed that you liked it so much when you were younger. In fact Holden Caulfield would probably not like Catcher In the Rye.
OK, so I went and bought a copy. Interestingly, the used stores in my neighborhood (Brand Books, and Bookfellows) were sold out. Apparently there was a minor run on Catcher when Mr. Salinger died. Anyway, I went to the local Borders, and they still had a few copies, so I’m out the $6.99 they wanted. Would rather have paid a used price (I’m cheap, what can I say) but whatever. So I sit down and read the first paragraph (which runs more than a page, usually a bad sign) and frankly by the end of it I was chuckling. I’m about 40 pages into it now, and I’m enjoying it in spite of myself. The main character’s a self-important twit…but since he’s the narrator, and Salinger’s controlling what Holden talks about, says, and does…I wonder, did anyone ever consider that Salinger *deliberately* made this guy a self-important twit, or did he intend for everyone to take the kid’s angst seriously?
OK, so I finished the book. I’ve decided that Salinger was brilliant, and that I’m the only one who understands the book…either that, or I’ve taken it in a way Salinger didn’t mean it, and everyone else understands it but me.
The main character (and narrator) is this self-important, self-absorbed, hyper-critical twit named Holden Caulfield. He gets thrown out of his prep school, essentially for not even trying to study, and spends the weekend in NYC making a fool of himself. My point is this: I don’t think the character is realistic at all. He spends most of his time trying to buy alcohol in bars, trying to pick up girls who are too old or sophisticated for him, and trying to convince you, the reader, that he’s much smarter, older, more sophisticated, and more mature, than he really is. Frankly I took it as more of a comedy than anything else; it’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but it did get more than a few chuckles out of me.
However, I have to ask: why would anyone describe this as a coming of age novel, or give it to a teenager with the intent of letting them identify with the main character? The kid winds up institutionalized at the end of the book…does anyone consider that a good thing?
After I read the book, and described my reaction to it in contrast to the other reactions other people have had, my wife commented that maybe this was why Salinger retreated into his isolation. Maybe everyone misinterpreting his book, identifying with a main character he didn’t want *anyone* to identify with, and the resulting fame and adoration…maybe that sent him over the edge, and he didn’t want to talk to anyone any more. Being misunderstood would I suppose be pretty upsetting in such a context, if you didn’t intend the character to appeal to anyone, and it *did* appeal to a large segment of society anyway.
This kind of incident probably happened more than anyone, famous or not, would welcome. I’m surprised that he didn’t build a locked security gate at the bottom of his driveway (and I know where his house is, having trekked up there following easy-to-find geographic clues in one particular book–wouldn’t have dared go up the drive, though).
If you were there in 1964, the woman who answered the door would have been JD’s second wife, Claire Douglas, who would have been in her mid-late 20s at the time. Salinger married her when she was 18 and a Dartmouth co-ed (from a prominent English family). I guess he had a thing for 18-year old girls. If you read his daughter and Maynard’s excellent memoirs (esp. Margaret Salinger’s) you will realize just how creepy he was. I think he is a fascinating character but highly overrated as a writer. He’s lucky that his estimated quarter million in royalties each year from a handful of novels was able to support his reclusive lifestyle for fifty years. Not bad work if you can get it–even Holden Caulfield might have been able to appreciate the slacker quality there.
He’s certainly one of my favorite writers. I recall having just read Catcher in the Rye the second time in December, a month later, the great recluse died. Read it on NYT. As tribute, I wrote a blog post about him on my blog in Whatever Works. This comment is a bit late, but it’s always a pleasure to read something about the man again, especially on books he was reading.