February 1st, 2010
Thinking about J.D. Salinger…and Joyce Maynard…
J.D. Salinger was all over the NY Times this morning, including a memorial ad placed by his publisher Little, Brown and Company that included the famous last paragraph of “The Catcher in the Rye” where Holden Caulfield explains just what a catcher in the rye would do….catch children as they come through the rye before they fall off a cliff.
“That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”
When I re-read that graph (there’s more in the ad on page C7 of the Times), I remembered why this book is my all-time favorite. Salinger wrote so elegantly and thought in a way no one else did. The “catcher” concept is “crazy” as Holden says and yet, through his writing, Salinger turned that crazy thought into one of the most memorable titles ever published.
The Times also has a story today on the way Salinger interacted with his neighbors in Cornish, New Hampshire where he retreated a half-century ago to live in peace. They claim he was not a recluse at all but a “townsperson” who regularly went to church dinners. He valued his privacy and he found it in Cornish. His neighbors would give bad directions to any visitors trying to find Salinger’s house. I love this quote: “(He) was like the Batman icon. Everyone knew Batman existed, and everyone knows there’s a Batcave, but no one will tell you where it is.”
What always gets me about Salinger’s story is how he wound up having a well-documented affair with the writer Joyce Maynard when she was 18 and he was 53. As opposed to Salinger, Joyce’s life has been an open book since she was 18 years old as she’s documented her pregnancies, children, divorce and everything else in between.
I’ve also always been a fan of Joyce’s writing and just about a year ago, I attended a writing workshop at her home in Guatemala. She couldn’t have been more open and friendly. The workshop was based at her home on the beautiful Lake Atitlan and nothing in her home was off-limits Everyone there knows where she lives.
So when Salinger died, I began thinking of Joyce. Another workshop there is about to begin, and she’ll once again welcome everyone into her home, the kind of behavior that would have driven Salinger completely out of his mind. It’s incredible that fate brought these two writers and polar opposite personalities together. Sometimes, the universe does have a keen sense of humor.
I’m glad Salinger got the privacy he sought but I hope that the books he apparently were working on finally see the light of day now that he’s gone.