The enigma of J.D. Salinger
David Blackburn 5:10pm
Close personal friend of J.D. Salinger, Lillian Ross, has written an intriguing article remembering their friendship for the New Yorker. Perhaps this is stating the obvious but Salinger intended to protect his privacy and that of his family from beyond the grave. Ross writes:
Now, call me a cynic but doesn’t the phrase ‘stymie one or two vultures – freelancers or English-department scavengers’ have an air of Holden Caulfield about it? I wish Salinger had written that "really factual" book as now I fear the details and emotiosn of his enigma will die with him. If Ross’s article is anything to go by, Salinger’s friends will keep his life a secret.‘At one point during the more than half century of our friendship, J. D. Salinger told me he had an idea that someday, when “all the fiction had run out,” he might try to do something straight, “really factual, formally distinguishing myself from the Glass boys and Holden Caulfield and the other first-person narrators I’ve used.” It might be readable, maybe funny, he said, and “not just smell like a regular autobiography.” The main thing was that he would use straight facts and “thereby put off or stymie one or two vultures—freelancers or English-department scavengers—who might come around and bother the children and the family before the body is even cold.”’
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Fergus Pickering
February 8th, 2010 10:54pm Report this commentNo enigma. He ran out of things to say. There was never much in the first place. Anybody re-read the book. I don't do it because I am sure it will come up, well 'phony' would be the word, wouldn't it?
Catherine
February 9th, 2010 2:59am Report this commentI agree--I believe his published writing is overrated. Anything he may have written, as it has been rumored by many who have observed or spoken to him about it, since his last publication in 1965 is likely more obsessive ramblings about the Glass family. I sense they became his real children, his real relationships. However, perhaps he spent some time crafting an autobiography and I would be interested to read it.
What will be interesting to see, if he has been writing all of these years, is if his estate will allow their publication.
What is ironic, and I hope he appreciated, is that he did not owe the world anything, he was easily able to retire from publishing because of the c. $250,000 USD he got in change each year from royalties. Not bad work if you can get it: even Holden might have agreed.
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