What I heard at J.D. Salinger’s doorstep
4 April 2009
Tom Leonard makes a pilgrimage to Cornish, New Hampshire, where the 90-year-old author of The Catcher in the Rye leads a reclusive existence with his third wife
There are, of course, few better ways of bolstering one’s own mythology than by hiding away, and Salinger’s silence — compounded by the continuing popularity of his novel, still reportedly selling 250,000 copies a year — has fuelled intense speculation about what he has been up to for 40 years. One theory, supported by a former girlfriend, is that he has been writing feverishly. She said she saw shelves loaded with notebooks and two completed novels. Some say there are 15 manuscripts locked away in a safe.
Reporters have traipsed up to Cornish many times but they’ve usually found the 1,600-strong community as uncooperative about Salinger as he is himself. But that code of silence is clearly disintegrating as many neighbours were more than happy to supply me with their own anecdotes and theories about the local celebrity everyone refers to as ‘JD’.
Salinger’s unnumbered home off a remote hillside road is no longer so hard to find in the age of sat-nav and internet address searches. But there was a time when those who knew where he lived didn’t even let on to their neighbours, said Janice Orion, a retired British schoolteacher who moved there in 1989.
‘I guess he asked them not to. When I moved here and asked where he lived, I was met with a blank stare,’ she said. ‘I was told “Oh, we don’t talk about him”, which I thought was a bit odd.’ Her friend, Beth Lum, added, ‘Not talking about him is a Cornish ritual. Someone asks you where he lives and you point vaguely in the wrong direction.’
Mrs Orion said she had seen him only the day before in the local co-operative supermarket, leaning heavily on a trolley as he shopped with his wife. Her only exchange with him was in the 1990s when she accidentally dropped a homemade loaf of bread at his feet when he came to his gate. ‘I can’t remember what he said but he was very irritated,’ she said.
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Tariq
April 2nd, 2009 8:02pm Report this commentThis article is so pointless that I have to ask: April Fool?
Zack
April 3rd, 2009 3:18am Report this comment"The man who stopped talking to the world more than 50 years ago doesn’t intend to start now."
No shit, Sherlock.
Vijay
April 3rd, 2009 9:59am Report this commentWhat a waste! I really want to know what made you do the trip when everybody else, the world over, has given up in the last 50 years?!
Eliot C.
April 3rd, 2009 2:36pm Report this commentOnly a truly pathetic individual would stoop this low. So he doesn't want to live in our media culture and he's a 'recluse'; as I said, pathetic sums this up.
Alide
April 3rd, 2009 11:28pm Report this commentCheck your background. There was a Canadian journalist by the name of Michael Clarkson, who was nominated though not chosen for a Pulitzer Prize for getting an interview with Salinger , see http://www.lancetteer.com/Archives_Feature_Michael_Clarkson.htm or http://www.lancetteer.com/Archives_Feature_Michael_Clarkson.htm
beezz
April 5th, 2009 12:19pm Report this commentSuggest you take a leaf out of Salinger's book Tom and not publish anything for the next 40 years. Must try harder - or shut the f*** up.
teledu
April 5th, 2009 3:34pm Report this commentDid you get paid for this?
Margot Darby
April 5th, 2009 8:41pm Report this commentNice work. Salinger always struck me as a complete phony, a derivative writer animated by the fads of his youth and a thin velleity to have a kind of Thomas Merton spirituality, provided it wasn't too much trouble. (Obviously it was.) I see why this hoaxster hides out, but he has not earned the right not to answer questions.
Henry Wood
April 5th, 2009 9:24pm Report this commentWTF was that all about? I tell you what, Tom, you come to my house and I'll tell ya to FO too, just like I tell everybody else. Some of us don't like company but can get by with comments to crap blogs like yours.
Sanjeev
April 6th, 2009 2:04am Report this commentYou are a nitwit, Tom Leonard. 50+ years later, don't you get it that the man does not want to talk to anyone. Why go hound him at his doorstep like this! Just so people can read about your stupid exploit. (Maybe in some way, you are elated to see this response. Isn't this what you wanted when you went to NH?)
James R
April 6th, 2009 6:49am Report this commentI'm not defending Salinger's work, but then neither is he. He did not make himself a 'cult hero'. And, yes, he does have the right not to answer questions. He was born with it.
Ben
April 8th, 2009 2:48pm Report this commentharrassing a 90 yr old man? great reporting!
David Short
July 25th, 2009 5:03am Report this commentIt's no surprise tha JDS wrote nothing much more after The Catcher in the Rye.
How embarrassing it must have been to have written a book that so many of us read as adolescents and thought it was so wonderful.
But has anyone, once in full adulthood, re-read it and thought it was anything but rich kid rubbish?
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