Home > Essays > All

Sunday 27 May 2012

What I heard at J.D. Salinger’s doorstep

01 April 2009

/article_images/articledir_7011/3505896/1_listing.jpg

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

J.D. Salinger is in the kitchen when I turn the corner of his farmhouse, his reported deafness probably explaining why he doesn’t hear me until I am a few feet from him and ringing the doorbell. His wife correctly guesses the identity of the caller and, apprised of the information out of my hearing, the author shouts something that sounds like ‘Oh, no!’

It may be succinct but it is the most he has said to the media for years. A tall but stooped figure in a blue tanktop, Salinger won’t even look at me as he sidles crab-like out of his small kitchen with his back to the window. His wife soon appears at the same window and opens it to talk, but the great man — who was 90 in January — has gone. Time may soften many things, but Salinger’s complete disengagement from public life sadly isn’t one of them.

The recluse’s recluse, Salinger has lived in seclusion in the small rural community of Cornish, in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, for more than 50 years. After writing The Catcher in the Rye in 1951 — his generation-shaping masterpiece about teenage angst and rebellion — he published only a few collections of short stories. A short piece of fiction for the New Yorker in 1965 was his last published work. He hasn’t spoken to the media since the early 1950s, breaking his Trappist silence only once in 1974 for a brief phone conversation with a New York Times journalist in which he said there was ‘a marvellous peace in not publishing... I write just for myself and my own pleasure.’ He added: ‘I’m known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I’m doing is trying to protect myself and my work.’

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Next page

More articles from: Tom Leonard | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (14)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

Tariq

April 2nd, 2009 8:02pm Report this comment

This 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 comment

What 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 comment

Only 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 comment

Check 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 comment

Suggest 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 comment

Did you get paid for this?

Margot Darby

April 5th, 2009 8:41pm Report this comment

Nice 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 comment

WTF 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 comment

You 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 comment

I'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.