The Mysteries of J.D. Salinger

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5144/5615659523_fedc200a9f.jpg

Looking at this long rich threahttp://blog.devstone.com/images/emote_ellipsis.gifeel like one could spenhttp://blog.devstone.com/images/emote_ellipsis.gifot of time following up its links and ideas.

the fuck happened there with your 'd's?

I like the animated ellipses

whatever it is...I like it

wow

Maybe the d's are being reclusive.

Or recursive, do u see?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/us/10prayer.html

I read Salinger mostly in high school, Pynchon mostly in college (both a long time ago). Enjoyed them very much then, haven't tried re-reading. I don't remember much of Catcher, do remember many bits (especially zingers and other kinds of hooks) from Nine Stories. "I mean, it was nothing you couldn't read while clipping your toenails, but...", zinc oxide on the nose v sunburn, ""Sex Can Be Great---Or Hell" He calls me Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1947", all those other setups and steps and step-ins, all of them unmistakably necessary, as it turns out in "Bananafish"--also, "I guess he's got a sense of humor, he laughs at comic strips"; "He says it's so beautifully written. He can't admit he likes it because it's about two guys who starved to death in an igloo"(note to self: google L. Manning Vines) Who could forget: vomit in the military wastebasket; the remains of a dry chicken sandwich not disposed of, not quite yet; a dead voice, "rudely, almost obscenely quickened for the occasion" (which of course works, as in the King James Bible's "the quick or the dead". whether you bother with "quick" once meaning "alive" or not) "his--his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s"--and the hits just keep coming! sorry.

Whatever may have become of Pynchon (the opening pages of his latest slithered with self-consciousness--maybe also "rudely, almost obscenely quickened"), he once tried to take a hard look at his earlier work, in the introduction to Slow Learner, the incomplete collection of his apprentice fiction. He seemed genuinely embarrassed by it, reminded me of having read that he didn't want Lot 49 to be published as a book (another magazine story he wasn't thrilled with) Also, said re one of the stories in SL and apparently V as well, that he'd misunderstood entrophy, in physics terms. Then again, he's also written that computers were based on misunderstandings of how the (organic) brain works, but that humans adapted to/became more like their distorted mechanical image. H'mmm creative misprision in both cases? Anyway, I think "Zooey" is Salinger trying to achieve some perspective (incl linking the characters from Nine Stories, acknowledging and extending their relatedness--everything, including "Franny" is "pre-Glass"., as Updike says, before this explicit family tree is drawn). Zooey's lecturing, and his flailing around, is Salinger trying to adjust his voice,warning and challenging his followers and himself. (Also, none of Nine Stories was actually narrated by his child characters, right? Unless you count the excellent Daumier-Smith, who was looking back, like Salinger's other narrator/witnesses, to times of blue and gold) The lectures seemed to take over and become self-mesmerized in Raise High/Seymour, though I might try to re-read those, at least.

What are some titles of uncollected stories, other than "Hapworth", which I should Google?

I don't know - I haven't even read that one.

Thanks for your thoughts! You seem like a considerable expert on Salinger - frankly I barely remember any of those moments that you seem to have at your fingertips.

TP says people have adapted to be like computers? ... doesn't sound quite right. We've adapted to be *around* computers, maybe - as in 'don't bother remembering it, you can google anything' - but that might be the opposite of what TP is supposed to have said (because we might have annexed things off to computers).

Yes, TP put down CL49, and it seems to me that he was wrong, as authors sometimes are about their work. (Admittedly there are some things in it that I don't like, but they're the things that resemble the many big and irritating things in his other work like GR. From my POV it's crazy to say 'I wrote CL49 and it was bad, but then I wrote GR and that was good' as for me the values are roughly reversed.)

I don't think I ever read Updike on Salinger - but I did read Kermode!

(btw I can't see any Salinger reference in that link about the nuts in the church, which if anything is a relief)

(btw I can't see any Salinger reference in that link about the nuts in the church, which if anything is a relief)

― the pinefox, Monday, July 11, 2011 2:06 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

Been puzzling me today. Feeling like I missed a Glass reference? Really have no clue.

there was not one; it reminded me of franny glass and the jesus prayer.

That book she got it from, The Pilgrim On His Way or something like that, and its sequel, The Pilgrim Continues His Way (pretty sure that's exact title) were re-issued, in the 70s I think, used to see ads (in the Atlantic, and other publications which students might read, way back then)

(pinefox, my impression at the time was that Pynchon didn't hate Crying of Lot 49, he mainly thought it shouldn't be presented as a "novel" to stand on its own with V.--this was before Gravity's Rainbow)

Maybe he meant to save it for something like Slow Learner, or some better collection, although as I said, several stories remain uncollected, and I don't think Slow Learner was his idea either, or he didn't seem too happy with it.

If that's what he thought, I still think he was wrong. The idea that CL49 of all things didn't deserve to stand as a text in its own right is bonkers.

He died 18 months ago... I'm surprised nothing at all has come out about the unpublished manuscripts he's supposed to have stowed away in a room-sized safe. You'd think by now someone would have at least confirmed or denied their existence.

I agree! Was just thinking about that the other day.

He died 18 months ago... I'm surprised nothing at all has come out about the unpublished manuscripts he's supposed to have stowed away in a room-sized safe.

Last year a theater group in Brooklyn performed a hilarious play on that exact topic, as well as the Salinger-cult and some of his predilections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOifA73EOi8
http://plasticflamingotheatre.blogspot.com/2010/05/rip-jd-celebration-of-death.html

yeah surprised there hasn't been at least a little hint of his unpublished stuff
maybe it was all this when they opened the safe
http://www.overthinkingit.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/all_work.jpg
except, you know, the jesus prayer.

I suspect there's something there. Maybe not the 15 finished manuscripts that's he'd supposedly written. Maybe just 40 years of notes on the Glass family. But something at least. It's remarkable that not a whisper of whatever he left behind has made it into the media. Surely his literary executors could be goaded into saying something as to what will happen to his papers.

Surely his literary executors could be goaded into saying something as to what will happen to his papers.

i think the point in them is that they couldn't!
there were some v beautiful things thrown up in the aftermath of his death - oral history from people in his community who deterred & confused visitors looking to find him, describing how the salingers would give out pencils to trick or treaters; a story from the guy whose job it was to read salinger fanmail; another from the guy who almost managed to issue hapworth - & even a bunch of his letters, which in a way seem like the weirdest thing to be reading, intended as they were as articles of private correspondence w/one person, from a guy who didn't want any of his stuff read. but though i would read this guy's boiler maintenance instructions gladly, it feels like his preference that his work not be read is pronounced and un-nuanced enough as to accept that we have what we have. read the newspaper & magazine stories if you haven't, but pulling his private work off the shelf would seem kinda a step too far.

although this seems like a longer shot than the unpublished manuscripts, i really hope someday we see a book of JDS's collected letters. the ones we've seen have been so fascinating, and i suspect they're the closest anyone will ever get to understanding what the man was actually like. which of course is exactly what he didn't want.

The more I read about his personal life, the less respect I have for him, but that goes for any public figure I guess. Joyce Maynard's memoir was devastating, and she didn't seem like any great prize herself. His daughter Margaret's account was also very sad.

who will be the 21st century max brod?

The whole idea of writing a novel that you don't want strangers to read is pretty wackadoo

yeah i've tried to ignore most of that stuff, his daughter's book, the maynard memoir etc. i did read the recent bio, which was good -- not a candy coated portrayal, but not a hatchet job either.
what's interesting to me about the alleged volumes of unpublished stuff is that salinger, out of all authors, seemed to really write to his reader -- the Buddy Glass stuff is so aware of the audience. so what does an author like that sound like when he's writing for no one but himself?

I wanted to read the recent bio, but it seemed bogged down in WWII battles . . . maybe I will try it again. I think I read (or heard somewhere, I can't remember) that the Paul Alexander bio is better (though I haven't read that one either).

A teacher of mine once said Salinger's literary voice was sort of the ultimate in reader manipulation . . . so I really can't imagine him not writing with that kind of emotionally charged narrator, but his later ('60s!) work does see him going further and further up his own ass, as it were.

yes, author of the newest bio (blanking on his name) goes to great lengths to make WWII the focus of pretty much all of Salinger's life/work...and is fairly convincing about it, I suppose. the one story where one of the characters swears not to talk about the war after it's over is important it seems--salnger's subsequent work was in a lot of ways an attempt to talk about it without really talking about it, maybe?

That's pretty interesting. When I worked in a college library a couple of students were doing papers on Salinger's supposed P.T.S.D. and its connection on his work.

yeah it was interesting. though tbh he seems like he was kind of a weird dude before the war too.

The whole idea of writing a novel that you don't want strangers to read is pretty wackadoo

i think there's a pretty substantial history of writers writing for others that aren't necessarily strangers.

The whole idea of writing a novel that you don't want strangers to read is pretty wackadoo

i seem to recall JDS said somewhere (prob in one of those memoirs by other ppl) that the reason he'd chosen to stop publishing was the flood of invasive publicity that accompanied each new book. if that's the case, then his decision to just write for himself (and presumably posthumous publication) seems understandable to me. it's not like he needed the money.

the joyce maynard book is very weird, not least because maynard didn't seem to have really processed her experiences even like 30 years later. my gf went to school with her kids.

I suspect that the reason there is no material is that Salinger had nothing left to say, beyond notating Chinese medicine treatments, but I would love to be proven wrong.

he mentioned in a few of the letters that he had finished several book-length manuscripts, and some other accounts seem to back that up.

who will be the 21st century max brod?

max brod is fuckin satan incarnate and I spit when I hear his name

hack-ptooie max brod

What'd he do to you?

he invented the concept of putting prose before bros

OK, that's pretty funny.

who will be the 21st century max brod?
Dmitry Nabokov.

Here's an account of answering his mail (it was her job):
http://www.slate.com/id/2243299/ Note links on to other Slate pieces on Salinger; should be something like A Salinger Companion (Salinger: A Hermit's Companion ?), with contributors from academic to indie intelligentsia to whackiedoodle, like some of the better Dyliania collections.

"Dylaniana", I guess (should be something better)

Also, re unpublished Salinger manuscripts at Princeton ( NPR had also somebody else's account of reading this story, I but can't find it; other guy said he thought "Bowling Balls" was great while he was reading it, but cooled off later)
http://nassauweekly.com/articles/1217/ In the 70s, a bootleg collection of unpublished Salinger stories was reviewed in the Voice; with comments on even more unpub, not included in the boot. Reviewer really liked some of these tales, but said most tended to confirm his suspicion re Salinger's inability/resistance to face getting older (as a motivation for not exposing his stories to further criticism and/or increasingly cult-like fandom)

he invented the concept of putting prose before bros

― love in a grain elevator (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, July 13, 2011 9:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

a+

so what does an author like that sound like when he's writing for no one but himself?

Sadly, he probably sounds like the Hapworth story - the Glasses become not only the subject matter but the audience as well.

I can't believe Salinger would have wanted his manuscripts (if they exist) destroyed, and even if he did I can't imagine anyone would do it. There's probably someone appointed by his literary agency sorting through his papers as we speak, but it'll take years and years and nothing will be prepared for publication for another two decades or something.