The Mysteries of J.D. Salinger

being disliked by a writer as awful as updike surely has to be some sort of recommendation.

^^that's the kind of post that makes me love Updike

as opposed to the books he writes...? (Updike, that is)

"I've read Updike on Salinger too. He describes the uncanny feeling the reader gets that the omniscient narrator is another male presence in the room with Franny and her boyfriend, feeling protective of Franny and hostile to the boyfriend."

— is this really much of a criticism?

(besides which I don't even know if it is accurate. I came across the line in which Updike compares a vagina to a ballet shoe sometime in my mid-teens; I always wondered what he was doing fucking a ballet shoe.)

I guess you've never seen a vagina, huh?

never without thinking "plié! plié!"

Maybe not, thomp, as I took it out of context (and across years). Here's the complete essay.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/06/lifetimes/updike-r-franny.html

The passage I remembered was this:

In "Hoist High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" (the first and best of the Glass pieces: a magic and hilarious prose-poem with an enchanting end effect of mysterious clarity), Seymour defines sentimentality as giving "to a thing more tenderness than God gives to it." This seems to me the nub of the trouble: Salinger loves the Glasses more than God loves them. He loves them too exclusively. Their invention has become a hermitage for him. He loves them to the detriment of artistic moderation. "Zooey" is just too long; there are too many cigarettes, too many god-damns, too much verbal ado about not quite enough.

The author never rests from circling his creations, patting them fondly, slyly applauding. He robs the reader of the initiative upon which love must be given. Even in "Franny," which is, strictly, pre-Glass, the writer seems less an unimpassioned observer than a spying beau vindictively feasting upon every detail of poor Lane Coutell's gaucherie. Indeed, this impression of a second male being present is so strong that it amounts to a social shock when the author accompanies Franny into the ladies' room of the restaurant.

I think that's pretty just.

(Also, I'm not here to defend Updike's fiction. I like his Bech books, and Centaur somewhat, but don't have much time for others.)

janet malcolm, for the defense:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14272

Today "Zooey" does not seem too long, and is arguably Salinger's masterpiece. Rereading it and its companion piece "Franny" is no less rewarding than rereading The Great Gatsby. It remains brilliant and is in no essential sense dated. It is the contemporary criticism that has dated. Like the contemporary criticism of Olympia, for example, which jeered at Manet for his crude indecency, or that of War and Peace, which condescended to Tolstoy for the inept "shapelessness" of the novel, it now seems magnificently misguided. However—as T.J. Clark and Gary Saul Morson have shown in their respective exemplary studies of Manet and Tolstoy[7]—negative contemporary criticism of a masterpiece can be helpful to later critics, acting as a kind of radar that picks up the ping of the work's originality. The "mistakes" and "excesses" that early critics complain of are often precisely the innovations that have given the work its power.

i'm leery of rereading salinger, because i completely loved, felt moved by, spoken to, etc., by 'franny and zooey' but also the other stories, 'for esmé', etc., when i was like sixteen. at which point i didn't quite see the point in the great gatsby.

also, i detested catcher in the rye at twelve and at sixteen, but dug it a great deal at twenty.

also:

<a href=http://penrod-pulaski.livejournal.com/47646.html>;<img src=http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/wp-content/2008/12/robin%20in%20the%20rye.jpg>;</a>

http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/wp-content/2008/12/robin%20in%20the%20rye.jpg

oops

J.D. thank you for linking to that typically excellent Janet Malcolm piece, which I'd not read before

thank you also for slagging off the truly awful updike

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.