Tuesday, September 10, 2013

If You Really Want to Know About J.D. Salinger, Read J.D. Salinger

1951 --- Author J.D. Salinger, best known for Catcher in the Rye. --- Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS 
  1951 --- Author J.D. Salinger, best known for Catcher in the Rye. --- Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

J.D. Salinger died on January 27, 2010, but the quest to solve the mystery of who he was and what he'd been doing since 1965 — the year The New Yorker printed his last work of published fiction, a 50-page letter from a seven-year-old Seymour Glass — has never ceased. Now comes Salinger, a two-hour-plus documentary by Shane Salerno that, along with its huge companion book by Salerno and author David Shields, attempts to answer this longtime literary riddle.

The film and book gather interviews with more than 200 people, along with never-before-seen photographs of the famous recluse, and promise something that fans have been waiting for for years: the release of Salinger's first published work in nearly half a century — five books of new or revamped material to come out between 2015 and 2020. (Full disclosure: I was interview by Salerno for the film, and my comments also appear in the book.)

But those in search of J.D. Salinger, whether they're solipsistic solitary stalkers, rarified would-be literary detectives, or well-intended filmmakers, might do well to let their fingers do the walking. Almost everything you'd ever want to know about Salinger can be found on the written page — in Salinger's own unmistakable voice — in his slim oeuvre of four famous volumes; the plethora of letters he sent to friends, editors, and lovers; the 22 uncollected short stories published from 1940–48 in Story and other magazines; and the handful of unpublished stories stashed in libraries.

Salinger is among the most autobiographical of postwar American authors. "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like … and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth," reads the famous first line of The Catcher in the Rye.

Yet Catcher is sprinkled with a Hansel and Gretel–like path of autobiographical crumbs, from Holden's visit to the Museum of Natural History, near where Jerome David Salinger grew up from the age of nine, at 221 West 82nd Street, to his various hobbies. When he was at Valley Forge, the probable prototype for Pencey Prep, Salinger, like Holden, managed the fencing team, acted in plays, and worked on the school newspaper. And like Zooey, he fancied tropical fish. And so it goes through the three other published Salinger books, Nine StoriesFranny and Zooey, and Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenter, and Seymour an Introduction. (Consider Buddy Glass's interest in Buddhism; the psychic war wounds of his older brother, Seymour, who commits suicide in "A Perfect Day for Banana Fish"; and Franny reciting the Jesus prayer.)
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