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The Sound of Salinger's Silence

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The Sound of Salinger's Silence P e r i o d i c a l s too. And Nabokov, who was a political as well more downhearted predecessors.” as a spiritual fugitive, and who, like Beckett, No matter how fully these writers embraced gave up his native language to write in an- new countries and new languages, or settled other, found America a source of great inter- into “that other homeland, the kingdom of est and amusement. He made the abundance art,” they were displaced persons, homeless in of his English a compensation for the loss of their native lands, strangers abroad. We re- his beloved Russian. “In the splendid artifi- member them for having used the dislocation ciality of his language, in its surface virtuosi- to their advantage by “turning exile and alien- ty,” Dickstein observes, “Nabokov shows us ation into a unique vantage point, an angle of the shock of alienation as effectively as his vision for interpreting the world.” The Sound of Salinger’s Silence “Reading Salinger’s Silence” by Myles Weber, in New England Review, (Vol. 26, No. 2), Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt. 05753. Often when people say they write only for writing. He refuses to talk to the press and lives themselves, everyone else silently thanks them. in seclusion in Cornish, New Hampshire. In the case of J. D. Salinger, who has pub- “The critical establishment, denied access lished not a word in 40 years, critics, scholars, for decades to whatever pages Salinger is actu- and journalists have done little but badger and ally accumulating in his desk drawer, simply condemn him, writes Weber, a literary critic will not permit Salinger to depart the active lit- and the author of Consuming Silences: How erary scene,” writes Weber. “Rather than dis- We Read Authors Who Don’t Publish ( 2 0 0 5 ) . appear, he is reconfigured as a prolific, nearly Salinger became an American icon with the conventional author inundating the market- publication of his first book, The Catcher in the place with silence.” R y e (1951). He went on to publish Nine Stories And so Salinger has left himself—and, on (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), and R a i s e occasion, his pet and his mailbox—open to in- High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters; and Sey- terpretation. In 1975, C. David Heymann mour: An Introduction (1963). In 1965 a final chronicled in The Village Voice his trip to short story, “Hapworth 16, 1924,” appeared in Salinger’s home; he left with little to describe The New Yorker. And then began a silence all but a dog’s bark answering his knock: “It was a the more tantalizing because Salinger, 86, is miserable whine, empty-sounding and hol- alive and well and—by his own admission—still low.” In 1977, E s q u i r e ran an unsigned Salin- e x c e r p t Crazy Fame “Every time I think I am famous,” Virgil Thomson said, “I have only to go out into the world.” So it is, and so ought it probably to remain for writers, musicians, and vi- sual artists who prefer to consider themselves, to put it as pretentiously as possible, s é r i e u x. The comedian Richard Pryor once said that he would consider himself famous when people recognized him, as they recognized Bob Hope and Muhammed Ali, by his captionless caricature. That is certainly one clear criterion for celebrity. But the best criterion I’ve yet come across holds that you are celebrated, indeed famous, only when a crazy person imagines he is you. I especially like the fact that the penetrating and prolific author of this remark happens to go by the name of A n o n y m o u s . —Joseph Epstein, former editor of The American Scholar, in The Hedgehog Review (Spring 2005) 1 0 4 Wilson Quarterly geresque story that turned 1997 after a fruitless trek to out to be penned by the Salinger’s driveway, his si- magazine’s fiction editor, lence “represents some kind Gordon Lish, who said that if of spiritual renunciation.” Salinger was not going to (Salinger’s few known con- write stories, “someone had to tacts with the wider world write them for him.” In haven’t helped his cause; a 1982, Steven Kunes offered college girl he wooed in P e o p l e magazine a faked 1972 after reading an essay transcript of an interview she wrote in The New York with Salinger, who sued and Times Magazine later pub- kept it from running. In lished a memoir about their 2002 came the publication affair.) of a collection of letters Weber dismisses such addressed to Salinger, in- J. D. Salinger in 1951, when he speculations as worthless, cluding an e-mail from published The Catcher in the Rye. declaring that Salinger’s one Don Paton, who wrote, published work is probably “You can’t make yourself unfamous. Cough it “the only reliable source material” on him. up. Either publish everything you’ve got left in In the story “Zooey,” he writes of a clear im- you or hurry up and die.” perative for the artist to keep performing—it’s Would-be biographer Ian Hamilton— owed “to the Fat Lady, to the public, to whom Salinger prevented, in 1987, from ex- Christ, to the God who dispenses talent.” cerpting unpublished letters—has accused the But noting Salinger’s increasingly disjoint- reclusive author of pecuniary motives. “He said ed, difficult writing style, Weber also sug- he wanted neither fame nor money and by this gests that silence may be a still more extreme means he’d contrived to get extra supplies of form of artistic expression. In any case, he both,” Hamilton wrote. Others have theorized concludes that Salinger’s silence, whether that Salinger withdrew because he knew he’d run broken by the publication of another story out of talent or he couldn’t stand criticism. Per- or punctuated only with an obituary, will go haps, as Ron Rosenbaum opined in E s q u i r e i n on speaking volumes to ears cocked to listen. The Shakespeare Code “The Catholic Bard: Shakespeare and the ‘Old Religion’” by Clare Asquith, in Commonweal (June 17, 2005), 475 Riverside Dr., Rm. 405, New York, N.Y. 10115. Though a 17th-century Protestant clergy- augurated a new era of enlightenment. But man stated that “William Shakespeare dyed a “fresh evidence . indicates that Shakespeare papist,” Protestant England for centuries lived in an age of silent, sullen resistance to the deemed it unthinkable that the national poet imposed new order. In spite of penal legisla- had adhered to the “old religion.” But histori- tion and horrific executions, Catholics re- ans now acknowledge that England in Shake- mained in the majority through 1600, con- speare’s day was not so wholeheartedly Protes- forming under duress, not out of conviction.” tant as previously portrayed. Like dissident Scholars today agree that Shakespeare’s Soviet-era dramatists expressing the cause of “childhood was deeply imbued with the ‘old freedom, the Bard in his great works stealthily r e l i g i o n ,’” though he probably did not retain his made a case for Catholicism, contends Catholic beliefs throughout his working life. Asquith, author of Shadowplay: The Hidden Asquith thinks that a familiarity with “Catholic Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shake- idiom, history, and liturgy” reveals a hidden s p e a r e ( 2 0 0 5 ) . political message in Shakespeare’s plays. Protestant historians long maintained that The Merchant of Venice’s final act, for ex- Henry VIII’s break with the pope in 1534 in- ample, “almost completely extraneous to the Autumn 2005 1 0 5.
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