THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702010565
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BERNICE GROHSKOPF
LENGTH: 107 lines
When J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951, The New York Times said it was ``too long'' and ``monotonous.'' By 1961, however, despite having been banned by some schools and libraries, it had sold over 1.5 million copies. It is now considered a minor American classic.
In prose that echoes adolescent speech patterns, Salinger recorded a 17-year-old's confusion and vulnerability, along with his perceptive intelligence. Young readers recognized in Catcher's Holden Caulfield an ally who shared their pain, fears, anger and frustrations.
We meet Holden when he has been expelled from school for the third time. Unable to face his parents, he wanders the streets of New York City, reflecting on the superficiality and phoniness of adult values. He sits in bars, drinking, smoking, talking to strangers; he stays in a sleazy hotel, has an innocent encounter with a prostitute, impulsively phones anyone because, like many young people, Holden is lonely. And, he's endearing.
Few readers are likely to forget Holden dancing with his little sister Phoebe in her pajamas. Or telling her that he doesn't want to be a lawyer, because instead of ``saving innocent guys' lives. . . all they do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink martinis.''
After Catcher, Salinger's Nine Stories was published. It was 1953, a time when Zen Buddhism was a fashionable trend in the United States. Salinger's preoccupation with Eastern philosophy led critics to draw pretentious conclusions: The entire collection was pronounced a sequence of linked stories concerning ego-purification and the passage of the soul toward the infinite; ``A Perfect Day for Bananafish,'' a story in which Seymour Glass, the central figure in Salinger's works, commits suicide, was described as a ``non-teleological work, a story of what happens to the partially illuminated person torn between the lustings of his instincts and the dictates of his conscience.''
Franny and Zooey, published in 1961, two stories about the Glass family, also received lukewarm reviews, but it had popular success. There is one unforgettable scene in which Zooey, age 25, is taking a bath when his mother enters, seats herself comfortably, and starts smoking and talking to her son.
Salinger's last published books, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, also about his beloved Glass family, came out in 1963, by which time the number of critical works on Salinger had multiplied. The final episode on the Glass family saga, a story titled ``Hapworth 16, 1924,'' was published in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965, the year that Salinger, age 46, went into seclusion. He repaid a $75,000 advance from his publisher, wanting no further publication of his work, and has remained reclusive since, emerging only to protest a pirated edition of his earliest stories, and to bring legal action against qualified biographer Ian Hamilton, who was trying to write a biography.
Born in New York City on Jan. 1, 1919, to prosperous parents, Jerome David Salinger, like Holden, attended fashionable prep schools before entering Valley Forge Military Academy, the model for Pencey Prep in Catcher. After attending college briefly, he studied short-story writing at Columbia with Whit Burnett, who published Salinger's fiction in his magazine, Story.
It is rumored that in 1941 he was romantically involved with Oona O'Neill, playwright Eugene O'Neill's daughter. From 1942 to 1945 he served in the military, married a Frenchwoman in 1945, and divorced in 1947. The New Yorker began publishing his stories in 1946; except for his earliest stories and Catcher, all of his work was originally published there. In 1955 he married Claire Douglas, with whom he had two children; they were divorced in 1967.
Commentaries on Salinger's work continued to proliferate, despite his hermit existence. A bibliography published in 1984 lists nearly 1500 entries. But does his work merit such attention?
A work of art, according to playwright Arthur Miller, is something that changes ``the consciousness of people and their estimate of who they are and what they stand for'' - a definition that fits Catcher. His central themes - the absence of love in human relationships and the conflict between the spiritual and the material - are woven skillfully beneath the witty, seemingly guileless surface of his work.
As to the literary merit of Salinger's entire small body of work, critics disagree. Some, like George Steiner, attribute his promotion to greatness simply to his accurate rendition of ``the semi-literate maunderings of the adolescent mind.''
There's little doubt that Catcher deserves a place in American literary history. At his best, Salinger is an admirable writer with an ear for dialogue, an observant eye and a sardonic, wise-guy wit. But his is the humor of despair and exasperation, tinged with arrogance.
Now 78, Salinger lives alone, so far as we know, on 99 acres, in a fenced-off house on a hilltop in Cornish, N.H., presumably supported by royalties from his previous volumes. A few loyal friends protect his privacy. But does he ever need a doctor? A dentist? Does he emerge to vote? Is it true, as rumored, that he has two full-length manuscripts locked away in his safe? If so, why re-release ``Hapworth,'' originally published over 30 years ago?
Perhaps the burden of being regarded as the author of a minor classic caused Salinger to withdraw. Possibly Salinger himself suspected his work was overrated. Hints of self-doubt appear repeatedly in Seymour: An Introduction, a work that might also be described as ``too long'' and ``monotonous,'' the ``maunderings'' of an undisciplined, 40ish writer. In it, Seymour Glass writes to younger brother, Buddy (alter-ego): ``I think I'd give almost anything . . after your own heart.''
My hope is that Salinger is working on a book that will justify the praise that has been bestowed upon him. He has the talent. Of course, he may just be meditating. Or sulking. But I like to imagine that he's writing a wise and wonderful book that records the reflections on the 1990s of 78-year-old Holden Caulfield as he wanders the streets of New York City, with 69-year-old Phoebe by his side. MEMO: Bernice Grohskopf is a free-lance book reviewer in Charlottesville
who specializes in 19th century British literature. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
[Salinger]