Uncouth Reflections

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

A life-of-Salinger documentary, directed by Shane Salerno, recently became available on Netflix Instant. It’s called simply “Salinger.” I took a chance on it. For a movie about a writer who was active for only 25 years, it’s pretty long — over two hours. And if you’re at all cynical about Salinger’s reputation (as I tend to be), the stench of all the incense burning can get pretty thick. The early portions are primarily devoted to Salinger’s celebrity fanboys — guys like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Edward Norton, along with some academic types — gushing about their hero. They say things like, “Salinger’s idea of perfection is really perfection and shouldn’t be tampered with,” which as a critical statement isn’t too far removed from “Batman roooooollllzzzz.” It’s long been my suspicion that more stupid things have been said and thought about Salinger than any other cultural figure of the twentieth century. Nothing presented in “Salinger” caused me to reexamine  that impression.

But as the doc became focused on Salinger’s private life, a large portion of which was devoted to his hermitage in rural Connecticut New Hampshire, my interest was piqued. Who isn’t intrigued by the bizarro affectations of a cultural icon? Much of what was presented about Salinger the man struck me as pretty interesting.

A few points/observations:

• The young Salinger was something of a fame whore: he was hyper-ambitious, dying to be published in “The New Yorker,” prone to kissing up to power brokers, etc. Nothing unusual about that, of course — it’s hard to make it as a writer without being both full of yourself and willing to polish a few knobs. Still, I kept wondering: “What would Holden think?” It contradicts the image, no?
• Salinger had a thing for the ladies, especially the underage ones. Oddly, his first significant love, socialite Oona O’Neill, ended up marrying Charlie Chaplin, another guy who liked to — ahem — dabble in the pleasures of not-so-adult women. One gets the sense that Charlie and ol’ J.D. would’ve had a ball cruising the middle-school playground for potential playmates.
• The movie has a beaucoup difficult time dealing with Salinger’s experience during the war. First he was a shining example of anti-Nazism, then he married a former Nazi (she was, of course, both very pretty and very young). You can almost hear Salerno exhale in relief when the union ends in divorce. What was going on there? According to the film there’s a lack of information regarding this portion of Salinger’s life. I suspect there’s also a lack of curiosity.
• The location of Salinger’s bunker — and it really was a sort of bunker — wasn’t as secret as it was often made out to be. It was the focus of regular pilgrimages made by reporters, fans, and crazy people — though it’s often hard to distinguish where one category ends and another begins. Many of these folks expected Salinger to reveal to them the meaning of existence, and they were dismayed when he turned out to be a crotchety old guy in a bathrobe. One disappointed acolyte recounts being dismayed when, upon being pinned down at the bottom of his driveway, Salinger simply gave him the stink eye and asked if he might be suffering from some kind of mental problem. Salerno treats figures like this sad pilgrim with a degree of uncertainty. It’s possible he recognizes the similarity between the pilgrim’s conception of  Salinger and his own.
• During the last years of his life, Salinger’s hobby was writing MASH notes to female teenagers whom he noticed in the media. He seems to have succeeded in getting into the pants of a few of them. Call it Famous Recluse Game.

While discussing the film (and Salinger) with co-blogger Paleo Retiree, he pointed me towards a few recent articles about the author. You can read one of them here. The guy who wrote the article is a smart guy, and he makes a bunch of good points. He also seems to be an eminent expert on Salinger. But the take expressed in the linked-to piece — that it’s folly to compare Salinger with his most famous character, Holden Caulfield — strikes me as a tad overstated. Granted, any such analogy is going to be overly simplistic. But as simplistic analogies go, the Salinger-Caulfied one is pretty potent, no? According to the folks interviewed for the documentary, Salinger spent his later years hiding from the world while watching old movies (including “Lost Horizon,” a picture dealing with eternal youth) and courting teeny boppers. Of the those who managed to become close to him, at least one claims to have been advised by Salinger to renounce the phoniness of public life. She also claims that Salinger believed that the only person capable of portraying Holden in a movie was himself. Provided all this is true (and who knows if it is?), why shouldn’t we see Holden as being a partial reflection of Salinger? It sure would explain some things . . .

The doc also caused me to reconsider a question I’ve been pondering since first reading “The Catcher in the Rye” back in eighth grade. Namely: What in the hell do people see in this lame book? Back then my take was that Holden was a sorry little shit — the biggest phony in the novel — and that Salinger, while not explicitly endorsing Holden’s point of view, was far too willing to treat it with kid gloves — to elevate Holden’s woe-is-me, it’s-all-bullshit pose to a kind of naive heroism. But maybe that’s an unfair take. It’s been a while since eighth grade, after all.

My experience is that many people who love the book view Holden as a sort of larval saint; they look up to him. Further, my vague sense is that Holden’s point of view — and Salinger’s treatment of it — held considerable appeal for the post-war audience. To that audience the idea that a young person might see through the corruptness of traditional America — might pierce the veil separating society from the golden light of truth — was a mighty powerful one, even if the “truth” in this case amounted to little more than Holden blowing mouth farts at the system.

Seen in this light Holden (and, I guess, Salinger) is similar to James Dean or John F. Kennedy, two men who remain famous more for what they represented (youth, change, great hair) than for what they accomplished. Modern Americans and their idols, eh? It’s all about intentions and potential — about what you say and represent. And if you’re gone before you have a chance to live up to your image, so much the better — it’s further proof of just how rotten everything is. I wonder: Is it a coincidence that Salinger, like Dean and Kennedy, was effectively taken from us before his potential (whatever that might have been) could be fully realized?

Anyway, I’m curious how UR readers take “Catcher.” As a great novel? The alienated blurt of a generation? A dopey forerunner of YA fiction? And why are people still talking about it 60 years after it was published?

Related

• “About the only thing that I got out of Holden’s character was that he had at some point probably been tied to a chair and beaten over the head for about 6 hours by a giant gorilla with a baseball bat made out of frozen stupid.”
• Goodreads.
• Was Holden the original hipster? He did wear a hunting cap.