Other than a link to an obit, I haven’t offered anything on Salinger and his passing. He was, if you read last week’s essays and opinons, a most important author. What I remember is spending an entire summer looking for, finding, and reading anything he wrote that I could get my hands on. And not because I was influenced by Catcher In The Rye – I didn’t enjoy the book when I first picked it up and it was only a bit of chance and circumstances that I ever came back to Salinger again.
My first job out of college was as a proofreader for a law book publisher. If you think proofreading is a mind numbing business, try law. Although some comical things could happen such as when the typesetter, not having the Japanese idiograms for a trademark book, substituted Yiddish characters while he ordered the type. Unfortunately, the type was never placed in the text and nobody caught it as the book went thru page proofs, repro, and mechanical stages . The final book was printed, bound, and shipped most likely wishing the legal experts a happy Shavuos.
One of my trenchmates was a former English major named Dennis who processed manuscript for release to the compositors (typesetters). I handled the next stages which were galley and page proofs. We sat next to each other in separate small offices, working quietly, until one or the other needed a break.
One afternoon, especially worn, I dragged myself into Dennis’ office and slumped down in his chair for a bit of philosophy and conversation. I was having a particularly hard time getting up the energy for another set of proofs and complained that I could find no good reason why I should spend as much time as I did since traffic was always pushing me for more and faster.
“Do it for that old lady,” Dennis said, “do it for the old lady in Kansas.”
What?”
“Ever hear of JD Salinger?” he asked.
Told him I read a brief bit of Catcher but really hadn’t read anything else by the author.
“Well,” he said, putting down his pen, straightening his tie, and leaning back in his chair, “Salinger wrote about the Glass family. They were featured on this radio program called It’s A Wise Child.”
Go on, I said.
“Anyway, one day Franny is complaining to her brother Buddy that the older brother Seymour got on her case about shining her shoes before she went on the program. Franny thought it was a stupid request since they were on a radio show and that no one was going to see their shoes anyway.
“Seymour explained to her that somewhere out in the mid-west, in some dust-bowl, sat a dirt poor lonely old woman, in her rocking chair on the porch of her broken down house. Every day she looked forward to listening to that show and hearing the Glass family speak to her and it was the one true pleasure she had left in her life.
“So what?, said Franny.
So, Seymour said, if there is any one good reason you need to shine your shoes, do it for that old lady who sits alone all day waiting for us to come on the radio.”
As if there’s any other reason you need…
[Note – if you’re interested in the story, pick up and read Franny & Zooey… – J.]
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February 2, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Ralph
I’ve been completely silent on Salinger because I admit, he was totally lost on me. ‘Catcher” was required reading for us in the 9th grade. I simply didn’t get it, felt no affinity for Caulfield whatsoever, had no desire to read anything more, and as a result the Salinger cult has been a mystery to me lo these 40-odd years.
I will say I don’t understand the concept of “writing for its own sake,” which I hear is what Salinger did during his years of hermitage, “for the sheer love of words.” Help me with this: words are the building blocks of language, and language is the primary means of human communication. How can one write for oneself? I am a failed (many times) diarist because I find writing just for its own sake a sere and pointless exercise. What’s the point of using communication tools if your purpose is not to communicate? When I am writing anything at all, I have to imagine an audience–of one or of thousands, but an audience of some kind. Am I missing something? Is there some mental trick that allows good writing for its own sake?
And maybe I’ll give Salinger another chance, starting with “F&Z.”
February 3, 2010 at 8:47 am
lazarusdodge
Ralph –
I had to mull this one over a bit because you raise some real interesting points.
First, my reaction to Caulfiled and CITR was the same as yours. Just didn’t find it all that interesting and put both Salinger and his work away for years. Only brought back to it by the story told to me above. Franny & Zooey is a great place to start – and others to follow thru with more about the Glass family. Worth giving it a second try…
As far as “writing for oneself” – I think the point you’re making is that unless the writing is done to satisfy an audience outside of the writer, there is no purpose? My impression of writers is that they write compulsively. Some good, some bad. But always putting words to images and ideas and committing to paper (or keyboard). It satisfies a need that’s within them, not necessarily to satisfy a need that’s external.
There is writing that’s done directly for pay – ie non-fiction, journalism, etc. Yet even there, something internal drives it.
Secretly, maybe writers do expect some type of reward. As a recent commenter wrote on an earlier post, the author of a particular poem was “truth-telling” and looking for some redemption and comfort. I don’t doubt that. But must you publish to get that?
I guess it also speaks to the question, “what is a writer”. But that is another hornet’s nest I may stir at another time…
Onward into February!
– J.
February 3, 2010 at 7:31 am
nan
Great post, Jeff.
February 3, 2010 at 8:35 am
lazarusdodge
Always appreciate your visits and encouragement, Nan!
– J.
February 3, 2010 at 9:09 am
Ralph
Thanks, Jeff–hope I didn’t come off as abrasive in tone–I tend to get over-exerted about some things that have been eating at me all my life as I’ve compared my own experiences to others’ I see a difference between writing for publication–pay– and writing simply to reach out and communicate, and if there is an internally-originated compulsive quality to it, that’s what mine is. I grew up with a writing father. He was a beat reporter with no interest whatsoever in creative writing or even memoir, but still, writing in our house was a completely normal activity and I was encouraged in it. Among my most memorable toys were a printing press and a typewriter. Ever since I got my own (real) typewriter in college, I’ve seen the keyboard literally as an extension of myself, of my brain, my spirit.
I’m also inherently a teacher. I enjoy nothing more than explaining things to people, helping them understand things–and that covers territory from the French past-progressive tense (I LOVED explaining it as a teacher in the Peace Corps–felt totally alive while doing it) to what it was like growing up gay in the America of the 60s. Writing is all wrapped up in my compulsion to teach, and I’m always using examples from my own life as object lessons, the idea being, “I learned something worthwhile from this; maybe you can, too.”
Thanks for this opportunity for me to work this out in my own mind….I could just write it to myself, I guess, but somehow writing it to you makes it mean more. There I go, explaining again!
February 4, 2010 at 10:22 am
lazarusdodge
Ralph –
There’s not much distance between you and me – I understand your joys and your love of teaching. So no need to apologize for those passions.
Interestingly, there’s not much distance between you and Salinger. From what I’ve read, he was not so much an arrogant recluse as people might think. He was someone who was very concerned about his writing and how his readers would perceive it. And he seemed to have been driven into seclusion more by his own lack of faith in his abilities than by disdain for his audience.
Interesting essay I read this morning here:
Maybe Salinger Wasn’t Such A Curmudgeon
Take a look – and keep writing. The words will out!
– J.
February 4, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Ralph
Unfortunately Newsday locks nonsubscribers out of its website and I don’t need a Newsday subscription, so I can’t read the piece until it slips into the public doman. But the very premise that he was unsure of his own abilities is touching and sad. If that’s so I wish it weren’t.