As I’m sure most are aware, Salinger has left us at the age of 91. I did not know this until this afternoon. So when I mentioned Salinger in class today, I was thinking he was still alive. How tragic to find out otherwise! And this, the very week I had decided that Salinger might be my favorite short story writer. I’ve been reading him for the past week straight, having no idea he was going to die anytime soon. How terrible. Just last night, I was printing out pages and pages of his uncollected stories (because you can’t BUY them). As the ink was bleeding out onto the page, Salinger very well might have been bleeding out into his bed. (I’m just being dramatic here, but you never know.)
I was just telling my friend this week that it’d be great to have all his uncollected stories published in one volume, so people can actually read them for the first time in 50 years. But I didn’t mean I wanted him to DIE! This is all so sad to me…
Anyway, the class will have the privilege to read his most famous short story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” soon. However, he hasn’t really said anything about writing, as far as I can find.
It’s obvious that Salinger considered writing an extremely personal thing. He’s said to have kept writing regularly since 1965, but nobody has seen any of it. He writes for himself, and nobody else. I wouldn’t say this is a good thing, though; he was simply an eccentric and reclusive man. But I do agree that writing in a very personal manner could bring great benefits, although it isn’t required.
He does hate movies, though. Here’s what Holden Caulfield, from Catcher in the Rye, says about his brother, who moved to Hollywood:
“Now he’s out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me.”
Only one movie based on his work has ever been allowed to be made. And Salinger despised it.
So his views on writing aren’t very helpful to us. But one of the best ways for an aspiring writer to learn how to write is to READ Salinger. He had an endless imagination, unforgettable characters, some of the best dialog ever put to print, and the kind of high, dark comedy that makes you breathless with belly laughs and tears.
He will surely be missed. Goodbye, dear J.D.
Editor’s note:
Hello again. Reading Salinger’s Seymour – An Introduction, which is a novella about Buddy Glass’ (a fictional character) fictional brother Seymour. It’s written in a sort of free form diary manner, with hundreds of absolutely hilarious digressions and anecdotes. Much of the “story” talks about writing. Here are a few tidbits. One can assume that Salinger might agree with some or all of it.
“When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion. Do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won’t be asked. You won’t be asked if you were working on a wonderful, moving piece of writing when you died. You won’t be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won’t be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won’t even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it was finished. I’m so sure you’ll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? [...] If only you’d remember before you ever sat down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world (insert your name here) would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined. Oh, dare to do it, Buddy! Trust your heart. You’re a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. I think I’d give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a story, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.”
“It’s a wonder we’re not worse cowards in print than we already are.”
“I believe I essentially remain what I’ve almost always been — a narrator, but one with extremely pressing personal needs. I want to introduce, I want to describe, I want to distribute mementos, amulets, I want to break out my wallet and pass around snapshots, I want to follow my nose. In this mood, I don’t dare go anywhere near the short-story form. It eats up fat little undetached writers like me whole.”
“You can’t imagine what big, hand-rubbing plans I had for this immediate space. They appear to have been designed, though, to look exquisite on the bottom of my wastebasket.”
“You can’t argue with someone who believes, or just passionately suspects, that the poet’s function is not to write what he must write, but, rather, to write what he would write if his life depended on his taking responsibility for writing what he must in a style designed to shut out as few of his old librarians as humanly possible.”
“Fundamentally, my mind has always balked at any kind of ending. How many stories have I torn up since I was a boy simply because they had a Beginning, a Middle, and an End? One of the thousand reasons I quit going to the theatre when I was twenty was that I resented like hell filing out of the theatre just because some playwright was forever slamming down his silly curtain.”
And one interview quote:
“There is a marvelous peace in not publishing … I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure. [...] I see publication as a damned interruption.”
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