Salinger Page #10

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was a single parent.

And I think that

had to hurt Claire a lot.

I don't think she thought

that was gonna be

part of her life with Jerry.

And she was left to do

all the things for the children

and to make all the decisions

for weeks... weeks at a time.

He put a cot in

so that he literally

never had to leave the bunker.

You think about it daily.

You have flashbacks.

There are times in which I can

be sitting in the living room

and... have artillery

land in my yard

or in my living room.

So you do get

those kinds of flashbacks.

I've never told my wife that.

Sid Perelman, a humorist

and writer for the 'New Yorker',

did go up to see him

in New Hampshire.

Sid said, "He's got this

concrete bunker where he works,

"but he's got a great big statue

of Buddha in the garden

"and he's got a lot of

Buddhist priests around him,

"and they do

a lot of chanting."

And Sid thought

this was very strange.

Salinger's religion

was the central concern

in his writing.

His championing the ideas

of Vedanta Hinduism

in his Glass stories.

The so-called

karma yoga concept

that comes from

the Bhagavad Gita,

that you should do your work

as perfectly

as you possibly can,

with no thought of rewards,

and only that way can you be

a really happy person.

When Salinger submitted

the sequel to 'Franny'

to the 'New Yorker',

this novella called

'Zooey', in 1957,

the fiction editors unanimously

agreed to reject the story.

William Shawn intervened.

He was the editor-in-chief,

and he decreed that the magazine

would, in fact, publish 'Zooey'.

And since he was the one

who championed it,

he would edit it himself.

The 'New Yorker' was Mr Shawn.

There was no other

'New Yorker'.

He was it.

Salinger is

the perfect author for him.

Shawn is the perfect editor

for Salinger,

because they're both

strange, brilliant creatures.

William Shawn was a very shy

and introverted person.

He was a man who was

riddled with phobias.

Devoted to ideas.

He wouldn't sit

in the front of a theatre

because he was

afraid of a fire.

Has had more books

dedicated to him

than anyone, probably,

in the history of publishing.

He carried a hatchet around,

reportedly, in his briefcase.

He was always afraid

he'd be caught in an elevator

and have to hack his way out.

His whole life was really

wrapped up in the 'New Yorker'

and his writers.

He wouldn't travel if he

had to go through a tunnel.

Salinger truly was grateful

to him for the work he'd done,

and he felt that he had found

a kind of soul mate in Shawn.

'Zooey' was so successful

that after that,

all his work was handled

by William Shawn.

He didn't work with

the other fiction editors

in the 'New Yorker' anymore.

In the 1960s, 'The Catcher

in the Rye' takes off,

becoming a cultural phenomenon.

It literally is

a rite of passage.

It suggested that you had

lost your literary virginity

in a way.

Everybody loved him -

kids, adults.

He was an idol, a teen idol.

Salinger was

the national story.

In 1961, the big media

really pulled out the big guns.

'Time', 'Newsweek' and 'LIFE'

sent out some of

their best reporters.

Newspaper people

came and did interviews.

They all started coming,

and Jerry, he couldn't stop

for a cup of coffee.

They wouldn't allow it.

'Time' magazine tracked down

Salinger's sister Doris

at her job at Bloomingdale's,

and in no uncertain terms,

she basically told them,

"I would never do anything my

brother wouldn't approve of."

There was so much attention,

so much heat, so much light

being focused on J.D. Salinger.

Billy Wilder wanted to make

a movie of 'The Catcher

in the Rye' so badly

that he had his agents

hound Salinger.

I remember the whole talk

in New York at that time

was that Elia Kazan

was desperate

to make a film of

'The Catcher in the Rye'.

Jerry Lewis, who was,

like, a huge movie star,

publicly declared

that he was gonna

make a film of

'Catcher in the Rye'.

And on a fairly regular basis,

he would call J.D. Salinger,

who would hang up on him.

Salinger showed up unexpectedly

at Billy Wilder's

agent's office in New York,

and he starts screaming, "Tell

Billy Wilder to leave me alone!

"He's very, very insensitive!"

Elia Kazan going on his

search for 'Catcher in the Rye',

knocking on the door and saying,

"Mr Salinger, I'm Elia Kazan."

And Salinger saying, "That's

nice," and closing the door.

I hope it's true.

If they'd made a movie,

Holden wouldn't like it.

Enough said.

'Franny and Zooey'

instantly took off.

It was on the bestseller list

in no time.

It remained on

the bestseller list

for weeks and weeks and weeks.

When J.D. Salinger appears

on the cover of 'Time' magazine,

it's not a photograph.

It's an imaginary portrait.

It conveys the sense that

the author has enough integrity

not to be part

of the publicity machine.

I was assigned

by 'LIFE' magazine

to go up and get a picture

of this man

who was very reclusive

and had refused

to be photographed,

I guess, for many years.

The challenge was

to be unobtrusive,

to not be noticed

and to take advantage

of the terrain,

hiding in the bushes,

much in the way that one would

if you were photographing

wildlife.

You don't walk up there

with six cameras

hanging round your neck.

So I put my cameras

in a shopping bag.

I would find my little

hiding place in the bushes

and stay there all day

shivering.

Very cold and rainy.

I had a horrible cold,

bordering on the flu.

The editor had said,

"If it's more than three days,

forget about it."

Then lo and behold,

on the third day,

he made an appearance,

to walk his dog, very briefly.

He just emerged

just for a few seconds,

just enough time for me

to get off a half-dozen frames.

In fact, I was afraid

that I was close enough

that he might be able to hear

the clicking of the shutter.

I remember reading

about him in 'LIFE' magazine.

I remember reading about

this man who lived in this house

who didn't want visitors,

didn't want to discuss himself.

And I remember sort of

being puzzled by that,

because, again, you know,

you're at that age

where you're suddenly realising

there are famous people

and then there's

the rest of us.

There are people

who have extraordinary lives

and then there's

the rest of us.

And here was a man who had

an opportunity to have what,

at that young age, you thought

was an extraordinary life,

and he was saying, "I'd

rather not. Please go away."

McGOWAN:

When 'Franny and Zooey',

'Raise High the Roof Beam,

Carpenters,

'and Seymour, an Introduction'

were published as books,

the literary knives came out.

Joan Didion wrote

that he had a fondness

for giving instructions

to people on how to live life.

John Updike wrote,

"Salinger loved his characters

"more than God loved them."

Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin,

Mary McCarthy.

She wrote an essay

in 'Harper's Magazine'

called 'J.D. Salinger's

Closed Circuit',

saying the Glass family was an

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