Salinger Page #12

---

And there was one space

that was off the bedroom

that was a safe.

I saw two thick manuscripts.

I've written nine books now.

I know what the size

of a book manuscript looks like.

And this... these were thick.

I never read them,

was never shown them

and knew better than to ask.

He did show me one thing,

although it wasn't like

I got to sit down and read it,

and that was a kind of

an archive of the Glass family,

who were, in his world,

as real as any relatives.

He was protective

of those characters

as if they were his children.

Only one time

did I meet friends of his,

and that was this memorable

and, I guess, disastrous lunch.

We drove into New York,

and we went to the Algonquin.

And there was this man,

William Shawn.

I think Jerry Salinger

really loved William Shawn.

And a writer whose work I did

know, because I had read it

and studied it and admired it-

Lillian Ross.

But I knew from Jerry that

Lillian Ross and William Shawn

had been lovers for years,

although William Shawn

was married to somebody else.

They were known

as Ross and Shawn to Jerry.

So she asked me

what sorts of things I wrote,

and I prattled on

about my little career

writing for 'Seventeen' magazine

and judging the

Miss Teenage America Pageant,

and Ross shoots

William Shawn a look.

And I could well imagine

the 'Talk of the Town' piece

that Lillian Ross would have

written about that lunch.

This lunch must have

deeply embarrassed Jerry,

because we left the restaurant,

rather hastily,

and we went directly

to Bonwit Teller,

and he bought me a very

expensive black cashmere coat

of the sort that

Lillian Ross might have worn.

I think he was indulging

in a fantasy

of innocence that... that...

...that neither one of us

could hold onto very long.

One day,

I heard the telephone ring

and I heard him speaking

very briefly and then a click.

And then he emerged

from his office...

...with a look on his face

I had never seen.

And he said,

"'Time' magazine

"has got my number.

"You have ruined my life."

For years, I avoided any

information about J.D. Salinger.

Ask me about him, I said nothing

and I wrote nothing about him.

And I was at a party

in New York City,

pregnant with my third child,

and there was a woman

who came over to me.

And she said, "So...

"You're the one

that lived with J.D. Salinger.

"He wrote you letters,

didn't he?"

And then she said,

"I had an au pair girl

"who got lots of letters

from him too."

And I remember

feeling my stomach drop.

And that was the first

of what ultimately were

a surprising number

of stories about girls,

always girls,

getting letters from Salinger.

J.D. Salinger's love letters

come back

and kick him in the ass.

14 highly personal letters by

reclusive author J.D. Salinger

to then 18-year-old writer

Joyce Maynard in the early '70s

are to be auctioned

at Sotheby's.

Joyce Maynard wrote

a sort of kiss-and-tell memoir,

but when she put up at auction

the letters that Salinger

had written her,

Peter Norton,

the software developer,

thought it was such

a terrible act of disloyalty

that he bought the letters

and returned them to Salinger.

When I made

the decision to write that book,

I needed

to go see Jerry Salinger.

And I didn't do

what the worshippers did,

which was to stand

at the end of the driveway.

A woman called out to me,

"What do you want?"

"I've come to see Jerry.

"Would you tell him

Joyce Maynard's here?"

And then she sort of

turned to me

and looked at me through

the window and smiled, actually,

and I realised that that was

the au pair girl, Colleen.

And then the door opened,

and there he stood.

And he was

shaking his hand at me,

and he said,

"What are you doing here?!"

I said, "I've come to ask you

a question, Jerry.

"What... what was my purpose

in your life?"

"That question, that question...

"You don't deserve an answer

to that question."

And then he let loose

this torrent.

"I hear

you're writing something,

"some kind of reminiscence."

And he said it

as if that was an obscene act.

He watches very much

what's going on in the world.

He said, "I always knew this is

what you'd amount to - nothing.

"You have spent your life

writing meaningless garbage.

"And now you mean

to exploit me."

And he said, "The problem

with you, Joyce, is...

"..you...

"..love..."

"..the world."

Margaret Salinger

is back with us this morning

to talk some more

about her controversial memoir,

'Dream Catcher'.

The book is an intensely

private look at her famous,

yet very reclusive, father,

J.D. Salinger.

Do you think, Peggy,

he ultimately went into writing

so he could create characters

or create his own universe

where people

met his expectations?

I personally think

that that is certainly,

um, what's going on.

I sat and cried

reading that book.

And I don't know how much

of her book is really true

and how much isn't.

But I think it's

the saddest thing I ever read.

Guess we shouldn't

have got on that. Sorry.

Matthew Salinger told me

that the picture

that his sister painted

of growing up

in the Salinger household

was nothing like

his memories of childhood.

And he was quite adamant

about that.

How would you characterise

the relationship

you have

with your father today?

None? Oh, that's easy. Nona

No!

As a police officer

in the 20th Precinct,

we got a report of shots fired

at 1 West 72nd Street-

that's the Dakota.

I just couldn't wait

till those police got there.

I didn't know what to do.

I took 'The Catcher in the Rye'

out of my pocket.

There was a man standing

in the street saying,

"That's the man

doing the shooting."

So I drew my gun,

grabbed Chapman,

and I put him up

against the wall.

And here is John Lennon

being carried out

by two police officers

from my precinct.

And at eye-level, I see

John Lennon's face

with his eyes closed

and blood coming out

of his mouth.

They decided to put him

in the radio car and take him

to the hospital immediately,

try to save his life.

So I handcuffed Chapman.

I look down on the ground, I

said, "Are these your clothes?"

He says,

"Yes, and the book too."

I look at the book. You know,

it's 'Catcher in the Rye'.

I was literally living inside

of a paperback novel,

J.D. Salinger's

'The Catcher in the Rye'.

We have to remember,

the things we produce,

symbolically

and in language,

we have no control

over what happens to them

once we let them go.

Salinger put

his depression into Holden.

It's almost like black magic.

Some of his depression may go

away, but the character lives,

and there are some readers

who will take the depression

out of the character

into themselves.

The conversation

Salinger creates

between himself and the reader

is so close

that if you misread it,

you read Holden's antipathy

to the culture

as license to kill.

To have the book with him,

he was right there

with J.D. Salinger,

right there with Holden.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes