Salinger Page #4

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Salinger at Princeton Library.

After we got into

the reading room,

we turned the last page

of something and came across

a 3-by-5-inch light green

spiral-notebook-bound paper.

And I remember, at that moment,

everybody's pulse sort of jumped

because it was handwritten.

Ostensibly,

it was written by Salinger,

about the Allies

coming into Paris.

He talked about

driving in the jeeps into Paris

and the Parisians

holding their babies up

for the Americans to kiss.

And he said that you could

stand on the hood of your jeep

and take a leak on it, and it

wouldn't matter, it would be OK.

Anything you did would be fine.

I think one of the great

stories of literary history

is the meeting of Ernest

Hemingway and J.D. Salinger

in Paris during the liberation.

Ernest Hemingway was his icon.

He loved the way

Ernest Hemingway wrote.

At the time that Salinger met my

grandfather, Ernest Hemingway,

in World War II,

he was the most famous writer

of the 20th century,

and so you can see why Salinger

would seek him out.

And I think that would have been

a kind of romantic vision

for my grandfather

to see in Salinger

a talented young writer

in the Infantry division

fighting during World War II.

And Jerry actually

gave him a manuscript

and asked Hemingway

to look at it.

Which took a great deal

of derring-do

on his part, really.

But Hemingway saw what

he'd written and loved it.

Jerry was thrilled that

Hemingway appreciated

his writing.

This was like getting

the greatest accolade

he could possibly have.

I didn't think that Jerry would

ever push up to see anybody...

...'cause he seemed

rather shy and reclusive.

J.D. Salinger is a recluse who

likes to flirt with the public

to remind them

that he's a recluse.

He's not a recluse. He appears

whenever he feels like it.

The Cornish Fair would start,

and we'd see all our friends

and all our neighbours,

and Jerry Salinger

was one of 'em.

He came to all the fairs

and enjoyed them immensely.

A friend of mine said, "Oh,

I met J.D. Salinger tonight,

"popped in backstage

to meet the cast.

"And he was very jovial

and very cheery."

He's not reclusive

in the total sense of the word.

He's in touch with people.

He travels to Europe.

He comes to New York.

We were just

hanging around the house

when the phone rings.

I answered it. This male voice

asked for Lacey Fosburgh.

Salinger has to do everything

exactly on his own terms.

The true recluse

would never pick up the phone

and call a reporter

from the 'New York Times'.

Lacey was the first woman

to ever cover the police beat

for the 'New York Times',

and now working out of

the San Francisco bureau.

She picked up the phone,

and his first line was,

"This is a man

called Salinger."

He enjoys the game.

Reclusivity is a great

public relations device,

among other things.

By being out of the picture,

he's in the picture.

I think that is probably an

intentional paradox on his part.

She goes...

.. "Salinger! It's Salinger!"

This was the first interview

that Salinger had granted

since 1953.

"Give me some paper!

Give me some paper!"

He says, right off the bat,

"I can only talk for a minute."

So I'm scurrying around,

grabbing some paper,

she's furiously writing notes

on anything that's around.

Then, of course,

the conversation ends up

being a half an hour long.

He sets the scene - it was

a cold, windswept, rainy night

in New Hampshire

as he was talking to her.

And the point of the call was

he was concerned that

pirated editions of

his uncollected shod stories

were being sold

across the country.

J.D. Salinger

paperbacks.

Two little volumes.

He referred to them as

"the gaucheries of his youth".

The stories that he never

wanted published at all,

that he had written

in the 1940s.

He called her because

he was clearly upset

about this pirate publication.

These were stories that

he did not want in circulation.

He didn't have to do that.

He just had to file a lawsuit.

One of the great coups

of the story was that

she was able to get Salinger

to talk about

what he was up to as a writer

and that he was

writing every day,

which was one of the great

mysteries of the literary world

for a decade or so.

He paints

this portrait of someone

who is completely devoted

still to his craft,

still turning out

story after story,

novel after novel, perhaps.

And she got him

to talk about his own feelings

about publishing and being

published and being private.

Salinger said, "I don't have

any intention of publishing.

"There's a stillness that comes

from not publishing."

Lacey immediately

got on the phone

with the national desk

of the 'New York Times'

to say, "Hey," you know,

"I just talked to Salinger."

He knew if he called

a 'New York Times' reporter,

that story would be on the front

page of the 'New York Times',

which is exactly what happened.

Which was

extraordinary at the time -

this was before the 'Times'

format had changed,

and so running soft news on

the front page was a big deal.

I didn't have

a lot of money then,

and I didn't know

quite what was going on,

so I bought volume one,

and when I went back

to buy the second one,

not only was the book gone,

both volumes were missing.

The store owners declined

to admit they'd ever sold it.

Salinger had pulled them

from all the bookstores.

I mean, this was a second-hand

bookstore on Telegraph Avenue.

I couldn't even believe

he could reach that far.

It was incredibly eerie,

almost sort of medieval...

...primal fears came out of

the Hilrtgen Forest.

Salinger experienced that

firsthand.

It was basically described

as a meat grinder.

Soldiers described

that battle as one where

they wished they could

crawl inside their helmets.

Whole companies of 200 men

would be down to 20 or 30

after four or five hours.

Guys would literally

have their arms blown off,

half a leg missing,

and they'd be laughing as they

were taken off on a stretcher

because they knew

they were going home.

The only way Salinger could have

survived an intense shelling

would have been

to literally hug a tree.

To get close enough

to that thing and pray to God

that somebody else gets it.

"November 10, 1944.

"Dear M, This poor young man

"has been bombarding me

with poems for a week or so.

"It appears that

he's serving overseas,

"so everything becomes

more touching."

J.D. Salinger and Louise Bogan

first crossed paths

when he wrote to her

in November of 1944.

He may have thought

that she was the poetry editor

of the 'New Yorker'.

She wasn't.

She was simply their reviewer.

And she passed the poems along

to her friend at the magazine,

William Maxwell.

"Dear M, I send you another

of Sergeant Salinger's letters.

"I've written him, but it is

better if you write him too.

"Perhaps this would help

stem the tide. Love, Louise."

We don't really know

what she thought about

the poems themselves,

but she was deeply touched

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