Salinger Page #6

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1948 was really a turning point

for Salinger

and the 'New Yorker'.

He published

'A Perfect Day for Bananafish'

and two other stories.

And from then on,

he was known and identified

as a 'New Yorker' writer.

And Jerry was thrilled -

he told me how much

it had meant to him to be

published by the 'New Yorker'.

Salinger was considered

really a shooting star.

A 'New Yorker'

contributor in Hollywood said,

"Everybody out here

talks about Salinger.

"My God, that guy is good.

"Evenings are spent,

and this is on the level,

"discussing the guy

and his work."

I would ask people

who worked with him,

"Did he have a reclusive

personality back then?

"Did you ever see him?"

They said, "Oh, you know,

we saw him all the time."

"We talked to him. He was

very warm. He was Jerry."

He would call up and say,

"I'm going to the Blue Angel

tonight. Wanna come along?"

So we would go to the Blue

Angel, which was a nightspot

where young talent

would try out.

When we were at

the Blue Angel together,

he was very sociable.

He talked to people. He even

talked to the performers.

Jerry was

a different person there.

Jerry had a wonderful time,

because he'd identified

with these types

who were trying

to make their mark,

just as he was trying to make

his mark with his writing.

And he was very charitable.

He was very encouraging.

But he wouldn't encourage

a young writer.

That was different.

That was competition.

He was pretty suave

with the women.

He used to lie to them

and tell them

he was a goalie

for a Montreal soccer team.

But it was

a very platonic going out.

I mean, he didn't try to kiss

me or hug me or squeeze me

or anything

the way other people did.

Maybe I was too old for him.

I think he liked younger girls.

I was only seven years younger.

I think maybe he preferred them

12 years younger.

Or younger than that.

Don't mess

with Mr In-between.

We were in Daytona Beach,

and I was sitting at

this rather crowded pool

reading 'Wuthering Heights'.

And this man

sitting next to me said,

"How is Heathcliff?

How is Heathcliff?"

And I turned to him, and I said,

"Heathcliff is troubled."

He was in this

terrycloth bathrobe.

He was very white,

and his legs were white.

He didn't look like

he belonged at this pool.

It's the classic

veteran's syndrome.

You come back from a war

and see all around you

people that don't understand,

don't have a clue

about the first thing

that you did

when you were over there,

rather than here.

His mind seemed to skitter

over various topics.

He told me he was a writer,

that he had published stories

in the 'New Yorker',

and he felt that was

his finest accomplishment.

We sat there for quite a while,

and finally he asked me,

"How old are you?"

And I said, "14."

And I do remember very clearly

his grimace.

He said he was 30.

He made a point of saying

that he was 30 on January 1,

so that, in a way,

he was just 30.

I finally left,

and as I was going away,

he told me his name was Jerry.

I saw him the next day,

and we began these walks.

We would walk down the beach

to this old rickety pier.

We did this every afternoon

for, say, about 10 days.

We'd walk very slowly

down to the pier.

It was though

he was escorting me,

and he would always have

his left shoulder behind me

and lean down to hear

what I had to say.

He was very deaf

in his right ear.

I think something to do

with the war.

But Jerry Salinger

listened like you were the most

important person in the world,

and he wanted

to know about my family.

He wanted to know

about my school.

He wanted to know about

what games I played.

He wanted to know who I was

reading, what I was studying.

He wanted to know whether

I believed in God.

Did I want to be an actress?

He wanted to know

everything about me.

We would end up at the pier,

and we'd sit.

We'd buy popcorn

and we'd buy ice-cream

and we'd feed popcorn

to the seagulls.

He was having a wonderful time.

There's an image

from 'Esm' which haunts me,

and it's that image

late in the story where

Sergeant X feels his mind

dislodge itself

and begin to teeter,

and he compares that to luggage

on an overhead rack

that's unstable.

Think of 'For Esm -

with Love and Squalor'.

Surely, there is no better

story in the half-century

on either side of that novel.

You're in a tea shop

in England,

and an American soldier

is on his way to war.

And he finds himself explaining

himself to a 12-year-old girl,

whose manners are too good,

and this wish

that she expresses

that he should return

from the battle

with all his, as she says,

F-A-C-U-L-T-I-E-S intact-

with all his faculties intact.

And then he makes this abrupt

kind of shattering

cinematic cut

to this soldier

after he's been to battle

writing a letter to Esm.

And he has barely clung to

his F-A-C-U-L-T-I-E-S-

He's barely hung onto his

intelligence and his powers,

and he's gonna return

to America

and he's gonna

be J.D. Salinger

and he's gonna write.

I would do cartwheels

on the beach,

and then I would

flip off into the ocean.

And he would love that.

I was fresh and new,

like a breath of spring,

and I knew I brought him joy.

I think he felt it was

as close to a perfect,

maybe even direct, moment

that he'd had...

...ever... maybe ever had.

These perfect moments,

they got him away

from his melancholy,

his angst about the war.

On his very last day,

he asked me would it be alright

for him to write me?

And I said, "Of course."

He also said,

"I'd like to kiss you goodbye,

"but you know I can't."

And then Jerry

went up to my mother

and said very seriously,

"I am going to marry

your daughter."

Years later,

he told me that he could not

have written 'Esm'...

...had he not met me.

Well, I remember talking once

to William Maxwell

about what it was like

to work with Salinger.

He said Salinger

was very specific,

he was a very careful writer.

He knew what he wanted,

even down to his punctuation.

And Maxwell told me the story

of a piece

that Salinger had written

that had been edited,

it had gone all through

the process,

down to the final page proof,

when they were getting ready

to publish the magazine,

and a final proofreader

found a spot that he felt like

needed a comma.

And he went to Maxwell,

Maxwell looked at it,

and he said,

"it looked like it needed

a comma to me."

They couldn't find Salinger,

so they went ahead

and put the comma in.

And when the story came out,

Maxwell said Salinger was

melancholy about that comma.

Salinger's idea

of perfection...

...is really perfection

and shouldn't be tampered with.

Samuel Goldwyn was one of

the original Hollywood moguls.

He was one of that group of

a half-dozen Jewish immigrants

who realised early on

that there was not only

a lot of money to be made

in the movie industry

but that there was

a budding art form there.

And he became famous

for being the most literary

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