Salinger

by David Shields

  DAVID SHIELDS: In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden says, “You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any.” By the end of 1953, Salinger had come to the same conclusion. Self-contempt was becoming world-contempt.

  LAWRENCE GROBEL: Salinger ended up building a wall. Literally, he built this wall around his house and just shut the kids out. He never saw them again. The wall never came down.

  Conversation with Salinger #5

  Betty Eppes, 1980.

  GEORGE PLIMPTON: Betty Eppes is a reporter from the Baton Rouge Advocate. In the spring of 1980 she was a Special Assignments Writer for the “Fun” section which appears in both the Advocate and the State Times, the morning and afternoon papers respectively. That spring she decided to spend her summer vacation trying to interview J. D. Salinger, the author famous for his reclusive behavior.

  SHANE SALERNO: Betty Eppes was maligned by certain members of the press after her 1980 interview with Salinger, and George Plimpton distorted some of her story when he reedited and republished it in the Paris Review in 1981. Since then she has made no comments about the interview, but I tracked her down in Costa Rica, and after a number of conversations she finally agreed to an interview. She retraced her steps in Cornish, then traveled to New York for a formal interview, where she told the full story.

  BETTY EPPES: When I went to do the Salinger story, it followed a period that was very difficult for me. I had hit forty, which no woman wants to do. I had a very serious health issue that I dealt with, not elegantly or with grace, but I dealt with it. I was bored with the newspaper I worked at. I had taken time off and come back. I thought, “Why am I still at this newspaper?” I decided if I could do something significant I could continue. I was talking to a friend who owned a bookstore. I said, “I’m really thinking I’ll just go up to New Hampshire and find J. D. Salinger,” and he said, “Well, you know, I think you ought to call up NASA and bum a ride on the next space shuttle, too.” I wanted to do it on my own. I didn’t want to talk to an editor, who would have said no. I thought, I’ll have to finance this on my own, so on the trip I’m going to do a series of stories I can sell, regardless of whether I can get to Salinger, because I didn’t expect to succeed with him, really.

  When I went to rent a car, I said, not thinking, “I don’t want to spend a lot of money. I want the cheapest one.” So there I was in New Hampshire, driving a sky-blue Pinto that would barely move on those mountains; sometimes I thought it was going to roll back. On the way, I thought I’d find the story that that high school girl had done with Salinger, so I went to the newspaper that had published it. An old wooden building. Down in the basement, the morgue of the newspaper was incredible. Newspapers were just thrown in there, but we actually went back and found that article. And I had looked up what else I could find about Salinger. There was not a great deal of material, but I found what I could.

  The minute you go into town and say “J. D. Salinger,” everybody becomes your enemy. One lady would not sell me an ice-cream cone after I mentioned his name. I thought, “Whew, not the friendliest place.”

  I walked into the butcher shop, asked the owner if Salinger was a customer, and he said, “Oh, no. If J. D. Salinger were my customer, I would know that.” I described what I thought Salinger might look like. The guy said, “Well, I do make deliveries to someone like that.” I said, “Would you call the person’s house for me and allow me to speak? I won’t ask you for the number.” He said, “I always speak to the housekeeper.” I said that would be great. He got her on the telephone. Immediately she wanted to know how I knew Salinger shopped at that butcher shop. The shop owner didn’t realize it was Salinger because Salinger used an alias.

  The housekeeper was very nervous because she was afraid she’d be fired. She said I absolutely could not come to Cornish. I said, “No, I want to leave a message.” I asked if there was an answering machine and she said no. She asked if I was going to try to come to Salinger’s house and I told her I was not. She calmed down and told me to write a note, put his name on the envelope—I didn’t need a mailing address—and leave it at the post office in Windsor, where he went three to five times a week. I bought a notebook, went outside, sat on a curb, wrote a note, bought an envelope. I went to the post office and bought a stamp and left it there at about four in the afternoon.

  EDWIN McDOWELL: In her letter to Mr. Salinger, Miss Eppes, who arranged her vacation so that she could search for him, said she was a woman who supported herself as a writer. She explained that since she was staying at a motel with no telephones in the rooms, she would wait for him at a designated location in Windsor for 30 minutes beginning at 9:30 the next morning, and that if he did not show up she would wait there again the following morning before returning to Baton Rouge.

  BETTY EPPES: What did I write in the note? Well, first of all, it was rather intimidating. I thought, What can I write to this man that might inspire him to respond? I opened the letter, as my grandmother would say, in a mannerly way. I commented on the beauty of the area. It really is remarkably beautiful. I could understand why he would choose to live in such a beautiful place.

  PAUL ALEXANDER: Betty Eppes was a character unto herself. Emerald green eyes, a shock of red hair—a knockout. In her soul, she was pure Cajun Creole, all hot-blooded and fiery. But she was also smart and cagey and ambitious.

  CATHERINE CRAWFORD: Betty Eppes had been a model and a tennis champion, and now she was a reporter, and she jumped right into it. She decided this was a fascinating story and just went for it.

  BETTY EPPES: I told him that I would be sitting in a sky-blue Pinto right by the corner and just up the road from the covered bridge and that I was tall with green eyes and red-gold hair. I said, I will make no further effort to seek you out, not because of guard dogs or fences, but because I do not want to anger you or cause you grief.

  Betty Eppes’s press pass.

  I was determined not to go to his property. I was determined not to cross that river. I thought if he came in voluntarily to where I was, that no one could ever say with any truth that I had waylaid him or any of those things.

  I knew before I went there he was very interested in women. We all knew that, right? I did think I had a better shot because I was a woman; that gave me an edge. He was always very kind to all his female characters. The night before, I was a wreck. I second-guessed myself all the time. I thought about all the questions you can’t answer: What on earth am I doing here? Am I insane? Of course, the answers were “I don’t know” and “You’re insane.” It sounds a little bizarre, a little sixth sense, call it what you will, but I knew he was coming to meet me. I really did.

  The next day I was sitting on the Windsor side of the Connecticut River covered bridge, on a very public corner, because I was determined no one could ever say I had sabotaged the man. I was perfectly calm. I didn’t doubt he was coming; I knew he was coming.

  Salinger walked across the bridge, stepped out of the shadows and into the sunlight, and there he was. And I was ready to put my fist in the air and do the “yes” dance and all that stuff. As he started walking toward me, I got out—with my notebook and pencil in hand, of course—stood beside the car, and waited. He was carrying an attaché case. Once he appeared, I was shocked: he was as tall as I thought he would be, but he had snow-white hair. We’ve all seen that photograph on the back of the book. You expect people to age, but somehow it’s not the same as seeing it.

  He walked up. “Betty Eppes?”

  We shook hands, and I began to try to talk to the man.

  He said, “If you’re a writer, you need to quit that newspaper.” That was the first thing he said.

  I said, “Okay. We can talk about that.”

  He thought newspapers served no purpose, and he thought publishing was the worst thing a person could do. One of the things he talked about was politicians. He said the problem he had with politicians was that they tried to limit our horizons and he tried to expand them. I pushed
a few buttons and a few other things—asked for his autograph just to see what would happen. Well, whew, that got a response. I got another lecture. He came to lecture. It made you wonder whether he wasn’t a retired professor. The man really wanted to climb on his soapbox.

  I continued on, using the notes I had made from the Shirlie Blaney interview. “You told Miss Blaney you were going to London to make a movie. Did you?”

  Instead of answering the question, he said, “Where’d you get all this old stuff?” If I mentioned any of the things from Miss Blaney’s interview, he’d come back with “old stuff.” It was getting very frustrating.

  “Did you make or work on a movie?” I said. “Will you in the future?”

  “Can we go on to something else?”

  “Of course, but just for fun, do you remember the name of the ship you worked on as an entertainer?”

  He became furious. I was beginning to realize I was accomplishing nothing, but he did remember the name of the ship. “I do, yes,” he said. “The Kungsholm.” He wouldn’t talk about what kind of entertainment he did on board.

  “You were in the counterintelligence corps,” I said. “How many languages do, or did, you speak?”

  “French and German, but not very well. And a few phrases of Polish.”

  “Given your family background, why writing?”

  “I can’t say exactly. I don’t know if any writer can. It’s different for each person. Writing is a highly personal act. It’s different for each writer.”

  “Did you consciously opt for writing as a career or did you just drift into it?”

  “I don’t know.” There was a long pause. “I truly don’t. I just don’t know.”

  J. D. SALINGER (contributor’s note for “Down at the Dinghy,” Harper’s, April 1949):

  I’ve been writing seriously for over ten years. Being modest almost to a fault, I won’t say I’m a born writer, but I’m certainly a born professional. I don’t think I ever selected writing as a career. I just started to write when I was eighteen or so and never stopped. (Maybe that isn’t quite true. Maybe I did select writing as a profession. I don’t really remember—I got into it so quickly—and finally.)

  BETTY EPPES: I asked him several times whether he was writing. He insisted each time he was. But he would not comment at all about he nature of the projects, whether they were short stories, books, screenplays, movies. He just wouldn’t.

  I asked questions, and he would always come back with, “Where did you find all of this? Why are you asking me this? Let’s talk about writing.” He always wanted to talk about writing.

  Salinger wouldn’t discuss whether he had written more about the Glass family. He insisted he had more important issues to address with his writing. He wouldn’t expand on what they were.

  J. D. SALINGER: I will state this: it is of far more significance than anything I ever wrote about Holden. I have really serious issues I am trying to tackle with these new writing projects.

  BETTY EPPES: I wanted to know what they were. I got zip.

  J. D. SALINGER: I’m tired of being collared in elevators, stopped on the street, and of interlopers on my private property. I’ve made my position clear for 30 years. . . . I want to be left alone, absolutely. Why can’t my life be my own?

  BETTY EPPES: I asked him whether there would there be a sequel to Catcher in the Rye. He was vehement: “No!” He became rather annoyed, agitated. He said creating Holden was a mistake, and if there was anything else I wanted to know about Holden, I should reread Catcher. He was adamant that there would be no more Holden.

  When we did talk about writing, he became more of a person; he didn’t seem defensive. He clearly thought about the value of writing, but he was always guarding the gate of privacy as the domain of the writer. He said he wished he had never published Catcher in the Rye. It had had such a terrible impact on his life he wished he had never done it. At those moments, you felt like you were talking to a person. The other moments, no, but those moments you thought you were talking to a person and he was probably answering honestly—telling you what he felt and what he thought. He lost some of his intensity. A couple of times he even uncrossed his arms, but he never lapsed into conversation, never. I’d never encountered such intensity in a person, the way he stared. It was unnerving. He didn’t blink as much as I thought he should’ve. He didn’t blink at all. I was very uncomfortable with that.

  He insisted that he was working. He said that he was working for himself, and that’s what writing should be. Writers write for their own reasons, but it should be for themselves alone, and the only important thing was the writing, according to J. D. Salinger.

  Salinger seemed a very argumentative, angry person. I was surprised. I thought I was going to find a grown-up Holden. I thought there would be this pleasant guy; maybe we’d even laugh once or twice. Forget it. You don’t laugh in his presence. The guy is so intense. It made you want to take a step back, maybe two. He’s one of those people who get in your face because he wants to make his point. He’s very tall, and so he looked down deliberately and with great intensity.

  When I began, I was stupidly enthusiastic because I thought Salinger was going to talk to me, and we were going to have a conversation. Instead he delivered these little minilectures. I had hoped I would come away with a scoop of some kind, that he would tell me what he was doing, something specific, no general mumbo jumbo. I was very persistent. If he was writing, then tell me about it. If it wasn’t about Holden, what was it about? If it was not a sequel to Catcher in the Rye, was it a continuation of the Glass family? Every time: “No, no, no.”

  So I finally put the notebook down, put my pen down, looked up at him, and said, “Why did you bother to come here to see me? Why didn’t you stay up on your mountain? Why didn’t you just ignore my letter?”

  “I write, you write,” he said. “I came here one writer to another.” He wanted to know whether I had written a novel. Goodness me, J. D. Salinger asking Betty Eppes about her work. I told him I had, and he asked me if I intended to publish it. I told him I had a contract and the publisher and I had disagreed, and I, being stubborn as a mule, withdrew the manuscript. He thought that was perfect. If I wanted to write, I should write it all, put it in a drawer, and save it. The only important thing was the writing, according to him.

  Salinger walking away from the interview with Betty Eppes, June 13, 1980.

  —

  PHOEBE HOBAN: Salinger apparently told Betty Eppes, “I’m tired of people asking me about Holden. It’s over. Holden’s a moment frozen in time.” Perhaps Salinger himself is frozen in time.

  PAUL ALEXANDER: He didn’t have to go down and meet Eppes at her Pinto. If he really wanted to protect his seclusion, he wouldn’t have gone. Obviously he had planned this out in advance. He did it with the introduction both to Franny and Zooey and to the last book as well, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. In both instances, those little introductions, those tidbits, were clearly calculated to get attention from the public. Here’s the bottom line: if he hadn’t wanted to talk to Betty Eppes, if he hadn’t wanted to talk to Michael Clarkson, or to the other journalist-fans who have wandered up there through the years, he wouldn’t have talked to them.

  BETTY EPPES: After the interview, I went to Boston, where I had a flight to Baton Rouge. I called my newspaper from Boston, asked for my editor, and got immediately patched through, which was highly unusual. He came on the line and said, “Where the hell are you?” I said, “Well, at this moment, I’m in Boston.” He said, “You know, I’ve already had two phone calls. I know where you’ve been. Can we talk about this now?” I said, “Well, actually, I have to get going.” So he told me that as soon as I got back into Baton Rouge I should call him and come in to the office. He said he would find out the time of my plane and meet me at the paper. And he did.

  He kept pressuring me for the story, but I wasn’t ready to write it. Finally, I did write it. It caused an incredible c
ommotion. First of all, the newspaper did all kinds of promotions for it. There were interviews with TV stations and radio stations ad infinitum, and it was really rather bizarre. We had the story in our paper first. The Boston Globe reprinted it, and then the story went international.

  There were a lot of calls, a lot of job offers from newspapers and TV stations. I wasn’t interested, not in the least. I just wanted the furor to die down. I really hadn’t anticipated the commotion that would be caused by the story and the interview. And I wasn’t interested in moving to a different part of the country. I was okay in Baton Rouge, so I stayed.

  I had told Mr. Salinger that I would send him a copy of the story. And I did. After I’d finished it, I sent it, and a week or ten days later, I received something from Windsor, Vermont. It didn’t have his return address on it or anything, but it was some photocopies of orders he had placed. And then, after that, there were, I think, three packages from Windsor that came altogether. In one there was a photostat of part of The Catcher in the Rye. It was just a photostat. In another one, there were about four letters that he had written to different firms in New York. Always photostats, never a word, nothing, but always with the postmark of Windsor, Vermont, which was peculiar, to say the least.

  12

  FOLLOW THE BULLET: NINE STORIES

  CORNISH, NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1953

  So far the novels of this war have had too much of the strength, maturity and craftsmanship critics are looking for, and too little of the glorious imperfections which teeter and fall off the best minds. The men who have been in this war deserve some sort of trembling melody rendered without embarrassment or regret. I’ll watch for that book.