Salinger

by David Shields

  I really don’t understand these exchanges between us, this kind of talking we do. I can tell you I’m not accustomed to any of it. . . . If it’s sometimes hard to write back and forth, maybe it could be because we are, or have the makings of, close friends, but on short acquaintance. Hurray for us for managing anyway!

  I haven’t shaved in a week. . . . I look like a black-hat type in a Monogram Western.

  Just in case of anything at all, my phone number here is 603-675-5244.

  Next Saturday . . . I’ll be driving down to Boston to collect Peggy and her stuff—end of term. I thought of asking you what you might think of [a] handshake between us, on the way, but I think while you have work going, work-about-to-be-finished, that’s probably not such a hot idea. Still it would be so very nice, from my point of view, to meet you before too very long.

  If you’d left four-foot margins in the last letter, I think I’d be replying, responding, to every word in it. . . . I want to answer or answer back to little tiny worries and things in your letter. . . . I think I tend to form lasting attachments to anything personal you say in my direction. Miss Maynard.

  You really have to let me defend myself against the accusation that I overestimate you. . . . You also said, in this last letter, that I make you feel much more special than you really are. . . . Something in or around it all, your writing, lets me have peace, satisfaction, arouses affection in me, makes me feel all right. . . . Your mind happens to put me in a nondescript state of armistice. Your words suit me. When you call yourself Good-sense-ish, the word calms me, works on me just right—I’m both happy and not surprised that you consciously or unconsciously discarded Sensible for this much better, righter word. . . . For me, you write and think the way you look.

  About the world being full of people with whom I’d feel equally close if they, not you, came to visit. . . . It’s utterly unlike me . . . to walk into a news store in Windsor on a Sunday morning with a Guest. . . . It seemed natural to appear there with you.

  I, too, have never had a friendship like this. At no time. It makes me cheerful, even outwardly, on the whole. For instance, I smile (I think) at your tendency to look ahead and worry that we’ll make each other miserable. It’s exactly the kind of grey reflection that usually goes through my head. . . . I don’t picture us making each other miserable, and what I don’t picture I don’t tend to believe. Do you picture us making each other miserable? (I said do you, not can you.)

  I can see that I might sometimes hover, watch you anxiously. Partly my age, partly not my age, at all—there is a yin, a pretty feminine side to my nature that crops out; I’m as maternal with kids, for instance, my own or not necessarily just my own, as I am paternal. . . . Medicines, food, hatha yoga, publishing—all a form of hovering, of unsolicited watchmanship. . . . On the other hand, I’m usually so self-centered or so self-absorbed, like any inveterate writer and narcissist, that I scarcely notice what people are doing or wearing or eating.

  Every time we publish something, produce something, air something, we’re about to be re-judged, weighed, tagged, squeezed, bagged all over again. I think we have it coming to us, for a lot of reasons. . . . But something else you said does make me sort of lean my mouth and chin into the palm of my hand pretty gravely, maybe too solemnly. The word “embarrassment” as you used it—underlined—embarrassment. I know that kind of embarrassment. . . . We don’t have to feel that kind of embarrassment, and I say we shouldn’t, that it’s bad for us, a little too damaging. . . . Please determine and succeed in being wise about this one little matter. Please try to see the readership, the publishing-time attention of close and dear relatives, friends, all really ardent well-wishers with as much pure detachment as you can. Maybe it’s sort of cruel to deliberately cast an occasional highly-detached eye—a cold eye, to spit it out—on the best and closest we’ve got, but it can be done pretty privately, with no pain for them, only a little guilt for us. . . .

  I don’t understand what I’m talking about, yet I go on talking.

  I’ve missed you all day.

  It makes me uneasy to realize that I may sooner or later be at least one kind of annoyance to you.

  So many thoughts of you.

  Shall we think about our plays and our sumptuous suite at the Waldorf or the Claridge? The answer to that could well be an emphatic yes rising out of me, but right now, today, at this pasty midnight hour, I don’t feel up to thinking about matters so concrete and explicit.

  I miss you pretty sorely.

  Never thought of it, but we should have had a go at reading “A. and Cleopatra” out loud, just for fun.

  A whole week we had, nearly. A great portion of fairness in my life. We didn’t do, so much; we were.

  I miss you very uncomfortably, and I can’t say that I have anything particularly contributive to add to your grave ruminations about common sense and your age (or mine) and moving in and (spear through the stomach) moving out. If Movings In inevitably lead to Movings Out, I emphatically tend to be in favor of separate quarters, be they ever so bleak or humble or dessicating. Maybe that’s going too far, but it’s very plain to me that I’m not responding to any of your goings, leavetakings, Standby Flights with anything that could pass for genuine Cool. . . . What the hell is Cool, anyway? Freedom from, or severance from, attachment. I’ve been examining the matter, off and on, for a lot of years, and I remain the same lightweight outsider-onlooker that I was at seventeen.

  Your beautiful letter. Oh, yes—beautiful.

  I was very conscious . . . of Peggy’s not knowing or understanding or loving anything about Jews and Jewishness—Torah Jews, shtetl Jews, displaced Jews—and probably the only ones she will ever know are a few private-school boys cut off from all that, and glad of it, in most cases. Beards without Jews. One of the Hasidic Rebbes casually, sadly, alluded to a man in his congregation who had fallen seriously from grace as “a beard without a Jew.”

  I miss you, love you, love your two letters, and I have no idea, by the way, how Holden got so much into one night. I could ask Joyce Brothers. Boy, is she smart.

  I feel your not-here-ness countless times a day, and I don’t know what’s wise to do about it, or even if there is anything wise to be done about it, and so, because I know nothing, I write and mail jaunty-sounding letters.

  I’ve been around jazz enthusiasts a lot of my life, having known a few jazz people, and certainly I’ve listened to quite a lot of it, and I don’t think I listen to it like an out-and-out dummy—at least, my foot keeps time and I may occasionally tap out the beat with my finger on my water glass. I like a lot of it, in short, and I know about the fun they have, the improvisers. Why shouldn’t they? They mostly do what they do in groups of two or more, and they feed each other pre-stylised musical patterns, musical idioms, almost always identifiably based on past sets, other sittings, performances, pieces. Even the jazz musician working alone, the soloist, rarely does anything distinctly new, anything never-done, anything mouth-shuttingly firsthand. Even when the jazz improviser is in top form, hottest, what he’s mostly doing is relying (with almost perfect confidence) on a composite or combination of . . . effects that are already developed within himself and that he knows will almost absolutely surely rearrange themselves in “new” kaleidoscopic (sp.?) patterns if he applies himself to his instrument assiduously, affectionately, in the mood with the others or just with the occasion, and provided he isn’t too drunk or stoned. I’ve seen it happen again and again, and it never fails to under-impress me, even when I’m listening with real pleasure.

  It just seems to me a perfect unwonder that writing’s almost never terrific fun. If it’s not the hardest of the arts—I think it is—it’s surely the most unnatural, and therefore the most wearying. So unreliable, so uncertain. Our instrument is a blank sheet of paper—no strings, no frets, no keys, no reed, mouthpiece, nothing to do with the body whatever—God, the unnaturalness of it. Always waiting for birth, every time we sit down to work.

  I love y
our life, and I love writing that’s real writing.

  When your days at the Times are over this week—Thursday? Friday?—do you think you might be able or willing to take a plane up here, stay here . . . till Sunday or Monday or Tuesday, and then fly or drive to New York with me? . . . Does that sound any good or possible?

  I have only movies, no Films, including, I’m afraid, “Lost Horizon.” I’m really a terrible lightweight.

  When you’re in New Haven next year, I thought I might rent a place in Westport or Stamford, kind of halfway between New Haven and New York. Does that seem to you a fairly thoughtful idea? I don’t think I could take stewing in my own juices up here all winter, almost totally out of sight of you. And though there’s no good reason why I couldn’t see you in New Haven, occasionally spend the night, say, on your chiffonier, it would be a bad idea, I think, if I were to move into New Haven on any more staying-on basis—you’d have no easy or “normal” campus life, college life, with me around, and I comport myself lousily around campuses anyway, but really lousily. . . . What I learned, if anything, while you were in Miami is that I am not able to be bleedingly alone and cut off while you’re away. I take to it badly, really badly. . . .

  My mind is complicated, and I have to take measures, always, to live as I’d advise myself to live if I were my own mentor.

  What a relief, pleasure it is to love your mind, really love it.

  The Prom piece is so good. Even when you’re busy just reporting, it always comes out real writing, and all your own. I think I would know your writing anywhere.

  You play the bugle well, as the man said, and I read you with an old and passionate love for writing that I seldom feel any more or, for that matter, miss. . . .

  When I pulled up at the Post Office yesterday afternoon, Peggy and Matthew pulled up behind me. A lot of grinning, happy looks exchanged in a flash. God, it’s good to love a few people in the world.

  I miss you and gave myself a rotten short haircut. On your head be it.

  I think very, and only, lovingly of you. I love lastingness, permanence, and I wish us nothing less. Permanence, not petrifaction. There must be a difference.

  About five hours later. Guests have come and gone. It was strenuous talking, question-and-answer talking, and one of the reasons why I moved up here in the first place. I’m full of my own wine and beer at this point. How I dislike drinking on social occasions—that is, pure social occasions, not connected with contentment or some sort of celebration. . . . I wish I felt closer to them all. They act as though they feel close to me, and that makes me feel guilty and irritated at once. It was pretty, up on the hill, though, and I really like them all; I just like smaller doses. . . . Even when I was being drawn, as though forcibly, into the worst and deadliest kind of literary talk, I recovered some balance simply by thinking of you and my love for you.

  I feel restive and very edgy. I always was a poor yogi. It sometimes seemed to me all my real yoga was in knowing that.

  Love,

  Jerry

  17

  DEAR MR. SALINGER

  CORNISH, NEW HAMPSHIRE; DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA, 1972–1973

  I spend a long time composing my response to J. D. Salinger’s letter on my yellow legal pad. When I’m done I type it carefully. Like my mother, I place a piece of carbon paper and second sheet underneath: “Dear Mister Salinger, I will remember your advice every day of my life. I read your letter over and over, and carried it in my pocket all day. I no longer need to read it. I know it by heart. Not just the words, but the sentiments expressed.

  Joyce Maynard

  JOYCE MAYNARD: My first experience of Holden Caulfield was not in The Catcher in the Rye. It was in the letters of J. D. Salinger. It was that voice; if the letter writer had been someone I’d never heard of, I would still have responded to that voice. It’s exactly the response that generations of readers of Catcher in the Rye have experienced—the sense, finally, that there was somebody who knew me, recognized me, and understood me as I felt nobody ever had. I fell in love with the voice in his letters.

  Within three days, there was a second letter and then a third and a fourth. I just told him about my life, told him college stories. It may have been part of his attraction to me because he was living a very isolated life, high on a hill in New Hampshire, cut off from many things. I brought news of the world from a young person out there in it. I told him about all the girls jumping on and off scales, weighing themselves; I was one myself. I told him that I liked to ride my bicycle into the countryside outside New Haven. I told him that I didn’t have many friends there, that I made dollhouse furniture, that I listened to music, that I drew. I told him about the three girls who were my roommates; I was the only one who didn’t have a boyfriend, so I left for a “psychological single.”

  Joyce Maynard.

  Letters Maynard received from Salinger.

  Both of my parents were brilliant, gifted artists. My father for thirty-some years was an assistant professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, never promoted. His true passion was art. He painted in total obscurity for almost all of his life. He never made any money. My mother had a Ph.D. from Harvard and couldn’t get a job at the University of New Hampshire because she was a woman married to a man who had one. I felt a huge obligation to deliver at my parents’ feet the success and acknowledgment that had eluded them.

  I would tell my father stories; I loved to entertain him, which had been my role in my family. He described Scheherazade to me, how she keeps on telling stories so she won’t be killed, and I always felt a little bit like Scheherazade, not because my life was in danger, but my place in the world was ensured by my storytelling. I didn’t know who I would be if I didn’t entertain and charm and delight.

  And now I was entertaining and charming and delighting Salinger. I knew that I had won the approval of this great man, and I knew that it would make my parents very happy. For my mother, it was as if J. D. Salinger had recognized her, since I was her product. My mother was a little unclear of boundaries—where she left off and I began.

  Fredelle Maynard, Joyce’s mother.

  Joyce’s father, Max Maynard, a painter, in his studio.

  A young Joyce Maynard with her parents.

  I was not a relaxed and comfortable college student. I was anxious and tormented in a lot of ways. If I were a person who was having a happy life at college, I probably would have responded very differently to this voice than I did, but I was living alone in a top-floor dormitory room, and I poured out my heart to him. More and more, the energies that other people might have been putting into friendships, classes, and Yale went into those letters.

  I sensed from the beginning he had an idealized vision of me. I was perfect. I didn’t want to do anything to disappoint him.

  One of the very early pieces that I published ran in Newsweek, in the “My Turn” column, and was called “Searching for Sages.” I was looking for a sage and the meaning to life. I found it with Salinger. I was raised in a family with huge respect for language and art. Some people could be seduced by a Jimi Hendrix guitar riff; I could by words. Words were the religion of my family, as were intelligence, excellence, and humor—all of which I found in Salinger’s voice. Before I could physically write, I gave dictation. My mother typed up my work. We would sit around the living room, reading our manuscripts. The moments of purest joy and perfection in that relationship with Jerry lay in the weeks before I ever met him when we communicated on the page, and on the page it was perfect.

  There’s only one other time in my life when I experienced the phenomenon of letters having an equivalent power of seduction, seduction by words. It was a man serving life in prison for double murder. He had only words to pull in a woman, and he did it very well. Salinger was a master at that. Getting a letter from J. D. Salinger was like getting a letter from Holden Caulfield, but written just to me—Holden Caulfield telling me how wonderful, perfect, lovable, and brilliant I was. It was a pretty strong drug.
It was the only drug I took in college.

  He had suggested that I call, collect.

  “Is this Jerry?” I began, when he picked up the phone that first night. “This is Joyce Maynard calling.”

  “What do you know? That’s terrific,” he said. He was a little out of breath. “I was just down at the garden, putting in the last of my tomato plants. Black flies are murder this year. What have I been telling you? Everybody’s after your blood.”

  Once we started exchanging letters, I always knew we would meet. There was never any question that we would meet. There was never any discussion; it was just understood. On the one hand, I couldn’t wait to meet him. On the other, I was afraid that I might disappoint him and that the meeting couldn’t live up to what the correspondence had been. Of course, it turned out I was right, although our first meeting, after I got the courage to go up there, was wonderful. School got out in early June and that’s when I went to meet Jerry. I had been raised to believe that I was going to do big, important things, and this was a sign that I was going to.

  My favorite English teacher from high school, from Phillips Exeter, was driving up to Hanover, so he drove me. He was an early encourager of my work, a real friend. Many people, I know, look back on it all now and wonder, “My God, what was going on there?”

  This part makes me sad—because I really loved my mother, and I know her to have been a wonderful woman, but she offered me up to Jerry Salinger in a way. She sewed me a dress for our meeting. The fabric was meant to be curtain fabric for a child’s room. It was the A-B-C’s. I was very skinny; it didn’t take a whole lot of fabric.

  Joyce Maynard’s mother, sewing.

  It was a basically an A-line dress, very short, with two very large buttons at the shoulder. You just unbuttoned them and the whole dress would fall off. There were two very large pockets onto which she had appliquéd letters: an A on one pocket, and a Z on the other. Very bright primary colors. A very short dress. It looked a lot like the dress I wore to first grade. And that’s the dress that I was wearing the day I met him.