Permit me to preface this essay with a quote from Ambrose Bearce's amusing The Devil's Dictionary:
DISTANCE, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs, and keep.
I did not initially write at Contratimes about J. D. Salinger's death because I did not think there really was all that much to say. Surely there were others with analysis to offer, and mine, should I offer any, would be aptly inferior. But I did draft a note right after Mr. Salinger's death, posting it on my Facebook page; perhaps those words are a fitting start for what follows:
Though I was not a big fan of The Catcher in the Rye, I remain an avid fan of Franny and Zooey. A legend has died; may J.D. Salinger finally be at peace.
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How can you grieve for a writer who has been, for all practical purposes, dead for half a century -- one defined by his refusal to publish or even to appear in public?
As the WSJ astutely suggests, if only by implication, there is really nothing to say about Mr. Salinger's work that has not already been said, precisely because the man stopped writing a long time ago. Salinger has given us nothing new; he has been utterly invisible for half a century. The WSJ continues:
Salinger, uniquely among major writers, seemed to go in the opposite direction, from public storytelling to private, until he reached the point where it was unnecessary to admit any readers into his fictional universe.
The purpose of "Franny and Zooey," with all its Zen exhortations, was partly to predict and justify this development. When Salinger declared that he was writing for himself, not for the world, he was echoing the words of the Bhagavad Gita that Seymour and Buddy Glass posted on their wall: "Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender." Yet this philosophy seems incompatible with the writing of fiction, which is nothing if not an engagement with the world and the self. It seems highly unlikely that the books Salinger wrote for his own pleasure—if they exist—could be as lovable as the books he wrote for the pleasure of his readers.
Really, what more can be said? Salinger's pen turned inward, too inward, apparently, for him to share with the world what it was in the literary life that he found so lovely, so wonderfully freeing and instructive.
When I first read The Catcher in the Rye my sophomore year in high school, my teacher told all of us in class that the easiest way to remember the essence of The Catcher in the Rye was simply to pronounce the narrator's first name -- "Hold In". Our teacher would note, "Just notice what Holden has had to 'hold in', and note what remains 'held in' even after he completes his plaintive confessional at the story's end." It was an easy hook, a helpful if incomplete mnemonic device, to share with listless and distracted sophomores, though perhaps too easy for purposes here. But it makes some sense, as does a college professor's observation that the family Salinger seemed most interested in writing about was the Glass family -- a fragile, lucent collection of souls (Seymour Glass = see more glass). Holden Caulfield was always holding something back, and it seems J. D. Salinger was, too.
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Permit me to talk a moment about envy. Envy is a very subtle, pernicious vice. It is hard to descry as it silently wends through the grasses, through the reeds, thistles and thorns. Envy is sly, and always well-camouflaged.
And let me like others observe that both J. D. Salinger and his Holden Caulfield came from privileged backgrounds. So, too, does Salinger's Glass family. And now that I've made an observation of the rank obvious, I will delve into some of envy's psychology.
Sometimes the privileged don't like to be envied. They see it in the eyes of those they pass; they see it in the doorman or cab driver, or the young children who live in the "mean houses" at the end of the estate's driveway. They hear it in voices -- "You live there?!" -- "You went to Exeter?!" -- "You work in that building?!" -- and what they hear often makes them feel ashamed. Also, sometimes they worry that if they are not charitable enough, or earthy enough, or "authentic" or "common", they risk losing their wealth, their privilege; that the gods or the masses will smite them for being selfish and rich.
Of course the rich and privileged are not exempt from envying each other; when I traveled around the Hamptons, perhaps America's only truly super-rich enclave, I could not help notice how massive and imposing were the hedges circling each estate. But these, or so I felt, were not merely to keep the riff-raff at a distance, they were designed to keep the Vanderbilts from noticing that the Dupont's house was a bit ostentatious, or too big, or impractically small. There is profound envy among the rich; let us not be fooled.
Salinger fell into this whole game, or so I believe. His Holden Caulfield was doing one thing, and one thing only: he was sabotaging the image of wealth and privilege because of envy. On the one hand, he envied all those who still had more -- whose Christmas recess was celebrated not at Stowe, but at St. Moritz. He envied all those who had not just second homes on a lake in New Hampshire, but third and fourth homes in exotic lands; and he damned them. On the other hand, in venting -- in letting out what he held in -- he was also sabotaging the riff-raff's perceptions: he was saying to all the riff-raff out there that "we, the privileged, are not to be envied. We're as phony and unhappy as..." (As whom, everybody else?)
But notice, too, what the benefit of an attack on the life of the privileged has on those who live such a life: it keeps it out of reach. Recall the Bearce quote above, that the wealthy like to give away distance -- liberally. Don't descriptions of the privileged life showing it to be as empty and meaningless and vain and phony as any other type of life protect the privileged life?
Let me put it this way: If you have a friend who recently bought a huge, imposing mansion, and you say, as you tour the estate, "It is so lovely here, it is so beautiful! What a blessing to live in such a place. I am so happy for you," will he not respond with something like this: "Why thank you, but I have to tell you, the taxes are murder"? Might he not say, "We're happy, but boy, the upkeep is absurd"? Yes, he will say something like that, and his intent is this: "Please, don't envy me." And he responds this way because he fears that if he says merely "Thank you," the gods and the mobs will strike him with cancer or take away his wealth, or that he will be judged "greedy" or "avaricious" or "careless"; or that outsiders will declare, "He thinks he's better than everyone else."
My sense is that Salinger's work was partly this sort of thing: Don't envy me. And yet, as a member of the privileged class in which much was expected of him, perhaps too much, he wrote what he did in part to set for himself what he perceived life's all-consuming goal: an enviable life.
For some people, when faced with the competition inherent in living, they rise to the occasion and they compete. Others, fearful, perhaps, of failure, runaway altogether. Envy is at work even in competition; it could be said that all competition is fueled by envy. But envy's most devastating act is this: feeling that it can't compete, that it can't live the most enviable life of the family or win father's love, envy rejects the idols of the family. So, James' older brother went to Harvard, and James, fueled by envy, rejects his own acceptance to Harvard and thus declares his brother's success as being beneath him; James chooses something more authentic, or earthbound, or domestic; he becomes a writer. But this is not James acting nobly but ignobly: his envy metes out justice on his family by rejecting the family's expectations. And yet, even in so doing, James finds success in that very act; he flees the good life and chooses a life of hidden letters in the remoteness of some wilderness. There he thinks, finally, he has created one of life's most enviable lives: A man from wealth and fame, who rejects it all for a life in the hills, alone, sickened by the phonies who want his attention.
And what does he really get? He lives a life of privilege, in the hills, with the riff-raff and even the muckety-mucks kept at a suitable distance, leaving his family and their privileged neighbors,"talking."
In other words, J. D. Salinger appears to this writer to have written a life with envy's pen solely to carve out a niche in the world of privilege that stands out from the phonies who live in the Hamptons or the Upper West Side. When I hear Holden Caulfield speak, I hear envy's whine, and little else.
It seems to me Salinger created Holden Caulfield merely to be the vicar of envy's ugliest machinations.
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Granted, Salinger may have left us two lifetimes' worth of work in his Cornish, NH home. Perhaps he will explain everything, showing that envy had no hand in his work, his eccentric silence. Perhaps. But there is no doubt he seemed a man who had little peace. May he finally find the peace he was looking for.
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Lastly, I must blame this essay on the very engaging essays of Contratimes reader, Randall Sherman, who wrote two interesting pieces on Salinger, which you can read
here and
here.
Also, if you want to read a short story that I think exactly captures the struggle the wealthy have with envy, please read "
The Garden Party," by Katherine Mansfield. She ably describes the anxiety the wealthy feel not only about their wealth, but about the gaze that comes from the "mean houses" (I borrowed this as shown above). And just note the irony in this line of hers when you read it in context: "Don't be so extravagant."
Blessings, from my little house in New Hampshire.
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