The death of J.D. Salinger yesterday has had reverberations across the landscape of modern American literature. Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City and Story of My Life, gives EW his take on the author’s legacy.
“When I heard about Salinger’s death yesterday I realized I hadn’t thought about him in quite a while. He left the stage a long time ago and his influence is so pervasive that it’s easy to forget how different the cultural landscape would probably be if he’d never come along. Like Mark Twain, whom he mimicked in the opening line of Catcher in the Rye, he injected a new slangy colloquial tone into our literature. It’s impossible to imagine the work of Philip Roth or John Updike without his influence. Several generations later, writers like David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers still seemed to be channeling Holden.
“Twenty-six years ago, when I published my first novel, more than a few reviewers remarked on my indebtedness to Salinger. Some commentators went so far as to suggest that my publisher had deliberately mimicked the cover art of the paperback edition of Catcher. I wasn’t necessarily displeased but I was baffled; back in 1984, it had been years since I’d read Salinger or really thought about him. In graduate school, we weren’t reading or discussing Franny and Zooey and I wasn’t remotely conscious of any influence when I was writing Bright Lights, Big City. I’d read Salinger in high school. I said as much in interviews. I’d point to what I thought of as more obvious influences like Hunter S. Thompson and Raymond Carver without stopping to consider the extent to which they were influenced by Salinger. I guess I was writing under the influence of Salinger, whether or not I was conscious of it. He’s the most influential American writer since Hemingway.
“As for the purported trove of fiction, I’m skeptical. Not of its existence, but of its quality. Anyone who’s read “Seymour: An Introduction” or most especially his last published work, “Hapworth 16, 1924” will wonder just how readable his later fiction is. “Hapworth” is a rambling, self referential, improbable letter home written by an alleged seven year old at camp. By the time he wrote it, Salinger seems to have decided to dispense with most of the niceties of storytelling, and to be talking to himself more rather than to the readers of Catcher in the Rye. I suspect we are going to be disappointed, but I would love to be proven wrong.”
J.D. Salinger had written somewhere that he considered F. Scott Fitzgerald the best American writer of his time. And though Salinger also confided that he considered himself the literary heir to F. Scott Fitzgerald, he aspired greater and aimed to lofty heights achieved by those he considered first-rate American writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville.
Those of us who had read all of Salinger’s works I am sure were quite boggled at his last work, Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. It was different than The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, and Franny and Zooey. Somewhere between the story of Li Po and Seymour, his prose had taken a turn. And though no one has yet to say it, his prose had taken a turn for the classical.
Those of us who had read Hawthorne recognize Hawthorne’s unmistakable style–chaste, moral, sonorous. In short, his’ was a style poetical. Though a novelist, Longfellow nudged Hawthorne into the poet’s camp, praising the “exceeding beauty of his style.” Herman Melville considered Hawthorne the finest American writer of his generation. “As deep as Dante,” he said of his close friend.
Salinger, like Henry James, Ayn Rand, and E. L. Doctorow (who have acknowledged Hawthorne’s influence on their own works), I think adopted the classical style for his last published novel as well.
But for those of us who halted upon mid-reading of the novel, something felt amiss. Salinger’s early novels and short stories are marked by its vermissilitude–his dialog for instance–that is a characteristic of the modern novel.
Yet this same requirement for the vermissilitude does not suite well the “chaste diction” characteristic of the classical form.
If all of this sounds abstract, consider this random quote from The House of Seven Gables by Hawthorne:
“Her tone, as she uttered this exclamation, had a plaintive and really exquisite melody thrilling through it, yet without subduing a certain something which an obtuse auditor might still have mistaken for asperity. It was as if some transcendent cracked instrument, which makes its physical imperfection heard in the midst of ethereal harmony.”
This rotundical “high-style” is the hallmark of the orotund classical style–whether they are by Attic, Augustan, or Georgian labels.
But it was unsuited to Salinger, who mingles this effort for the high-falutin with his gifts for the vermissilitude in Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters:
“I haven’t a very clear idea of how the next hour and a quarter passed, aside from the cardinal fact that there was no plunging into ‘Lohengrin,’ I remember a little dispersed band of unfamiliar faces that surreptitiously turned around, now and then, to see who was coughing. And I remember that the woman at my right addressed me once again, in the same rather festive whisper. “There must be some delay,” she said, “Have you ever seen Judge Ranker? He has the face of a saint.” And I remember the organ music veering peculiarly, almost desperately, at one point, from Bach to early Rodgers and Hart. On the whole, though, I’m afraid, I passed the time paying little sympathetic hospital calls on myself for being obliged to suppress my coughing spells.”
Attempts at classic diction of this sort does not suite well the modern tale, one because the narrator comes off as a prig, as if Jane Austen was suddenly narrating the goings-on of a navy barrick; and second, if the author lacks the temperment of the poet, he will come off, as T.S. Eliot said, “sounding like a fool.” Thirdly, the subject has to suite the style: describing a racuous cough in classical form as Salinger does in his last novel, rings rather miffy.
Salinger always exhibited conservatism in his style, as in this sentence from Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut:
“Twenty minutes later, they were finishing their first highball in the living room and were talking in the manner peculiar, probably limited, to former college roommates.”
To which the style of Raise the Roofbeam Carpenters would be but a natural progression. I for one believe that should we see more of his post-self-sequestered works, I am convinced we would be treated to the same experiment in lofty style that his last work had exhibited.
Did he succeed in achieving this venerable style by his own admittance? Since nearly all of his private, unpublished works had perished in a domestic fire, perhaps we will never know. But I sure would like to think so.
If Jay McInerney rues that “Salinger seems to have decided to dispense with most of the niceties of storytelling, and to be talking to himself more rather than to the readers of Catcher in the Rye. I suspect we are going to be disappointed, but I would love to be proven wrong.”
If McInerny qualifies Salinger’s prose as “insanne, epistolary monologues” than he must also qualify Virginai Woolf’s, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Joyce, Herman Melville as “insane…monologues” as Salinger’s latter works were written in “that vein.”
For a writer whose education begins with Rock and Roll and ends with the Simpsons, the least he can do is prolifergate his limited “culture.”
J.D. Salinger had written somewhere that he considered F. Scott Fitzgerald the best American writer of his time. And though Salinger also confided that he considered himself the literary heir to F. Scott Fitzgerald, he aspired greater and aimed to lofty heights achieved by those he considered first-rate American writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville.
Those of us who had read all of Salinger’s works I am sure were quite boggled at his last work, Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. It was different than The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, and Franny and Zooey. Somewhere between the story of Li Po and Seymour, his prose had taken a turn. And though no one has yet to say it, his prose had taken a turn for the classical.
Those of us who had read Hawthorne recognize Hawthorne’s unmistakable style–chaste, moral, sonorous. In short, his’ was a style poetical. Though a novelist, Longfellow nudged Hawthorne into the poet’s camp, praising the “exceeding beauty of his style.” Herman Melville considered Hawthorne the finest American writer of his generation. “As deep as Dante,” he said of his close friend.
Salinger, like Henry James, Ayn Rand, and E. L. Doctorow (who have acknowledged Hawthorne’s influence on their own works), I think adopted the classical style for his last published novel as well.
But for those of us who halted upon mid-reading of the novel, something felt amiss. Salinger’s early novels and short stories are marked by its vermissilitude–his dialog for instance–that is a characteristic of the modern novel.
Yet this same requirement for the vermissilitude does not suite well the “chaste diction” characteristic of the classical form.
If all of this sounds abstract, consider this random quote from The House of Seven Gables by Hawthorne:
“Her tone, as she uttered this exclamation, had a plaintive and really exquisite melody thrilling through it, yet without subduing a certain something which an obtuse auditor might still have mistaken for asperity. It was as if some transcendent cracked instrument, which makes its physical imperfection heard in the midst of ethereal harmony.”
This rotundical “high-style” is the hallmark of the orotund classical style–whether they are by Attic, Augustan, or Georgian labels.
But it was unsuited to Salinger, who mingles this effort for the high-falutin with his gifts for the vermissilitude in Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters:
“I haven’t a very clear idea of how the next hour and a quarter passed, aside from the cardinal fact that there was no plunging into ‘Lohengrin,’ I remember a little dispersed band of unfamiliar faces that surreptitiously turned around, now and then, to see who was coughing. And I remember that the woman at my right addressed me once again, in the same rather festive whisper. “There must be some delay,” she said, “Have you ever seen Judge Ranker? He has the face of a saint.” And I remember the organ music veering peculiarly, almost desperately, at one point, from Bach to early Rodgers and Hart. On the whole, though, I’m afraid, I passed the time paying little sympathetic hospital calls on myself for being obliged to suppress my coughing spells.”
Attempts at classic diction of this sort does not suite well the modern tale, one because the narrator comes off as a prig, as if Jane Austen was suddenly narrating the goings-on of a navy barrick; and second, if the author lacks the temperment of the poet, he will come off, as T.S. Eliot said, “sounding like a fool.” Thirdly, the subject has to suite the style: describing a racuous cough in classical form as Salinger does in his last novel, rings rather miffy.
Salinger always exhibited conservatism in his style, as in this sentence from Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut:
“Twenty minutes later, they were finishing their first highball in the living room and were talking in the manner peculiar, probably limited, to former college roommates.”
To which the style of Raise the Roofbeam Carpenters would be but a natural progression. I for one believe that should we see more of his post-self-sequestered works, I am convinced we would be treated to the same experiment in lofty style that his last work had exhibited.
Did he succeed in achieving this venerable style by his own admittance? Since nearly all of his private, unpublished works had perished in a domestic fire, perhaps we will never know. But I sure would like to think so.
If Jay McInerney rues that “Salinger seems to have decided to dispense with most of the niceties of storytelling, and to be talking to himself more rather than to the readers of Catcher in the Rye. I suspect we are going to be disappointed, but I would love to be proven wrong.”
If McInerny qualifies Salinger’s prose as “insane, epistolary monologues” than he must also qualify Virginai Woolf’s, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Joyce, Herman Melville as “insane…monologues” as Salinger’s latter works were written in “that vein.”
For a writer whose education begins with Rock and Roll and ends with the Simpsons, the least he can do is prolifergate his brand of “culture.”
I’m inclined to agree with McInerney that as a reader, I may be disappointed with his unpublished work in light of last published works.
Jay, well done, a spot-on first take of Salinger’s impact on American literature. Although I wonder whether his influence is overbought. “Catcher in the Rye” is magnificent, the “Franny and Zooey” collection sublime. But then Salinger was derelict of his duty as a major force in American letters and simply became a reclusive hermit. You liken him to Hemingway — though Papa was prolific and published a dozen classics. Isn’t Salinger more a one-hit wonder? “Lord of the Flies,” “Catch-22,” “The Red badge of Courage” — all remarkable, singular literary achievements. Imagine if the Beatles went into seclusion after creating their first studio album and just issued a few singles thereafter. Now you realize the squandered potential of Salinger, who spent most of his life pushing the world away, rather than pushing out enduring classics worthy of his underutilized talents.
Squandered potential? Derelict of Duty? What duty? As if he should have spent his life pushing out enduring classics rather than living as he saw fit.
It was his life, and his alone. Success in one field does not give the moronic public any legitimate expectation that they can call upon an individual to account to them for how they choose to spend their life. Leave that work for God and to all else, piss off.
That you and your ilk offended him to the point of wanting nothing more than to put wall after wall between you and he was his business and his alone. Did you miss the essence of The Catcher in the Rye, Keith?
Derelict of duty, indeed.
Keith is correct in that he wrote, “squandered potential.” While Jerome David had a right to be a hermit, we have a right to state what a miserable person he turned out to be. Misanthropic much, Gomez?
Wait a minute…. please don’t lump William Golding in with your list of “one-hit wonders.” For me, his “Pincher Martin” was a much more wondrous book than “Lord of the Flies.”
I liked one book by Jay McInerney, and that was “Bright Lights, Big City.” And that was it. Of course, at the time, I was young and an idiot. Now, after reading his condescending opinions of J.D. Salinger, after his death, I wonder.
Salinger had no duty to keep “pushing out enduring classics”. If he said what he wanted to say in one spectacular work, so be it.
So his last two published works are indicative of everything that he’s been writing for the past 50 years? And that’s why you have low expectations? Fair enough.
I think writers evolve and change more than that. I’m not worried about the quality of what Salinger has been writing, but I am concerned whether we’ll get to see it or not.
For the record, I like Salinger’s later works just as much as his earlier stuff, maybe even more so.
I thought the opening of Catcher in the Rye was a reference to Dickens, not Twain (“…all that David Copperfield crap”)
Salinger’s four books were very important to me in my high school and college years, though they were never assigned reading. But I can’t say I’m at all interested in seeing his unpublished works published. I’m wary of books, albums, etc. released posthumously. It’s not like he dropped dead waiting around for a publisher. He was intensely protective of his own work for decades, and if he doesn’t want those manuscripts to be judged as part of his legacy, fine. As fans, we are not owed anything.
“Catcher” is an incredible masterpiece. It’s lightning in a bottle. It was the first book to touch my heart.
“I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography…I’ll just tell you about this crazy stuff that hapenned to me…” Read: “I’m not going to share with you my writings, just this one piece that shows a bit of my madness.” Yes, Jerome David shared with us his genius but only as much as he chose to. Let the man rest in peace. Appreciate what he shared and realize that in the first four sentences of the book he was talking about his mind and about how he interpreted his life.
I’ve never read any background on what Salinger’s life was like just prior to the publication of C.I.T.R., or what his own expectations for the novel were at the time; there may not be any pertinent information extant. The book must have been, for Salinger, a very bittersweet and intensely personal summation of that point in his life when he felt most alive, in spite of the angst and confusion. Perhaps he didn’t care at all about how well it sold. I like to believe that, if Holden Caulfield was truly a self-portrait of J.D. Salinger, then Holden/J.D. succeeded in his ambition; the novel itself has probably kept a lot of young people from going over the edge.
Jay McInerney? As Truman used to say, ‘That ain’t writing, that’s typing’. The shallow social mountaineer? Always quick to grandstand and promote himself, the pushy one is cringe-makingly unfit to pronounce on one as profound and virtuosic as J.D. Salinger. Yet here he is again, barging in. Hasn’t he got a fashion opening to go to? CAn’t he learn from Salinger and just shut up? It’s phonies like McInerney that kept the Buddhist Salinger far, far away from the bright lights and the big city. Pity that real writers, high-calibre, kinder, of equal depth, sensitivity and integrity – Updike and Vonnegut come to mind – are not here to pay tribute to the virtuoso that was J.D. Salinger. Travel well, noble voyager – no one can touch you, not then, not now. You were the illuminator of millions. Thank you.
Thank you, Gelhorn Girl. You captured my sentiments exactly! Typing indeed.
Well put, but I think I read somewhere that Updike disapproved of Salinger. Screw that anyway, I’d take Salinger’s most mediocre work over most writers any time of day.
McInerney on Salinger? Please! I’d love to see McInerney’s view of Kafka’s posthumously published work.
Listen, the Salinger lovers and I want you to know we have all been waiting for years to see what he has been writing for the past eternity or so in his kooky, yet charming, ascetic seclusion. Oh yeah and, Seymour is off the charts awesome… an inspired good bit of words. Your claims say more about you than who you are writing about. Let’s give the family some time to grieve and send in some damn manuscripts asap before we start getting way ahead of ourselves.