From "The Editor Who Edited Salinger/The personal archive of Gus Lobrano, a longtime editor at The New Yorker, provides a glimpse of a vanished literary past" by Mary Norris (The New Yorker).
Around the time of the aforementioned marriage, Salinger was working on what he called “the wedding story,” titled “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.” “It’s of novelette length, and the theme and form are terribly elaborate not to say flamboyant,” he writes. He goes to great lengths to finish a difficult passage: “I shaved my head about six weeks ago, the better to see this one Saturday sequence through to the finish, knowing I’d be too vain to go into town when I was stuck on a page or a paragraph.” Despair brought him to a peculiar pass: “I nearly bought a beautiful, marked-down Morgan horse a few weeks ago, thinking it would keep me happy till the book got done, but in the end, I let it go. I like to ride, but I like a horse to disappear when I’m through riding it, not just stand around somewhere.”
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"Raise" may be the least compelling thing he ever wrote.
This does, however, make me want to revisit, for probably the 50th time, Esmé.
Conspiracy Theory (1997) the Feds drugged Mel Gibson to obsessively buy Catcher in the Rye so that they could always locate him by looking at bookstore receipts. The amusing implication is that nobody else buys it beyond a small but tolerable error rate, in spite of its presence in required high school English classes.
is this "[J.S.] Salinger" related to JD Salinger who wrote the rye book? And married Claire Douglas?
, in spite of its presence in required high school English classes.
Seriously, when WAS the last time some (teen?) person bought the rye book willing, and through free choice?
S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, is Full of Horses*... Horses that stay around after you ride them.
Full of Horses* it's True! check it out!! I didn't remember any horses, but 2 years ago, when a (willing, and through free choice) bought a copy, and re-re-re-read it.. it was FULL of horses.
Something about Oklahoma, i'd guess
Imagine if the Beatles at the height of their creative powers had decided that Abbey Road of The White Album weren't up to specs and had salted it away in some vault and those albums were just sitting there. I get the feeling that Salinger left behind some choice material that wasn't up to his impossible standards. Apparently his heirs are honoring his wishes, and we'll have to wait another generation or so before it becomes available. Then it will probably be too late for the last generation of those readers who love Salinger. The rap loving offspring of some tat festooned couple will have no appreciation for Salinger's subtleties.....I read the article. The writer of the article was allowed to quote two or three Salinger sentences. Big deal....The article did, however, clear up the confusion between grey and gray. There's no doubt that grey is the preferred spelling for poetry. Ironically, the writer of the greyest poem in the English language, Elegy in a Country Churchyard, was named Thomas Gray.
William says: " I get the feeling that Salinger left behind some choice material that wasn't up to his impossible standards"
Well, if Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenter and Seymour: An Introduction were indicative of his "impossible standards," then it's likely he left behind no gems worth reading now.
The Finca Vigia edition of Hemingway's short stories, which I bought on publication, revealed a bunch of shit that Scriber was wise not to put out. Those first 49 were the creme.
A deeply overrated writer and a somewhat sociopathic personality who felt he was owed whatever women came his way. His 18 Yale GF Joyce Maynard was a borderline personality disorder, the type that is mutually attracted to such people. (I just dodged being in her circle, BTW. Friends dated her at both Oyster River and Phillips Exeter and still shudder over it.)
He caught the Zeitgeist. Nothing more.
The Love for Salinger has always mystified me. I've never got it. But yeah, writers used to be very close to their editors, with the editors suggesting stories and often demanding rewrites before they would publish short stories. IRC, John O'Hara stopped writing for the New Yorker because he was tired of the editor rejecting certain "Not fit for the New Yorker" stories or demanding absurd changes. Plus, he felt unappreciated.
@gilbar
thanks
fixed
At this stage, I doubt he left anything. Why hasn't it been published otherwise? Whoever controls the estate is under no legal restriction, and they've never been clear if there are any stories or any intention to publish anything.
Contrast this with Sue Grafton, who threatened to haunt her children if they sold the film rights to her P.I. Kinsey Milhone. That ended well.
Salinger "caught the Zeitgeist."
Should have worn a mask. Or a condom. (What is '18 Yale'? GF I get.)
I know more about JDS and women, because of hanging around here, than I know about his work; the consensus seems to be that I haven't missed much.
Salinger's short stories were perfectly crafted. If you read them at a certain age in a certain era they became a part of you. Salinger wouldn't even allow publication of some of his stories that had previously been published in magazines. His heirs apparently respect his wishes, but he is said to have left behind quite a lot of stuff he didn't deem worthy of publication. My standards aren't as exacting as Salinger's and I would like to read them....I've read the Pat Hobby stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. They were strictly potboilers but every so often there was a turn of phrase or insight that was luminous and Fitzgerald at his best. Perhaps the same is true of some of Salinger's work.....People here should give Salinger a break. He had a horrendous war. He was on Utah Beach on D-Day, in the Battle of the Bulge, and was there for the liberation of a concentration camp. He had a longer, nastier war than Hemingway, Mailer, or even James Jones. He didn't write about his experiences, but he came by his post traumatic stress honestly. Joyce Carol Oates wasn't his true ideal Esme but I don't blame him for looking. Apparently he had a thing for younger women, but he took care to only fool around with those who were over eighteen, so, unlike his romantic rival Charley Chaplin, there's that in his favor
Salinger's short stories were perfectly crafted. If you read them at a certain age in a certain era they became a part of you. Salinger wouldn't even allow publication of some of his stories that had previously been published in magazines. His heirs apparently respect his wishes, but he is said to have left behind quite a lot of stuff he didn't deem worthy of publication. My standards aren't as exacting as Salinger's and I would like to read them....I've read the Pat Hobby stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. They were strictly potboilers but every so often there was a turn of phrase or insight that was luminous and Fitzgerald at his best. Perhaps the same is true of some of Salinger's work.....People here should give Salinger a break. He had a horrendous war. He was on Utah Beach on D-Day, in the Battle of the Bulge, and was there for the liberation of a concentration camp. He had a longer, nastier war than Hemingway, Mailer, or even James Jones. He didn't write about his experiences, but he came by his post traumatic stress honestly. Joyce Carol Oates wasn't his true ideal Esme but I don't blame him for looking. Apparently he had a thing for younger women, but he took care to only fool around with those who were over eighteen, so, unlike his romantic rival Charley Chaplin, there's that in his favor
rcocean said, “IRC, John O'Hara stopped writing for the New Yorker because he was tired of the editor rejecting certain "Not fit for the New Yorker" stories or demanding absurd changes. Plus, he felt unappreciated.”
If you haven’t read Tom Wolfe’s 1965 profile of William Shawn and the New Yorker, you should; (a) it’s really really funny, (b) it explains O’Hara’s complaints, and (c) the aftermath managed to bring Salinger out of his hole - and not for the better.
Salinger is the most overrated writer of the 20th century. Even more overrated than Mailer.
My impression is that all the Salinger loves comes from the over 60 crowd. They read him as kids or Teenagers and it made an impression. For example, the guy who killed Lennon had a marked up copy of "Catcher in the Rye" and said he read it 50 times.
Salinger was too much the favorite of Sixties/Seventies English teachers, but he was still a remarkable talent.
Overrated and underrated are meaningless terms. Anyone the reading public holds in high esteem doesn't win praise from professors and sophisticates, and anyone the cognoscenti values is likely not to be valued by non-academics and the mass audience. Writers valued in their heyday are dismissed by the next generation. There is no single audience, so overrated and underrated lists are pointless. Salinger was savaged by the critical elite of the 1960s. I wonder if they saw too much of themselves in Franny's pretentious, would-be intellectual date, Lane Coutell.
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