Shane
Salerno succeeds in solving the riddle of J.D.Salinger's reclusive
behavior. Salinger chose to be a recluse when it suited his needs. Folks
interviewed during Salerno's documentary said he detested phonies, yet
he was a bit of one himself. An oxymoron. Sometimes a loveable oxymoron.
Sometimes a spiteful oxymoron. Paul Alexander, author of Salinger ('99) interviewed in the film, said, "A true recluse would never call a reporter for the New York Times." There are examples of how Salinger worked the press and ended up on the front page of the New York Times because he knew how to schmooze when it was convenient for him.
Salernos
biopic is filled with interviews with famous writers and stars. One is
led to believe Salinger would have cringed at the use of celebrity to
tell his story as he ran quickly from it in life. Yet he wrote many,
many letters to young women whom he barely knew and one of these was the
enchanting Joyce Maynard. While Salinger's second wife, Claire Douglas,
left him because he chose to isolate in a bunker- like studio in the
pines of Cornish, N.H. , Salinger wrote Maynard when he saw her on the
cover of the New York Time's Magazine Section.
Maynard was hardly press shy when the so- called press shy Salinger
wrote to her. Their love affair ended when she wanted children and he
cringed at the thought. He had a gorgeous daughter, Margaret, with his
second wife, yet he abandoned his duties as a father for solitude in his
bunker in the pines to write.
Salerno
brilliantly catches the hypocrisies in Salinger while loving him at the
same time. We are drawn into this fascinating story via mixed media:
drawings of him, film on him, photos of him and a minimal use of music
though at the onset I found it a bit annoying. This story does not need
music to indicate sentiment. It is rich in its own right and the viewer
feels so much emotion from the clever interviews and facts of Salinger's
life, that silence is a welcome soundtrack.
While
Salinger may not have liked the use of celebrity to tell his life story,
I did. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, John Cusack, Martin
Sheen, Gore Vidal, E.L. Doctorow, Tom Wolfe, J.Scott Berg, and A.E.
Hotchner--who ends up being sympathetic while tearfully not accepting
responsibility for Salinger's ending their friendship over feelings of
betrayal when according to Hotchner's own words, A.E. betrayed him--are
some of the stars in the fascinating biopic.
The
film begins with Salinger in love with Oona O'Neill, Eugene O'Neill's.
But war called the well breed blue blood boy and he abandoned Oona who
fled to Hollywood where she married Charlie Chaplin.
As with Vonnegut and Mailer, WWII gave Salinger grist for his pen and he worked on six chapters of Catcher in the Rye while bombs blasted away. One of the finest photos of him was taken while he was writing during wartime.
Obsessed with The New Yorker he
tried to have his work published there, but was rebuffed. Finally after
the war, he published his first story and became the darling of The New Yorker and of New York. Catcher in the Rye was
finally published by Little Brown and in a PR dinner celebrated by the
literati, a much fawned over Salinger excused himself from the table for
a cigarette and never returned to the table or to N.Y. Loathing the
pretense of publishing, he moved to Cornish.
At
first his privacy was challenged by a high school girl who interviewed
him then betrayed him by publishing it nationally. Throughout his life,
Salinger sought women much younger, as young as 14, and with all of his
games of stop it I love it about
wanting privacy, his love of control came out in his desire for very,
very young women. The less experience a woman had, the more he could
fill in the dots and play Svengali. His identity was threatened by a
strong woman which Maynard who had published nine books had become.
Salinger's
stories and books are flashed on screen to correspond to the events in
his life to explain the factors addressed within. While this is a
Herculean task, Salerno does this with aplomb and has a clear through
line that could easily have been a muddled mess.
After a
love affair with Norman Mailer who said about Salinger, "I seem to be
alone in finding him no more than the greatest mind ever to stay in prep
school," I was most drawn to the women in Salinger's life and the
respect he gave or denied them. His first wife, Sylvie Welter, was a
Nazi whom he divorced one week after returning home from the war. His
third wife, Colleen O'Neill, was an au pair who lived with him for
thirty years. An au pair knows how to care for children and when to be
subservient. Salinger appreciated these qualities. Whatever. Jerry's
books live on and what mattered to him most was not the publishing but
the writing.
Thanks
to Salerno, Salinger, as Mailer used to say, remains an inspiration to
writers--warts and all. And while he also inspired Chapman to murder
John Lennon, Hinkley to attempt to murder Ronald Reagan and Robert Bardo
to murder Rebecca Schaeffer, he also inspired a multitude of unknown
writers, one of whom drove four hundred and fifty miles to see the
Howard Hughes of Literature. When this Average Joe had the good fortune
of meeting him, Salinger said, "You need a psychiatrist," then, in
effect said for him to go home and write.
After
writing forty -five years writing in isolation, J.D.Salinger died at age
of 91 in 2010. What he was creating in secret will be published in 2015
to the joy of all the Salinger stalkers, die-hard fans and simply
readers of good literature.
