J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [177]
16. Dark Summit
It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer’s feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second-most valuable property on loan to him during his working years.
—J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey dust jacket, 1961
The New Yorker issue containing “Seymour—an Introduction” was published on June 6, 1959.* The magazine’s cover featured an illustration of three children playing in a field, eyes fixed skyward in delight. For ardent Salinger fans the eclectic story within the magazine’s pages was delightful indeed, but the general reaction to “Seymour” was mixed at best. Most readers simply did not know what to make of the novella. Was it a rebuke or an affirmation? A story of fiction or an autobiographical confession? A work of art or an exercise in self-absorption?
While readers were perplexed by its meaning and critics were nearly dumbfounded by its seemingly unrestrained style, the discussion over the nature of Salinger’s new work was immediate and furious. As a result, “Seymour” became a literary must-read for 1959 and the magazine quickly sold out—exactly the reaction that The New Yorker had anticipated. Regardless of the story’s merits—which were largely unknown to William Shawn when he had accepted “Seymour”—the story was expected to sell through the sheer force of Salinger’s fame.
The same assurance that guaranteed sales for The New Yorker also put Salinger into an awkward position. Even as newspaper and magazine articles began to review his new story with both disdain and admiration, the issue itself quickly became unobtainable, rapidly seized by Salinger fans lucky enough to find copies. For the rest of his admirers, who had now reached global proportions as Catcher and Nine Stories had been translated into various languages and published overseas, it seemed unfair of the author to publish exclusively for a tiny section of the population who had access to The New Yorker. It had been nearly a decade since the appearance of The Catcher in the Rye and six years since Salinger had published Nine Stories. That he would release a new novel about the Glass family was not only anticipated, it was now expected. In fact, Salinger had been promising a Glass novel to The New Yorker since 1955.
When “Seymour” was released, the reading public easily perceived the author coyly wrapped within the character of Buddy Glass. Buddy’s very protest, that readers “have somewhere picked up the bogus information that I spend six months of the year in a Buddhist monastery and the other six in a mental institution,” only served to validate the popular notion that Salinger was an enlightened, if eccentric, hermit. For his part, Salinger played his role well. Almost in mimicry of Buddy Glass’s character, he began appearing in the academic halls of Dartmouth College soon after the release of “Seymour,” where he spent hours working in the school’s library, very much resembling the literary aesthetic one might imagine Buddy Glass to be. He briefly grew a beard and sported a rugged backwoods dress of denim and plaid cotton shirts, an appearance suited equally to chopping wood as to scholastic endeavor. To complete the aura of the pensive genius, he took up smoking a pipe from which wafted billows of sweet-smelling Sobranie tobacco.
While playing this role, Salinger kept himself visible in the eye of public curiosity but always at arm’s length from intense inspection. Plainly put, he made sure that he presented the right image to the public, but he kept that image at a distance, close enough to inspire admiration but far enough to discourage close scrutiny. It was a game he played at his own peril and one he was destined to lose.
By the end of 1959, Salinger had played many roles: struggling artist, war hero, spurned lover, spiritual ascetic, the voice of a generation. But a piece of his image was still missing. On the eve of the 1960s, American society was awakening to an awareness of social and political issues in a way unprecedented since