J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [187]
Salinger hated the Time article, a fact that he was anxious to share with anyone who would listen. In the first place, he saw it as an invasion of his privacy. Not only did it dash any hopes he held of detouring gawkers away from Cornish to Westport, but the article’s sarcastic disclosure of the subterfuge made him look foolish in the attempt. Most of all, Salinger detested the magazine cover. That was not surprising. Time covers were archived and commonly collected. Salinger had taken great pains to ensure that his books held no such likeness. Time knew this; in fact, it had made a point of relaying his distaste for such images in the article. So it was with apparent relish that it emblazoned Salinger’s face across its cover. A portrait by Robert Vickrey, the image depicted Salinger clearly aging, his hair graying, his face drawn. His eyes at once focused upon everything and upon nothing, he seemed to be mentally inverted, sadly pensive. The background was, naturally, an overgrown field of rye with a small, childlike figure, arms outstretched, teetering on the precipice of a cliff.
When Russell Hoban, the artist who had designed the spread, learned of Salinger’s derision for the layout, he felt dejected. Hoban was among Salinger’s most ardent fans. His own daughters, Phoebe and Esmé, were both named in honor of Salinger characters. Yet a result of his admiration had been to estrange the author. Nineteen sixty-one was perhaps Salinger’s most publicly successful year, the summit of his career. But it reaped dark consequences. If admirers of J. D. Salinger ever held the hope of someday befriending the author, maybe even calling him on the phone, as Holden suggests in The Catcher in the Rye, that hope was extinguished in the autumn of 1961.
A portrait of Salinger on the cover of Time in September 1961. The recognition heralded the publication of Franny and Zooey and signaled the height of Salinger’s professional success. (Time, a division of Time Inc.)
The enormous success of Franny and Zooey and the countless articles that accompanied it advanced a public fascination with Salinger’s private life that he could not have imagined just a year before. Media articles with titles such as “The Mysterious J. D. Salinger” made for good copy. They were intriguing to readers and sold magazines. But they fabricated a myth that Salinger was an ascetic recluse who had spurned the real world for the refuge of his imagination. Reporters then set out to unravel the mystery that they themselves had created. The consequence of this manipulation was to produce in reality what had been fabricated on paper—and to curse the author in the process. With their relentless scrutiny and invasion of privacy, the media drove Salinger into a seclusion he might not have sought on his own, strengthening his resolve to remain in anonymity as his desire for privacy became more precious to him the more difficult it became to secure.
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Winter descends quickly in Cornish, and late September offers few gifts of Indian summer. On such a rare day in 1961, the barefoot Claire Salinger took her nine-month-old son into her arms and took her four-year-old daughter by the hand, and set out to enjoy the day. Stepping outside the cottage, she heard shouting from just beyond her fence. Alarmed, she walked to the gate as quickly as little Peggy could follow. When Claire peeked through the door, the day’s contentment must have melted