J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [198]
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In late summer 1964, Salinger and eight-year-old Peggy traveled together to New York City. Although it was not unusual for him to take the children on such a trip, where they visited their grandparents and his “family” at The New Yorker, Salinger carefully explained to his daughter that this trip would be special: they were going to ask William Shawn if he would honor them by being Peggy’s godfather, a post that had been held by the late Learned Hand.
Salinger placed the highest importance on the request. Since Hand’s death three years before, Peggy had been hospitalized twice (once during the summer of 1963 and again that winter). In addition, his marriage to Claire was in decline and he now kept almost exclusively to the small apartment above the garage. He was also anxious to honor Shawn with the request, especially after the dismal encounter with Whit Burnett.
Once in New York, Salinger and Peggy did not go directly to West 43rd Street to meet with Shawn. There was another desire on Salinger’s agenda that he needed to satisfy first. Together, father and daughter walked to Central Park. There, in a moment as surreal and triumphant as any offered by the life of J. D. Salinger, he lifted his daughter onto a painted horse of the Central Park carousel and, backing away, watched joyfully as she rode round and round.7
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In the early 1960s, most Americans connected with current events and opinions through newspapers and magazines. Television news was still in its infancy. The Kennedy assassination had proved the power of television reporting to draw a vast audience, and by decade’s end, the influence of newspapers and magazines would be eclipsed by television journalism. The shift in the public’s appetite from print news to television news occurred fitfully. In places such as New York City, where the number of newspapers was extraordinary, this transition was a violent one. Publications such as the New York Post, the Herald Tribune, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal vied for an ever-decreasing readership and were in a constant circulation war.
In 1963, the New York Herald Tribune underwent a major overhaul in a desperate attempt to revive its flagging readership. It reconstructed its Sunday supplement magazine, Today’s Living, to resemble and challenge the city’s most prestigious literary icon, The New Yorker. Defiantly renaming the supplement New York, the Herald Tribune then went to war with Salinger’s professional family, something that no other newspaper had dared to attempt.
At first, Shawn and The New Yorker ignored the Herald Tribune affront. But the newspaper had taken on the brilliant minds of Tom Wolfe and Jimmy Breslin, and The New Yorker’s competition soon proved to be surprisingly successful. By late 1964, Shawn and his staff began to fight back with editorial swipes at the Herald Tribune. In doing so they unwittingly upped the ante against rivals whose levels of ruthlessness were out of The New Yorker’s gentrified league.
Tom Wolfe decided to go straight for The New Yorker’s jugular. William Shawn, with his collection of phobias and idiosyncrasies, was nearly as famous for his intense privacy as was J. D. Salinger, yet barely a word had ever been published about him. Wolfe not only decided to write a series of “profiles” on Shawn, two scathing parodies of the editor’s management style and personal habits, but he taunted Shawn with a personal phone call asking for an interview. Shawn was mortified by Wolfe’s intentions and instructed everyone he knew to shun anyone connected with the Herald Tribune.
Wolfe’s first article on Shawn was printed four days before its scheduled release. Seeking to entice Shawn into a confrontation, he made