J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [199]
When Whitney, who had once been ambassador to Britain, presented Shawn’s letter to Wolfe and Breslin, he was unsure what to do next. But the two reporters were thrilled. Without hesitation, they telephoned both Time and Newsweek and read them the letter. They then put their own spin on its contents, claiming that the mighty New Yorker was so fearful of Wolfe’s series that it was threatening litigation to prevent its release. As a result, when “Tiny Mummies!” appeared in New York magazine on April 11, 1965, it was accompanied by a tumult of publicity that increased its readership many times over.*
Shawn’s was not the only letter Whitney received protesting “Tiny Mummies!” John Updike, E. B. White, Muriel Spark, and others wrote to defend Shawn and express their disgust with the publication. No letter to Whitney garnered more attention than the one sent by J. D. Salinger, who was closest to Shawn and best understood what it felt like to be manipulated and maligned by the press. “With the printing of the inaccurate and sub-collegiate and gleeful and unrelievedly poisonous article on William Shawn,” Salinger began, “the name of the Herald Tribune, and certainly your own, will very likely never again stand for anything either respect-worthy or honorable.”9
Respect and honor were vital qualities to J. D. Salinger. They were engraved into his personality. They were solid attributes by which he measured his own life as well as the lives of those around him. He not only required duty and gentility of himself, he also expected them from others and always exhibited a surprised hurt when treated rudely or deceitfully. Much of his life had been maneuvered by events beyond his control, yet he had never lost sight of a high standard of propriety. Duty and honor had held him steadfast throughout the war, when he had forced his feelings into the background until their release would no longer endanger others. Social faux pas—bursts of ego during a lecture or hints of phoniness during dinner—embarrassed him beyond measure. Even the most scathing and dismissive of Salinger’s letters adhered to a politeness that he would never dream of abandoning. And he was most hurt by the insensitivity of others: critical imperceptions, a broken promise made by a friend, a lie told to him by a child.
When it came to the Herald Tribune, Salinger and his friend Shawn had missed the point. It was not about respect and honor at all but about circulation, publicity, and money—the very things that Salinger most disdained. In truth, the world had moved on from concepts of duty, honor, and respectability. In 1965, such values were still given generous lip service, but they were increasingly difficult to find in daily life. Salinger’s scolding of the Herald Tribune was an honorable act in defense of a good friend whose innocence and sense of decorum were beyond reproach. But it did not convince Whitney, Breslin, or Wolfe, to whom such sentiments were abstract and antiquated. American society had embarked upon an era of violent change and shifting values. It was an era in which dynamic smashers of icons such as Tom Wolfe and Jimmy Breslin would find success; but it was a world in which J. D. Salinger, an icon himself, no longer belonged, a world where the gentility and values that had formed his character were being called into question or swept away.
The cover of the 1964 Bantam Books edition of The Catcher in the Rye was designed by Salinger himself.