Posted on August 5, 2010. Filed under: Guardian, J.D. Salinger, Jessa Crispin, Kevin Stevens, Megan Buskey, Paul Pulszartti, The Dublin Review, The Smart Set, The Wilson Quarterly, Tom Grimes |
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In the summer issue of the The Dublin Review, novelist Kevin Stevens reflects on the American writer J.D. Salinger, known for his best-selling novel The Catcher in the Rye
as much as for his hermit-like seclusion from literary celebrity culture, who died this past January. Stevens’ considers Salinger’s life and work within a literary culture that so often demands publicity: “Of course most writers pass their careers completely unnoticed by the general population, and many of those who toil anonymously welcome any attention that might sell a few books. But the inexorable advance of media technology continues to hone fame’s double-edged sword, to shorten the shelf-life of the work itself and to ensure that huge swathes of the public become familiar with the images and names of renowned authors they will never read. Those writers who refuse to fan the fire of celebrity are the first to be devoured by its flames.”
Stevens’ essay uses the occassion of the reissue of Ian Hamilton’s In Search Of J. D. Salinger
to consider Salinger’s reclusiveness and steadfast desire to protect his private life from public display. Upon reading galleys of Hamilton’s book, originally published in 1986, Salinger threatened the publisher with a law suit for using excerpts from Salinger’s unpublished letters–letters that were already in archive collections and conceivable in the public domain. The publisher relented, and Hamilton revised the manuscript, but even this was unsatisfactory. After two trials, Salinger succeeded and the court found that he had the right to protect the “expressive content” of his letters. Stevens’ essay ends where most discussions of Salinger end, with a question: “was his long silence an act of courage to be a nobody or a failure of courage to be famous, not for shunning fame, but for writing fiction?”
Silence is the thing that so frustrated the biographers and critics about Salinger. Writers need to be heard, and increasingly writers need to perform in public. A recent article in the Guardian profiles the new literary culture of book slams and book boutiques that have transformed the old, staid author readings into multi-media, storytelling scenes on par with dance clubs more than book clubs perhaps. But writer Alex Clark wonders, “what, precisely, has made audiences so receptive right now? Inundated with entertainment opportunities, probably already in possession of a number of books on their “to read” pile, able to access recommendations, reviews and footage of live performances in the comfort of their own homes, what attracts them to a literary cabaret?
Or take a scene from Tom Grimes Mentor: A Memoir
recently reviewed by Micheal Dirda at The Washington Post. The memoir recounts the highs and lows of Grimes’ voyage from star writer at the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop, where his early manuscript of his first novel Season’s End was celebrated by workshop director Frank Conroy (who would become Grimes’ mentor) to the obscurity of a novelist with a few bad reviews who struggles to write his second novel and to be heard in the din of literary chatter. Dirda notes: “When Grimes travels to Dayton, Ohio, for the first stop on his pathetic book tour, any writer will recognize the scene that awaits: Fifty chairs are set up for the audience, copies of “Season’s End” are stacked high on a table, there are plates of cookies and an urn of coffee — and nobody comes. Not a single person.”
Considering silence as either courage or failure reminds me that silence itself is something we hardly feel comfortable with or know what to do with anymore. At The Wilson Quarterly, Megan Buskey reviews two new books about silence: In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise
by George Prochnik and The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise
by Garret Keizer. Buskey notes: “If silence has so many benefits, why are head-splitting rock concerts popular and iPods ubiquitous? In part because loud sounds have their pleasures. As explained by one partisan of boom cars—which sport subwoofers capable of producing more noise than is audible 30 feet away from a jet at takeoff—the sound he experiences is “sensual.” Yet people also crowd their lives with noise, Prochnik incisively argues, because they are resistant to the virtues that silence exemplifies: contemplation, attention, prudence, and restraint.”
If silence is contemplation and restraint, in celebrity culture sounds are the stuff of envy. Jessa Crispin reviews Fred Inglis’s A Short History of Celebrity
at The Smart Set. Crispin writes: “Envy has always been a major player in the complex way we feel about celebrities, but never has it been quite so dominant. And, as Inglis writes, “Envy is a tense, psychotic passion.” We have no new Cary Grant or Marilyn Monroe — no matter how many rakish men or voluptuous women are declared to be so — because they would never survive today’s vicious brand of envy. . . In today’s world they would have been stalked and roasted, stripped of their facades of perfection. The Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe that we know would cease to exist.” But in the end “we have always looked to celebrities to tell us how to feel. They were up there on stage, moving us and our mirror neurons, showing us romance or revenge or grief.”
Salinger came of age with Cary and Marilyn, and took a different route when fame came to him in the 1950s. But amidst today’s noise and chatter and echo chambers (is this what I’m doing now?), silence may be an intriguing mix of courage and failure, a challenge to have both presence and absence. As Buskey notes, many animals use silence as a defense mechanism to protect themselves from predators.
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