by Nils Schou
Not a single mention was made of Salinger, an appointment, an interview, a letter transfer.
They had brought homemade sandwiches and a thermos of tea and coffee. They spoke of their lives, their families and friends, and we spoke of ours. Rose had once sung in a trio when she was at college. She knew all the songs of the 60s and her Diana Ross impersonation singing ‘You can’t hurry love’ with Beate was a huge success.
Was Salinger waiting for us at his home in Cornish? Or would he meet us at a drugstore or a restaurant in town? Art and Rose apparently didn’t know either because as we approached our destination they engaged in lengthy phone conversations with people whose names we didn’t catch. It sounded as if they were receiving instructions; their contribution to the conversation consisted almost solely of ‘Yes’ and ‘I understand’ and ‘Sure’.
When we reached Cornish, Art turned into the parking lot behind a supermarket. He found a parking space between two trucks and turned off the ignition. In silence we began to wait. Suddenly a woman knocked on the car door. She had strawberry blonde hair and was in her late 30s. She and Art had a brief exchange which we couldn’t hear after which the woman disappeared among the parked cars. Art switched on the ignition and drove out of the parking lot. A small blue Japanese car passed us when we were out on the main road. The strawberry blonde was at the wheel. Art followed her as she drove out of town. She drove very fast for a while and then after about 10 minutes made a sharp left. We entered a wooded area. At the end of a long forest road, in a clearing, an old black Land Rover was parked. The woman drew up alongside. A man got out of the Land Rover. He was tall, his thick hair dark and greying. He wore glasses.
It was him. I recognized him at once. He was wearing a pair of blue canvas trousers and a blue sweater. A light coloured silk kerchief was tied loosely around his neck. He was elegantly and neatly dressed. It was him, the man I had dreamed of meeting, J.D. Salinger himself.
The woman indicated I should get out of the car. I went over to Salinger who greeted me pleasantly. His handshake was firm. He had an old man’s hands.
He was 67 years old but well preserved. He looked at me kindly and searchingly. His eyes were jet black and his eyelashes, which so many women had fallen for I had read somewhere, were still thick and attractive.
The woman got into the driver’s seat of the black Land Rover. Salinger invited me to get into the back seat with him. As he was getting in I heard his voice for the first time. Mellow and pleasant, the way he must have sounded ever since he was a young man, I thought.
The first thing he said was that he was hard of hearing, but he had recently acquired a hearing aid made in Denmark, that he was very satisfied with. He asked the woman, whom he called Colleen, to start driving. Out of the rear window I could see my wife standing in the clearing, growing smaller and smaller. I felt like a schoolboy leaving his parents for the first time, watching them disappear from the back seat of the bus.
For as long as the interview lasted we drove around the country roads near Cornish. All I was aware of was the old man sitting next to me. In his own way he was just as handsome as the only existing official pictures. I gaped, hypnotised.
There was something attractive and frightening about him at the same time. He had a way of pushing his jaw out and staring fixedly at me that made him look like Marlon Brando playing Don Vito Corleone, the Godfather himself. Mafia associations, literary mafia, were not unwarranted; Salinger was the boss of his own universe. He demanded obedience and omertà, total silence. He had made me an offer through a strawman. Now I had broken mafia rules by outbidding him with an offer he could have refused, but which he had chosen to accept.
‘Let’s get started,’ said Salinger.
‘Are you the one that wants to buy the letters?’
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘Why didn’t you just write me in Denmark and ask for them back?’
‘Would you have given them to me?’
‘Of course’
‘Even when you know how much money is involved.’
‘Hmm. I hope so.’
‘Collectors would give their eye teeth to get a hold of those letters. Everything I think about Kierkegaard is in there.’
‘How do you feel about my blackmailing you into giving me your first real interview?’
‘I have mixed feelings about it, very mixed, but I’ve made a promise. A deal is a deal. I’m doing it because of Kierkegaard. I’ve been obsessed with Kierkegaard ever since I read him for the first time at military school. Everything I’ve ever written was inspired by Kierkegaard.’
‘Was that why you answered my first letter, back then?’
‘Yes. And also because you knew things about Kierkegaard only a Dane could tell me. Holden Caulfield is partly based on Kierkegaard, partly on my own life. The way Holden divides other people into categories, those he doesn’t like, the phonies, and those he likes, is straight out of Kierkegaard when he speaks of the single individual and the ethical and aesthetic idiosyncracy which so painfully cuts him off from the world and from living a normal life. That’s Holden’s dilemma, it was Kierkegaard’s, and it’s mine.’
‘Why do you care where your letters end up? What’s so terrible about a collector or a university?’
‘Are you naive or do you just pretend to be?’
‘I just pretend.’
‘When I was young I dated Oona O’Neill. I was crazy about her and her best friend, Carol, who later married the writer, William Saroyan, and after that the actor, Walther Matthau. When Oona started going with Charlie Chaplin I wrote her a bunch of letters. I was devastated and I ridiculed Charlie Chaplin. Those letters are now in the possession of a university library. Anyone can just go in and read them! Somebody even tried to publish them as a book, but my lawyers managed to put a stop to that.’
‘Do you think I should feel like a traitor, a whore or just a common blackmailer for taking advantage of the situation to get an interview with you?’
‘You’ll get no absolution from me! But I know what I’m expected to deliver. I’ve been a devoted fan of lots of people myself.’
‘You? The guy that’s famous for refusing to let his fans anywhere near him?’
‘There are people I would have travelled halfway around the world just to see walk down the street.’
‘Who?’
‘The person I’m the biggest fan of is Kierkegaard but he died in 1855 so that pretty much leaves him out, I guess. The other person I worshipped just as much as groupies dote on film stars and rock singers was Freud. I besieged him with letters and I met him once too.’
‘How did that come about?’
‘I wrote to Freud in Vienna when I was young. He always answered me, kindly and impersonally. He got lots of fan mail. I thought he was a brilliant novelist, in Kierkegaard’s class. His works on the mysteries of the soul were pure poetry to me. I dreamed of meeting him. Just before the war broke out I went to London to meet him. I was relentless. I had to meet him. I went to where he was living in exile and knocked on the door. And there he was, the old man, almost a dotard, his mouth in excruciating pain because of the cancer. He listened patiently to what I said, how much I admired him, how much it meant to me to meet him. My secret wish was to get to touch him, physically touch him. I was sure some kind of spiritual energy would be transferred from him to me by the least physical contact. Freud invited me to walk with him in the garden. We strolled there together, arm and arm, for 10 minutes at most without saying a word, Freud leaning on me for support. I was ecstatic. When his daughter Anna called Freud into the house again I did something perhaps I should be ashamed of. I stole a small plant shoot and put it into a little plastic bag I had brought. I took such good care of that shoot that its descendants now live in my garden. The day that plant dies I’ll die too, I’m sure of it.’
‘So you understand us, all us fans.’
‘Otherwise I wouldn’t know what I was turning down, would I? And who was a
greater fan than Kierkegaard? He wallowed in names, he hid behind any number of pseudonyms the way only people do who long to be famous. He sat at Hegel’s feet in Berlin, he dreamt of knowing everyone who was anyone in Copenhagen and was beside himself with rage when he wasn’t invited to the right parties. Kierkegaard was the ultimate fan long before the word was invented. A fan wants names, a steady flow of names to root around in so as to fill up the emptiness inside. I’m offering you a trade in names to get my letters back. You want names, facts. Don’t get me wrong though. I don’t mean to imply you’re a pig!’
‘I’m surprised you don’t sound angry.’
‘Listen, you Kierkegaard landsman. I’ve been friends with some of the most notorious gossips in the world. Take Truman Capote and Andy Warhol for example.’
‘You were friends with Warhol? And he never said anything about it in his diaries?’
‘Andy virtually besieged me. He told me he looked up people who knew me, he came up here and knocked on the door. Andy taught me something. Unfortunately it was much too late at that point; I was already famous as the freak who never gave interviews. Andy taught me how to be open and reserved at the same time. There was Andy the exhibitionist, wide open, the persona he had created as a shelter from the outside world. And there was the shy, withdrawn Andy. He kept that side of himself to himself. That way he didn’t have to live the hermit’s life I had created for myself. I’m just as sociable as Andy was, or at least almost. It’s just that Andy managed his inner split better than me. We were good friends. He used to come up here and visit, especially after he had been shot in the stomach by that crazy woman who wanted some of his fame to wear off on her and could only get it by shooting him. When Andy was here he took off his wig so nobody recognized him. We’d go fishing together. Andy was extremely intelligent and enjoyed hiding behind the façade of the red-neck village idiot. On the personal level the person he reminded me of most was Elvis Presley.’
‘Did you know Elvis too? I thought you despised popular culture?’
‘Does that surprise you? We often spoke on the phone. He was very gentle, very well mannered.’
Salinger fell silent for a moment. Then he turned to me and indicated I could continue the interview.
‘Do you still write?’
‘Every day.’
‘What do you do with your manuscripts? Is it true what the rumours say that you have a safe full of manuscripts that won’t be published until you die?’
‘I’ve published lots of books since 1965.’
‘You what?’
‘Under other names.’
‘How many?’
‘Seven. Or is it eight?’
‘Can you give me the books’ titles?’
‘I can. But I won’t.’
‘Why don’t you publish them under your own name?’
‘It turned out that publishing under a pen name has a marvelous effect on me. The vanity, the ego I’ve been fighting all my life simply disappears. I can concentrate on doing what I like best, writing well and telling interesting stories.’
‘How have your books been received?’
‘Often better than the books I published under my own name. That was a trick Greta Garbo taught me.’
‘Did you know Garbo?’
‘We were good friends. I had been called the Greta Garbo of literature so often that when we accidentally ran into each other on the corner of Second Avenue and 47th Street she came right over to me and introduced herself. As you can imagine I was beside myself with pride. She and Marilyn Monroe were my two best women friends in the movie industry.’
‘My God, did you know Marilyn too?’
‘Hey, take it easy there. Marilyn and I were friends all the way back in the 50s. We met in the waiting room of our mutual psychiatrist, a German woman who had been a patient of Freud’s. We got to talking in the waiting room because we always arrived at the same time and our therapist was always delayed because of the patients before us.’
Salinger had a faraway look in his eyes. I let him alone, then I asked, ‘Tell me how you write.’
‘Every morning I go over to the little house I built on the grounds. I lie down on the sofa because of a back injury I’ve had since the war and write by hand. I write with the same pencils and on the same paper that Hemingway used. I met him during the war in France. I looked him up and asked him to read a short story I had written. When he’d read it he picked up a revolver and shot the head off a chicken to show his appreciation. Never was I given higher praise. We corresponded until just before he died. I went to his funeral in Ketchum, Idaho. Hemingway taught me a lot of things, the most important of which was to make sure you stop writing while there’s still water in the well. But he also taught me a lot of technical tricks. Whenever he and William Faulkner were in New York we’d meet and get drunk. The only problem was that I can’t hold my liquor and I invariably fell asleep out by the hatcheck and would miss the words of wisdom those two old drunks were spouting. Faulkner gave me his old typewriter before he died. The machine still has the little handwritten message he’d put on it. ‘Kill your darlings,’ it says. I try to but it’s harder than you think. I use the machine to type up my handwritten manuscripts. Then Helen takes over on the computer. Helen is a retired Cornish school teacher who’s typed things up for me for years.’
‘Here comes the million dollar question that all your fans are dying to ask you. Why did you decide never to give a single interview?’
‘I’ll try to answer that as exhaustively as possible. First of all there was Kierkegaard, our mutual friend. He hid behind any number of pseudonyms. Kierkegaard was my hero, so the obvious thing to do was follow his example. It made me feel close to him. But there were a number of other things in my personal life that were decisive. Towards the end of the war in Europe I had a massive nervous breakdown. It was due partly to total exhaustion and partly to what I had witnessed. I was one of the first American soldiers to enter a liberated concentration camp and I saw what the Germans had done to my fellow Jews. My nervous system has never been the same since. Hence my radical decision to live in peace. The consequences that decision has had on my life were completely unpredictable. I feel like a criminal. My only crime is that I want to be left alone. They talk about me as if I was a madman, a saint or a fairly well functioning psychopath. It’s been particularly hard on my family. For them it’s almost like living with a wanted criminal. At the same time my decision not to give interviews has cemented my celebrity status. Very few people actually have any idea what I’ve written. To most people I’m known as the guy who doesn’t give interviews or appear on TV. My celebrity is due solely to a polite but definite ‘No thanks.’ I’m a freak in a world where communications have gone haywire.’
‘Are you a freak?’
‘No, there’s nothing mysterious about me. I’m a normal person, usually a very happy person. I love my work, my friends, my family. I enjoy excellent health. I’ve been a health freak all my life. I’m a self-taught herbalist, I can heal with herbs. I’m a completely average, banal old man.’
‘Why do you say banal?’
‘Because I’m completely uninteresting as a private individual. Marlon Brando has been a good friend of mine for years. As a private individual he’s almost boring. Marlon came up here once with John Lennon and Bob Dylan, who wanted to meet me. We were four unusually boring men. What we really sounded like was a group of travelling salesmen talking shop.’
‘Can I get you to talk about women?’
‘Oh, please don’t hold back! Just stick your nose right into my private life! I’ve always lived surrounded by women. I’ve been married twice, first time to a German woman right after the war and then to Claire, who’s the mother of my two children. She lives in California now, my daughter lives there too. She’s a psychotherapist, my son is an actor and film producer. Now I’m living with that wonderful woman you saw driving the car.’
‘One of your girlfriends, Joyce Maynard, wrote
a book about her affair with you when she was 18 and you were 55.’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you read it?’
‘Of course.’
‘What do you think of it?’
‘Apart from the fact that I come across as a dirty old man forcing an innocent young girl to have oral sex with him, the book is quite well written.’
‘They say you’re attracted to very young women?’
‘I’m attracted to young women and old women both. Woody Allen and I, we’re old friends, are considering founding The Dirty Old Man’s Club. Men with wives 40 years younger than themselves get to join free.’
‘How did you meet Woody Allen?’
‘The usual way. He wrote me many years ago. We’re both in therapy so we exchange experiences. Woody gave me the name of a therapist who helped him for many years. He finally stopped going to him because the guy kept insisting he was an infantile narcissist. I was an extra in four of Woody’s films. See if you can find me. Woody even made a movie about me. Zelig is about a man who only is what everybody else wants him to be. That’s me. Or it was me. Maybe that’s why I’m so dependent on women. I dry up and disappear if I’m not with a woman. I really am dependent on women on every level. Graham Greene used to say it came as a surprise to him that the dependency gets worse the older you get. He had always thought that desire would dull with age, but that’s not how it is. You’re in for a surprise if you’re expecting a peaceful old age.’
‘How did you meet Graham Greene?’
‘He was a good friend of Georges Simenon whom I met when he was living in America. All three of us used to meet at least once a year either in Antibes where Greene had an apartment in a building near the harbour or in Switzerland at Simenon’s place. Sometimes Noel Coward joined us and one memorable evening we went over to visit Chaplin and Oona. Oona still made my heart beat faster. Noel Coward sang for us and Chaplin accompanied him on the piano, and Oona and I danced just like we used to at the Stork Club in New York before the war. So don’t tell me I live an isolated life!’
