After Reclusive Life, Salinger Dies at 91

Buffalo News

J. D. Salinger's passing Wednesday was the literary death some people have spent decades awaiting and preparing for--not for ghoulish reasons, but because it can't help but involve matters of the highest drama.

The death of Salinger, at 91, brings with it elements of mystery, speculation and ethical quandary. Nothing else in his literary generation compares-- not Norman Mailer's death nor John Updike's nor even the ghastly suicide of David Foster Wallace.

That's because the death of Salinger--arguably the greatest recluse in the history of American culture (quite beyond Greta Garbo and Howard Hughes)--should finally answer some questions that have burned in the minds of just about every admiring reader Salinger ever had:

--What in God's name has he been writing since he allowed his last book to be published in 1963? (According to the New York Times, writer Joyce Maynard, with whom Salinger had a yearlong relationship when she was 18, says there are two novels in a safe.)

--What else has he been doing with it? Stashing it in computer files? Filling storerooms the size of airplane hangars?

--Will we ever see any of it?

--Who are the people who have been named to decide whether we see any of it? His children--Matthew, a former actor, and Margaret, a memoirist and famous invader of her father's privacy? Or, did the famous control freak name others in his will who will make the decision?

And, further, did he provide full instructions of what to do with it all, as Vladimir Nabokov did when he instructed his heirs to burn "The Original of Laura?"

--Will his final wishes be heeded?

It is, of course, theoretically possible that the 1963 publication of "Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters" and "Seymour: An Introduction" actually ended, for all time, Jerome David Salinger's inclination to string words together for literary purposes, whether narrative or poetic or philosophical or God only knows what.

It has always seemed to most, though, that the likelihood of that is, to steal a title from one of his literary heirs, less than zero. And that possibly puts their father's future place in American literary history in the hands of two children of different mothers who have always admitted growing up in different circumstances (but who have both had public lives).

In comparison with their decision, Dimitri Nabokov's final decision to publish his father's sketches for the novel "The Original of Laura" is like comparing an anthill to the Matterhorn.

Salinger himself, in fact, wasn't even close to the perfect writer for such questions. Henry James, at the very least, would have been necessary.

Nabokov never stopped being a literary eminence and public figure, however private. He remained one until he died in 1977.

Salinger, on the other hand, published his work for only 22 years, between 1941 and 1963. And then he tendered the most famous unspoken resignation from public life in American cultural history.

Garbo could always be seen on the streets of Manhattan. To the end of her life, she remained friendly with public figures, including writers. (Jane Fonda's memoir includes stories of swimming with Garbo.) Howard Hughes shuttered himself away and watched his hair and fingernails grow, but he had Mormons operating his interests for him.

But Salinger, to all intents and purposes, stayed in New Hampshire out of the reach of literary cohorts and shot lawyers at anyone trying to publish a biography or an unpublished story of his.

Salinger, alone, seemed to remove himself completely from the public world, except to sue anyone who invaded it.

That, of course, could never apply to his daughter, Margaret, whose memoir, "Dream Catcher," revealed much of value about her father. Nor could it apply to Maynard, whose relationship with Salinger and whose writings about it now form the basis for the lion's share of whatever literary fame she enjoys.

Otherwise, the world has been kept quite successfully away from J. D. Salinger's life since 1963. We've seen the occasional fugitive photograph and read the periodic "In Search of Salinger" piece, but only Maynard and his daughter came close to writing with anything resembling authority.

Not even the stray resonant and chilling fact--like Mark David Chapman's affection for Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" before he assassinated John Lennon--could penetrate too far into Salinger's well-constructed reclusiveness.

And now, Fort Salinger's blockade of the public world is over. Death, the ultimate victor, prevailed.

The world will now discover whether that great 1951 novel--his only full-length one--has any siblings. We'll now find out whether those magnificent short stories in "Nine Stories"-- especially the sublimely archetypal New Yorker story "Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut"--have cousins, or even offspring.

It may take a while--even a very long while--but we will, at long last, know.

His literary executors, whoever they are, now become the most famous and probably consequential literary heirs of our time.

Maybe in all of American literary history.

If only Henry James--or Nabokov --were around to invent a novel about them.

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