Exhibit review: J.D. Salinger at the New York Public Library
Emily Andresini
Normandy (France), 1944. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.
The J.D. Salinger exhibit was on view at the New York Public Library from October 18, 2019 through January 19, 2020. During this time I paid two visits to the Steven A. Schwarzman building where Salinger’s collection was on display in a small, traffic-controlled room. Due to the size of the exhibition space and at the request of the library, visitors were not permitted to bring bags, coats, cell phones, or cameras in with them, and had to leave these items with coat check. As I waited in line for my turn to enter the exhibit, I thought of how even in his death Salinger, known as a recluse, was still vying to maintain his privacy. Without any cell phones for distraction, strangers in the queue welcomed conversation with each other, and without my phone handy to capture details of the exhibit, I was relegated to jotting down notes in my notepad.
The bulk of the material in the exhibit was comprised of correspondence between Salinger and his friends, family, and colleagues that he maintained over the course of his life. Notebooks with typescripts, original drafts of book covers designed by Salinger himself, book contracts, galley proofs, one of his typewriters, and photographs documenting his life all filled the room. NYPL described the exhibit as a “rare glimpse” into the life and work of the author, and the elusiveness of Salinger was illustrated by the first item on display — a drawing of the author created by E. Michael Mitchell, whose head and shoulders portrait of Salinger is sketched from the posterior view.
Next displayed was a collection of snapshots of Salinger as a little boy, mostly pictured with his family, parents Sol and Miriam, and his sister Doris, around New York City where he was born and raised. In the black and white photographs presented, Salinger was not often smiling. Salinger’s autograph book from 1932 was opened to an inscription from his father that read, “Honesty is the best policy. Be honest, Sonny, at all times. Be honorable in all of your dealings with your fellow men. A good character is the finest asset a man can have. -Daddy”. This bit of fatherly advice shines through as having been embodied by Salinger and expressed in both his letters with friends and in his writing. It is noted that Salinger’s first foray into writing was in editing his school yearbook and newspaper, but his now familiar voice is first acutely heard in a letter to a friend as he complains about his experience in the Valley Forge Military Academy and his strong opinions of the people there.
After graduation, he briefly attended college before moving to Austria to pursue a business venture, and then returning home to focus on writing, with moderate reception, and ultimately enlisting in the army. He was stationed overseas during World War II and, with his typewriter in tow, he devotedly wrote in his spare time. While abroad, Salinger befriended Ernest Hemingway, who bestowed high praise on the young author in a letter saying, “you are a damned good writer and I will look forward to reading everything you write”. Salinger’s wartime experience informed his writing and is most strongly represented in the character arc of Seymour Glass in A Perfect Day for Bananafish. When Salinger returned home from the war, more of his works were published. As his writing gained popularity, his battles with publishers over control of his works and all expressions of them intensified.
All the while, Salinger was very sensitive to how his works were received and represented. This is conveyed in a letter he wrote to Ned Bradford of Little, Brown & Company: “I’d like very much to have your opinion, if it isn’t too frank” (May 31, 1961). Salinger later broke with his British publisher Jamie Hamilton over how his book covers were designed, and his desire for control was articulated in another letter, “…in any case the front cover is terrible. If we must let’s spell it out for them: no character figures, and no red hunting caps. Use an illustration of some kind, let’s insist that they restrict the motif to a geometric design or an abstraction or simple line drawing of Central Park or the NY skyline. But absolutely no Holden Caulfield depiction” (March 23, 1968). Salinger’s minimalist design of his book cover for The Catcher in the Rye — blank white with only the title and a spectrum of lines in the upper righthand corner (the color order of which he distinctly selected and arranged), indicates how much he wanted his words to speak for themselves.
The most compelling part of the exhibit was an excerpt from The Catcher in the Rye that Salinger had written and deleted, wherein Holden Caulfield addresses the reader directly and explains why he is telling his story:
“The thing is, I told my brother D.B. I was going to write a book and all, and he made me promise I’d write it very unphoney. So that’s what I’m doing. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read it. I mean it. You won’t hurt my feelings. What I’ll do, though, if you do read my book, I’ll do something that’ll partly make up for all the swearing and sexy stuff. I’ll tell you things I’ve never told anybody in the world, except maybe my brother D.B. or my kid sister Phoebe. I really will. I mean I’ll write the book as if you were a terrific friend of mine. Even though you may be a terrific bastard, for all I know.”
What’s so powerful about this bit of writing is how it reveals the point of The Catcher in the Rye — for the narrator to be forthcoming with his personal story, to tell it like it is, to be his unphoney authentic, vulnerable self in a world he perceives everyone else to be totally phoney in. Perhaps Salinger deleted it because it revealed too much about himself and his own creative process.
Included in the exhibit was a bookcase filled with books that Salinger kept in his bedroom. Concerned with his identity and legacy he wrote, “perhaps no one will ever know the truth of the matter: that the choice of the deceased’s bedtime reading rotated, varied, continually almost unstoppingly. So much for typical biographical implication and near intimations”. Nevertheless, the titles on the shelves speak to themes present in Salinger’s stories and motifs present throughout his personal archive. A few of them were: The Family Tomb, The Creative Process in the Individual, Let Go! Theory and Practice of Attachment According to Zen, Journals of Emerson, copies of The New Yorker, a book by Ivan Turgenev, poems by Emily Dickenson and plays by Anton Chekhov.
In his adult life, Salinger moved to New Hampshire, married Claire Douglas, and together they had two children, Margaret and Matt. Color photographs documenting this part of his life are presented and in most of them he appears happy and is smiling. Other items on display demonstrate various aspects of his life — his personal collection of 16mm films, a popcorn recipe he concocted, an audio recorder, tobacco pipes, and pictures of his cat. Letters exchanged with his son Matt are shown, and in them Salinger passes down his priceless inheritance of fatherly advice. He also shares with Matt (sometimes referred to as Math) his appreciation for Ralph Waldo Emerson, “I like, love, Emerson more than any other American writer” (January 25, 1974), and includes the Emerson quote, “I like people who can do things”. In another letter to Matt, Salinger writes candidly about his daily existence, “nearly all my news — nearly all of my life, for that matter — is what happens to me when I’m at the typewriter in the morning and when I’m making notes and reading in the afternoons, and that kind of news doesn’t fill up a letter very thrillingly” (March 29, 1977).
Salinger was in the habit of carrying with him portable notes held together on a key ring so he could jot down ideas about characters, scenes, and dialogue as they came to him. He also carried with him on walks vade mecums (Latin for “go with me”) — meditative advice for being at ease in one’s body and mind. Among those on display read, “the essence of relaxation is not to hold”, and “to practice keep both the mind and body loose and gentle” — bits of wisdom we can all take with us. Salinger seemed to have created for himself a life that supported his needs: being in close communication with family and friends, and carving out the space any reflective soul requires to nurture their creative spirit. Among the many letters from friends and peers, one stood out from William Shawn, New Yorker editor from 1952–1987, who wrote, “these stories, in addition to being among the best in all literature, are among the dearest to me” (July 31, 1961), praise one can only assume that Salinger valued as he kept it in his personal archive for the remainder of his life. At the end of Zooey, Salinger has Zooey give Franny advice on how to be an artist while contending with societal pressures. He says to her, “An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s” (p.168, Franny and Zooey). After visiting his archive and revisiting his works, I think it’s safe to say Salinger did just that.
Salinger’s popcorn seasoning recipe
6 tsps sea salt
2 tsps paprika
1 tsp dry mustard
½ tsp garlic powder
½ tsp celery powder
½ tsp thyme
½ tsp marjoram
½ tsp curry
½ tsp dill powder
Emily Andresini is Librarian and Archival professional.
