Now comes the word — though not really news, to some — that over the years when he was cherishing his privacy, Salinger was also carrying on relationships with young women 15, and in my case, 35 years younger than he.Writes Joyce Maynard, author of the memoir “At Home in the World,” that revealed to the world the relationship she had with the then 35 years her senior, J.D. Salinger.
Salinger wasn’t simply brilliant, funny, wise; he burrowed into one’s brain, seeming to understand things nobody else ever had. His expressions of admiration (“I couldn’t have created a character I love more than you”) were intoxicating. His dismissal and contempt, when they came, were devastating.
I was 19 when he put two $50 bills in my hand and sent me away. Years after he dismissed me, his voice stayed in my head, offering opinions on everything he loved and all that he condemned. This was true even though, on his list of the condemned, was my own self.
The private Salinger, nobody knew about, was not a very nice guy.
It is the quiet acceptance, apparently alive and well in our culture, of the notion that genius justifies cruel or abusive treatment of those who serve the artist and his art. Richard Schickel, writing of Salinger’s activities, expresses the view that despite the disclosures about Salinger’s pursuit of young women he lived “a ‘normal’ life.”He liked pretty young girls. Stop the presses,” writes the film critic (and father of daughters) David Edelstein. The implication being, what’s the fuss?
Do you think Maynard has a point here? is it ok to give steamed artists, the Woody Allens, a pass with regard to their personal lives?
Maynard presses her point further...
... we are talking about what happens when people in positions of power — mentors, priests, employers or simply those assigned an elevated status — use their power to lure much younger people into sexual and (in the case of Salinger) emotional relationships. Most typically, those who do this are men. And when they are done with the person they’ve drawn toward them, it can take that person years or decades to recover.
67 comments:
This is not breaking news, it has been known about Salinger for like forever.
The important thing about Salinger is that A Catcher In The Rye struck a chord with so many, almost an entire generation. The book is essentially about how shockingly "phony" the adult world appears to be to a sensitive innocent youth when he first encounters it. For most people it's a stage. They move on. They stop overvaluing "purity." For Salinger it was a trap. He didn't move on. Ergo the lifelong hangup on innocent young girls.
I'm getting deja vu feelings all over again. Didn't the press already have this discussion?
Is this slut shaming?
Priestly abuse is a cheap shot.
Of course, when Salinger, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, J.P. Sartre, seemingly hundreds of public school teachers, etc, sexually abuse underage women, the talking heads have no idea what the fuss is all about.
But when a Catholic priest does it, it proof positive of a what a bunch of hypocritical, rotten perverts the whole Church is & has been for 2000 years.
It might just lead one to think that maybe there's an entirely different agenda other than a worry about the morality of old farts banging adolescents in play here. Naaaah! Couldn't be that....
Man, what a drag. The guy writes one good book that anybody heard of and he's a genius? Wouldn't a genius do that again? And again. And easily. Know who's a genius? Robert Sabuda, that's who. And he's no recluse and no perv either. And he keeps doing it over an dover. Like right now.
I have his new book on preorder, get it yourself if you want at cut rate price too, what do I look like, your money-saving book-alert link-making bitch?
But I have a criticism to his genius. Maybe an observation.
I can tell by the cover that the pop-up will be great and imaginative, the usual 'environment built upon a platform' will be present, and there will be at least one mechanism that is jaw-dropping mastery and it will have multiple fill mechanisms that would make splendid cards on their own. Casually flicked off his fingers like sparks and crumbs, or perhaps more like sticky delicious maple syrup, but the art will be wanting.
He needs a new artist, or he needs to be become a more patient one. Because his is slapdash and crap.
Like mine.
I learned this by careful observation and analysis of peoples' reactions. Readers, viewers, people interested, do not care so much about the mechanism, that it does something different is enough, but they really do respond to the art, even my careless art in cards because I never cared so much about that, it is what holds attention so that something so mechanistically crap, and unimaginatively pathetically derived as Il Était Un Fois is lauded as genius and breakthrough for its compelling art alone. That's all it has going for it. And seeing that changed my attitude.
Oh, and by the way, did it ever occur to the brilliant minds of the literary world that maybe the reason J.D. Salinger lived like a recluse was so that he could get away with criminal shit like this in the privacy of his own compound?
Nobody ever says "Gosh, I wonder why those polygamous old-practice Mormons live out in the middle-of-nowhere?" It's just a lot tougher to to get away with having sex with a string of underage girls if you live in Salt Lake City or the Upper East Side. All those prying eyes, you know.
Wow, another totally helpless feminist. Here I thought they were all strong and sexually empowered and so forth.
Of course when the opportunity for fleeting fame and some cash crops up decades later, hello victimhood.
Priestly abuse is a cheap shot.
I took it from what she said in her article.
.. we are talking about what happens when people in positions of power — mentors, priests,
what she wrote in her article..
The point is Lem that you could have said mentors or older men or ever artists.
To say priestly is just a cheap shot.
Ten times more public school teachers molest children than any priests in the history of the United States. It seems that every week another teacher is suspended or arrested for having sex with a child.
Of course, when Salinger, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, J.P. Sartre, seemingly hundreds of public school teachers, etc, sexually abuse underage women, the talking heads have no idea what the fuss is all about.
And what's the name of the woman you've convinced yourself Woody Allen "sexually abused"?
And then there's James Ellroy, Chip, who's a genius AND a pervert.
Oh, and by the way, did it ever occur to the brilliant minds of the literary world that maybe the reason J.D. Salinger lived like a recluse was so that he could get away with criminal shit like this in the privacy of his own compound?
That doesn't make much sense. If he was worried about prosecution, why not just live someplace where his behavior would be legal? For example, in much of the United States the age of consent is 16. When he first went into seclusion it was even lower in many states. In Mexico it ranges as low as 12.
He may have been worried about the *social* fallout, of course. But more likely he was just a misanthrope.
Salinger wrote the perfect YA teen novel about the void in their narcissistic world. I agree with ricpic.
Most adults read Catcher again and either pity or despise Holden Caulfield.
Not unlike Red in Shawshank when asked whether he's been rehabilitated.
"Not a day goes by I don't feel regret, and not because I'm in here or because you think I should. I
look back on myself the way I was...stupid kid who did that terrible crime...wish I could talk sense to him. Tell him how things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone, this old man is all that's left, and I have to live with that. "
John Hinkley Jr. is what you get when they don't grow up. Or J. D. Salinger.
@Revenant,
And what's the name of the woman you've convinced yourself Woody Allen "sexually abused"?
How about Mia Farrow, for one. Are you being deliberately morally obtuse here, Revenant, or are you morally okay with banging the stepchildren living under one's roof?
Since some of his concubines were as young as 14, he would be hard pressed to find a "civilized" state to get away with that. As for overseas, it wasn't just the sex, it was the power he had over these girls as well their adulation. For a young Thai or Mexican girl, he just would have been some old white guy with money & a boner. They wouldn't have known just who he was.
He may have been a misanthropic pervert, but he was a pervert. And I seem to give that more weight than you do.
Revenant said...
And what's the name of the woman you've convinced yourself Woody Allen "sexually abused"?
Allen's behavior was foul, towards both women. Inexplicably and pervertedly foul given that there were at the time thousands of young women he could have run of with instead of his stepdaughter.
Revenant said...
And what's the name of the woman you've convinced yourself Woody Allen "sexually abused"?
Allen's behavior was foul, towards both women. Inexplicably and pervertedly foul given that there were at the time thousands of young women he could have run of with instead of his stepdaughter.
Allen has a history of intimate correspondence with teenage female fans. I once read a tell-all from one such fan who described how Allen led her on and on, until finally she demanded to meet him, even though she knew that would end their relationship, and it did.
Don't forget Allen's relationship with the teenage Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan. The young girl thing seems to be Allen's kink.
Generally I don't judge artists by their personal lives, especially when it comes to their sexual relationships. The problem with Salinger and Allen, though, is that they present themselves in their art as moral instructors. (Yes, even Allen -- see Crimes and Misdemeanors for instance.)
But Salinger was far worse in what he did to these young woman and the superior spiritual facade he maintained by which he judged the whole world as phoney and horrible.
I've read the Maynard book and Salinger's daughter's memoir. Salinger was not a nice guy. If it was just a taste for jail bait, I might shrug, but he managed these young girls and young women like an all-knowing, all-loving cult leader with the answers. He manipulated them at deeply personal, spiritual levels, then dumped them like yesterday's papers, leaving them psychologically devastated.
I loved Salinger's writing as a teenager -- all four of his published books, not just Catcher. I still admire his skill, but much of his appeal was the intimate bond he established with his readers as well as those women. I find it impossible to return to his writing without feeling revulsion at his hypocrisy.
I can't imagine a fitter punishment for Salinger then to see this part of his life emblazoned across Hollywood movie screens for all to see.
He may have been worried about the *social* fallout, of course. But more likely he was just a misanthrope.
Salinger was a very private guy, but the real problem with carrying on in public as he did was that it entirely contradicted the persona of himself he created in his non-Catcher books.
All his touching concern for the innocence of children and the terrible phoniness of adults looks very different when readers are picturing him as Humbert Humbert getting off with Lolita.
As pedophiles go, I understand that Salinger behaved in a responsible way. He groomed women as young as fourteen but never actually consummated the relationship until they were eighteen. He was a much more responsible degenerate than Roman Polanski and, probably, Woody Allen......,Joyce Maynard was a published writer and smart enough to get into an Ivy League school. She probably had an agenda of her own when she took up with Salinger. She's now achieved a certain amount of fame, and her memoir will be read for a far longer time than her other books. It was to some extent an exploitive relationship, but there are women who made worst bargains---Burrough's wife, for example, never got a book deal.
First, lets put Polanski in another category - Convicted rapist.
Second, Woody didn't have sex with his "Stepdaughter" Soon-yin (sp) was 16, had lived with Mia for about 6 years, and disliked her. Woody wasn't married to Mia, they were just Hollywood shack-ups. I don't want to defend leftwing pervert Woody, but fair is fair.
As for Salinger and these women, weren't they over 18? If so, what's the beef. " I am woman, hear me roar".
And I think JD Salinger is a literary fraud.
You are right Trooper.
Its just that teachers don't sell headlines nor court cases like priests do.
I'm just saying.
Btw.. Just in case you aren't watching.. The Red Sox lead the Yanks 4 to 1 in the 5th.
How about Mia Farrow, for one.
The person who "sexually abused" the young Mia Farrow was Frank Sinatra -- a longtime fan of young pussy who was later given America's greatest civilian honor by Ronald Reagan. :)
By the time Allen started dating her she was a twice-divorced woman in her 30s.
Are you being deliberately morally obtuse here, Revenant, or are you morally okay with banging the stepchildren living under one's roof?
Mutually consensual sex with a 19-year-old obviously isn't "sexual abuse of an underaged woman", even if you are dippy enough to think Previn was Allen's stepdaughter.
So you can answer my question, or admit you slandered him, or keep screaming like a retarded kid with a fresh load in his big-boy pants; I'm fine with any of the three options. :)
Since some of his concubines were as young as 14, he would be hard pressed to find a "civilized" state to get away with that.
Hawaii. Also, Canada's age of consent was 14 at the time.
And I think JD Salinger is a literary fraud.
You're welcome to your opinion but I do wonder what it's based upon other than your dislike for Salinger.
Salinger was a louse of a human being, but he was a very fine, accomplished, hard-working writer.
The guy writes one good book that anybody heard of and he's a genius? Wouldn't a genius do that again? And again. And easily.
Who says Sallinger was a genius? Who turns out books that enter the national consciousness again and again and easily?
Hardly anyone. Charles Dickens, Stephen King maybe. But not Hemingway. Not Fitzgerald. Not Joyce. Not Tolstoy.
The literary woods are filled with excellent writers who only managed one or two excellent books.
Salinger did write four books and published numerous short stories that were well-received in the forties and fifties until he stopped publishing in the early sixties
rcocean,
Farrow adopted Soon-Yi in 1978, and the affair with Woody was discovered in 1992. So that means Soon-Yi lived with Farrow not 6, but 14 years.
I'm always dubious about claims like this woman is making about Salinger.
Those pretty young things, more often than not, are quite aggressive about seeking out sexual relationships with older artists.
Not justifying or advocating anything.
If, 41 years ago, the now dead Salinger truly abused his 18 year-old woman lover, Maynard, I have not seen evidence that he ever tried to cover it up.
To mention the coverup, by the Church, of priestly child abuse is no cheap shot. It is a coverup that is a thousand times worse than all the coverups by all public schools everywhere combined. Considering that the coverup is by the Roman Catholic Church, of all institutions, it's more like one thousand times one thousand times worse.
I know that strictly speaking it wasn't incest, but I think to the other children in the Farrow family, Woody's affair had the same impact as real incest. The ambience of incest. That also might have been what attracted Woody as well. Certainly Soon Yi doesn't nowadays look like the kind of woman a successful movie director marries........I was a fan of Woody Allen (and Salinger too). I suppose there's more to these men than the squalor of their libidos, but that squalor is part of the equation. I still admire their work, but the personae they presented were more artificial than art.
"Who turns out books that enter the national consciousness again and again and easily?"
Glenn Reynolds.
You might want to read Dorothy Rabinowitz, Meade.
An excerpt from her book.
You've got the White Knight thing bad, which has its plusses and minuses.
Here's what Soon-yi said in 1992:
"
I'm not a retarded little underage flower who was raped, molested and spoiled by some evil stepfather-not by a long shot. I'm a psychology major at college who fell for a man who happens to be the ex-boyfriend of Mia. I admit it's offbeat, but let's not get hysterical. The tragedy here is that, because of Mia's vindictiveness, the children must suffer. I will always have a feeling of love for her because of the opportunities she gave me, but it's hard to forgive much that followed."
There is something incredibly funny about Allen, who was held up to me as an icon of the correctly sensitive man by my professors when I was in college, falling into this shit.
I ignore his movies because I'm not interested in the travails of rich, bored Upper West Siders.
Chinese sexual mores are different than ours. Way different. I don't know whether this woman grew up in China, but in a way, that doesn't matter. Those cultural sexual mores are a lot deeper than ideology. Should we criminalize all sexual behavior that differs from Western feminist-approved behavior?
As a for instance, in the Philippines, it is common for a successful Chinese man to have several wives, each maintained in a separate home.
The preference is for very young women, too. And marriage is largely seen as originating in a financial arrangement, not necessarily a love relationship.
My Filipino extended family sees nothing wrong with this so long as the man fulfills his obligation to each of his families.
Your point is what - that J D Salinger and Woody Allen should have moved to the Phillipines where they would have fit right in?
I made two separate points:
1) I doubt that Salinger's mistress was an unwilling participant, and I suspect that she was probably an eager participant who's now looking for a payday.
2) You might be surprised to discover that other places in the world do not share your Midwestern Christian sexual mores. I was pretty surprised to discover this myself. In other words, what seems odd to you about this behavior by Soon-yi, is not seen in the same light in traditional Chinese society.
The entire world does not run by the rules of West Lafayette, or my hometown in Illinois.
When Allen and Farrow were together, they adopted two children and had one of their own. Soon-Yi is the sister of those three children -- is she now their stepmother as well?
This interview with Allen a couple of years ago says he has no contact with those three children. Not surprised.
I'm always dubious about claims like this woman is making about Salinger.
Those pretty young things, more often than not, are quite aggressive about seeking out sexual relationships with older artists.
ST: Salinger approached Maynard by mail on the basis of an article she wrote which was published in the NY Times Magazine.
He was 53 years-old. She was 18. He was an internationally famous writer adored by the young. She was an insecure, bright, anorexic kid from a struggling family, trying to find a place in an Ivy League school where she felt entirely out of place. She dropped out of Yale to live with him. He dumped her ten months later.
Salinger repeated somethling like this pattern with many young women. It turned out he was corresponding with a teenage girl fan even when Maynard lived with him. Salinger was a predator.
Unless one refuses to censure anyone's behavior unless it is outright criminal, I don't see how people are letting Salinger off on this. It wasn't criminal, but it wasn't right either.
I'm not fond of feminists trying to have their cake and eat it too either, but I side with Maynard here.
"The entire world does not run by the rules of West Lafayette, or my hometown in Illinois."
True.
Also true: throughout the entire world, whatever the language, a pompous egocentric windbag is a pompous egocentric windbag.
Also true: throughout the entire world, whatever the language, a pompous egocentric windbag is a pompous egocentric windbag.
You're speaking of yourself, or of Althouse?
"I side with Maynard here"
So do the phony feminists - the one's who purport to want equality under the law but willingly play the victim card whenever it gives them an unfair advantage.
Well, I'm not any kind of feminist, phony or real.
So do the phony feminists - the one's who purport to want equality under the law but willingly play the victim card whenever it gives them an unfair advantage.
Meade: I laid out my case. Does anything go with a man like Salinger and a teenage girl like Maynard, as long as Salinger doesn't abduct her or beat her up?
What would you think if Maynard were your daughter or sister?
Does anything go with a man like Salinger and a teenage girl like Maynard, as long as Salinger doesn't abduct her or beat her up?
She was 18 years old. The decision was hers.
What is it you propose be done to Salinger?
I have daughters and granddaughters. Once they reach a certain age, their decisions are their own. There are plenty of things I'd prefer they didn't do, but I don't delude myself into thinking that I've got a lot of power to influence that once they reach the age of consent.
Again, I'm not saying Salinger broke the law.
I am saying Salinger did something wrong. He exploited a barely legal girl who had far less power and far less ability to take care of herself in pursuit of his own gratification and then discarded her.
"What would you think if Maynard were your daughter or sister?"
I'd think I did a pretty poor job of raising my daughter. Or, I'd think - good thing I have two sisters and at least one is not a Yale freshman who has lost her mind.
Meade: So, Salinger's behavior is OK with you?
So, Salinger's behavior is OK with you?
It's a long story, and in deference to Meade's objection to windbaggery, I'll tell it on my own time... but...
I've discovered through very bitter experience that judging another man's romantic behavior, when you aren't really privy to the intimate reality of that behavior, is an incredibly bad idea.
Men who like young women...
Were they below age of consent? That would be a crime. Above? No crime.
Salinger wrote a few good books, and then went away. He is over rated due to lack of material.
The ambience of incest. That also might have been what attracted Woody as well.
It might have been what attracted your father to your mother, too. Who can say?
What we can say is that there's no rational reason to believe it.
Chinese sexual mores are different than ours. Way different. I don't know whether this woman grew up in China, but in a way, that doesn't matter.
She's Korean.
She's Korean.
Shows how much attention I pay to Woody Allen.
Korean women are an entirely different kettle of fish, with their own unique set of sexual mores.
Well now.
Lem posted this topic at 4:54 PM (blog time, which is 3:54 CST) on Sunday afternoon.
Meade stops by at 11:28 PM (blog time, which is 10:28 CST) and leaves a comment.
Althouse posts this very same topic at 10:54 PM CST, some sixteen minutes later.
Plus - I posted: Wow, another totally helpless feminist. Here I thought they were all strong and sexually empowered and so forth. on Lem's blog, and -
Meade's first comment on Althouse's post is: A true feminist would be outraged at such unfair self-serving victim-posing. But it gets her opinion - bashing a dead man - published in the NYT, which seems to be her entire aim.
Heh.
Haz, Great reporting!
It's your PI skills rubbing off on me.
Michael Haz, well said!
Go back, Haz!!! It's a tr...
Too late.
Tale as old as time: assholes taking advantage of those weaker than they; operating under the 'if it feels good do it' school of decisionmaking.
I tell my daughters that people who live to satisfy their appetites aren't people; they're animals.
Hopefully they don't find that out for themselves the hard way.
I think both Salinger and Woody Allen pass the Holden Caulfield test. These are men one would like to be friends with. I don't think their moral deficits are as great as those of,say, Norman Mailer, but who looks to Norman Mailer for wisdom and moral guidance. It's not that what they did was so awful but that we expected so much more of them.
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