I Cannot Wait To Hear What Joyce Has To Say About Salinger!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                           This is so interesting to me, girls, because I have such an ambivalent relationship with both authors.  As a teen, I thought Salinger's was "the voice of truth," but it had nothing to do with "The Catcher In The Rye."  To this day, I regard his signature work as good, but overrated, preferring instead, the book "Franny And Zooey," and anything written about the Glass Family.  I always saw myself more as Zooey Glass, rather than Holden Caufield.

                                              Joyce was an author I came to at a young age--when she was young (we are barely a year apart; she older!) --fueled with resentment, over a success that I righteously felt should have been mine, not knowing what the price of that success would hold for Joyce, nor what direction life would take me, in order to give me my own voice, which I then so ardently craved.

                                                Forty years later, I can appreciate Salinger's linguistic brilliance, but have to agree with Joyce, when she calls him a "victimizer," not just of herself, but of others.  At the time of the Joyce-Salinger relationship, which someone like me, who follows literary gossip, was aware of, back then,  I
found myself asking of myself--If I had written a published piece, and, say, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, or Gore Vidal (all of whom were still alive, and all of whom, by then, I had read, and admired, as
writers) had written to me, might I have taken up with them?  At that time my answer would have been an unhesitant "Yes;" now, seeing the effect Salinger had on Joyce, I am less so, because, had this trajectory happened, who is to say what kind of shape I would be in now?  I was carrying enough issues of my own at that age; this would inevitably have added to them.

                                                  So, at my present age, I am glad things happened the way they did--and didn't--and I can appreciate the horror of what Joyce must have gone through--and apologize for the distorted perception I let other emotions of my own give her.

                                                    I think Salinger was a brilliant writer. But he was also an arrogant prick.  I would hope that the film makes both abundantly clear, and I am eager to hear how Joyce contributes to that.

                                                      However, with regard to what I said in my recent post, where I cited David Gilbert, like most straight, male writers, always including the wife and children in their publicity, as some sort of way of proving their heterosexuality, this same male, heterosexual literary cognoscenti seems determined to ban together in some kind of  fraternal solidarity, to protect Salinger.  With him gone, whom are they really protecting?  Themselves?  And what are they trying to prove?

                                                       And it is not like I write from some kind of self unawareness.  I am perfectly well aware that much of what motivates my actions is to proof to myself how mistaken my parents were, for placing me, early on, in an educational situation that was far beneath my capacities.

                                                          Salinger had his PTSD, which was the war.  He never got over it.
If what I just spilled is mine, so be it.  But I don't go writing letters to teen-aged boys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                            I cannot wait to see the Salinger film. My fear, though is the wrong viewpoint will have the last word.

                                                             Or the last laugh.



foundm