Joyce and Jerry are never going to be great friends again. With the benefit of hindsight it seems amazing they ever were, let alone rather more than that. Granted, they are both writers, but these days it is their shared occupation which divides rather than unites them. Joyce is Joyce Maynard, a student of the human condition, though only her own. For 25 years, her beat has been the curious twists and turns of her personal narrative: the arrival of her children, the alcoholism of her father, the death of her mother. She writes newspaper columns about herself and books about herself. She runs a newsletter called Domestic Affairs and a web site full of the cosy gossip and natter of family life.And Jerry? Jerry is J.D. Salinger, author of the original novel of adolescent dislocation, Catcher in the Rye. And we know all about him. Or at least we know what we do not know. He is the author as recluse, the guy who is famous for not being there. Since 1953, he has lived in seclusion in Cornish, NewHampshire. He has not published a book since 1965 and has barely been photographed, let alone given an interview. Maybe it would have stayed that way if, 26 years ago, Jerry had not read an article Joyce had written in The New York Times called ``An 18-year-old looks back on life'' and written her a letter of approval; a single letter that turned into a correspondence which turned in to a 10-month love affair.
Next month sees the publication of Maynard's memoir At Home in The World. If you ask her she will tell you it is her story. But in truth, it's the first detailed portrait of J.D. Salinger the world has been allowed, and one written from the close proximity of a shared bed.
So here it is: according to Joyce Maynard's book, J.D. `Jerry' Salinger, is a bitter, misanthropic man, fascinated by the wilder shores of homeopathy and with an obsession about what he eats that verges on a disorder. He hates literary prizes, literary reviews and New York intellectuals. He hates, Maynard says,``writers who seem to court an image with as much calculation as movie stars''.
He loves Hitchcock movies and From Here to Eternity, the first Pink Panther film, The 39 Steps and The Thin Man. He likes Glenn Miller and the Andrews Sisters, Mel Brooks and Johnny Carson, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. In other words, he likes junk television. But he hates junk food. He writes every day and has a safe as big as a room behind his study which, when Maynard arrives in 1972, contains the manuscripts of two completed novels.
``I keep feeling the irrepressible urge to cut off my ear,'' he announces, ``and catch the next train to Antarctica.'' But he doesn't because there are still things to do around the house, and in the vegetable patch. ``Jerry,'' Maynard confides, ``is an expert ballroom dancer.'' It is the one attractive detail.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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