According to Leon Edel, the art of biography is a “noble” endeavor. But in our celebrity-crazed era, when prurient interests have supplanted respect for artistic accomplishment, the most popular biographies are those emphasizing lurid details. Joan Peyser’s psychosexual exploration of Leonard Bernstein anticipated Arianna Stassinopoulous Huffington’s even nastier and more controversial reproachment of Picasso. With a passionate impudence, the 80’s are displaying an unhealthy interest in demythologizing yesterday’s heroes. And within this hostile environment, where it pays to snoop for the ultimate putdown, Ian Hamilton’s “search” for J.D. Salinger seems that much more inexcusable, since it sets out to expose the life of a writer who devoted considerable energy to securing his privacy. The only thing tasteful about Hamilton’s In Search of J.D. Salinger is the subdued design of its dust jacket.
In all fairness to Hamilton, many of us share his fascination for Salinger. The rare photograph, for example, taken from behind as he walks up the hill from his mailbox or returns to his house proper from his studio cottage, has prompted a million words on the state of his health and the circumstances of his life. If Confucius had given as much thought to Salinger as Salinger has evidently given to Eastern mysticism, the oriental philosopher might have concluded that “he who wants to be the center of attention should remove himself from the picture altogether.”
At one point, Hamilton goes so far as to suggest Salinger’s reason for closeting himself in the first place may have been, ironically, a ploy for attention. At another, Hamilton assumes, naturally enough, that Salinger went into hiding because he had something to hide. But beyond suggesting that this “something” relates to Salinger’s serving as a “spy” during the Second World War, and “that somewhere in his spying past there is a secret so secret that he now has no choice but to dwell perpetually in shadows, in daily fear, no doubt, of some terrible exposure,” Hamilton doesn’t even hazard a guess as to what that “secret” might be.
Hamilton has written a highly-regarded biography of Robert Lowell and has a scholarly background that would suggest he would rise above any ludicrous desire to “dish” his subject. Hamilton insists that his mission to capture Salinger’s life was originally founded on good faith. When he embarked on the biography in 1982, armed with a $100,000 advance from Random House, he was bringing with him a lifelong admiration for The Catcher in the Rye. But six years, two court cases, and three versions later, the biography Hamilton ended up with is a far cry from an appreciation. By the time it was over, Hamilton was itching to pounce on Salinger, and only too eager to denigrate even Salinger’s fiction, which he used to admire so much.
The single most interesting question regarding Salinger is, what have his literary efforts consisted of ever since he went into hiding? After two decades the closest thing to an answer has been provided not by Hamilton, but by the defense attorney who compelled Salinger under oath to reply, “Could I tell you or would I tell you? . . . Just a work of fiction. That’s all. That’s the only description I can really give it. . . . It’s almost impossible to define. I work with characters, and as they develop, I just go on from there.”
The book was originally scheduled to be published by Random House in August 1986, but Hamilton was coerced by Salinger’s objections to modify his first version, which incorporated 200 letters written by Salinger between 1939 and 1961. After removing the offending letters from the text but retaining their content, Hamilton lost a federal appeals case in January 1987, and was forbidden to publish his altered version on the grounds that even paraphrased, the material in the letters belongs to Salinger. As others have noted, it was ironic that Salinger was forced to emerge from seclusion and become front-page news for the sake of maintaining his cryptic persona in a court of law.
By revising his biography a third time and finally publishing it in May, Hamilton may have abided by the letter of the law. But by eliminating all evidence of the letters, he has produced a book that isn’t worth reading. To fill out the pages of his already slim biography, Hamilton had to come up with some new material. What he has done is intersperse his unavoidably inconclusive, crazy-quilt version of Salinger’s life with discussions of the problems he encountered in writing it. Hamilton includes descriptions of the ethical dilemmas that roamed through his biographer’s mind while doing his research. Unfortunately, this results in little more than self-conscious babble as a running side-text.
“It would be a biography, yes, but it would also be a semispoof in which the biographer would play a leading, sometimes comic role,” explains Hamilton in a typical passage. “I set off for New York—or we did: me grappling feebly with the moral issues and my biographizing alter ego, now my constant companion, merely eager to get on with the job,” he writes in another.
In lieu of pertinent facts and information, Hamilton provides catty character investigation. It’s as if Hamilton were no longer a revered literary critic, but one of the “section men” that Franny tells Lane about. “A section man’s a person that takes over a class when the professor isn’t there,” explains Franny. “He’s usually a graduate student or something. Anyway, if it’s a course in Russian literature, say, he comes in . . . starts knocking Turgenev for about a half hour. Then, when he’s finished, when he’s completely ruined Turgenev for you, he starts talking about Stendhal or somebody he wrote his thesis for his M.A. on. Where I go, the English Department has about ten little section men running around ruining things for people, and they’re all so brilliant they can hardly open their mouths—pardon the contradiction. I mean if you get into an argument with them, all they do is get this terribly benign expression . . . ”
[In Search of J.D. Salinger, by Ian Hamilton, New York: Random House]
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