Salinger and Solitude

Americans are fascinated by people who voluntarily choose to shut their gates against the maddening crowds. Well, fascinated by famous people who do so. If you're just some guy living in a cave in Santa Cruz, you're probably just a sad failure of a human being who uses Eastern spirituality to justify his lack of motivation.

On the other hand, if you're J.D. Salinger, and you walked around campus proclaiming that you were going to write The Great American Novel--and then actually did it--shouldn't you stick around to enjoy the mindless adoration of vapid acolytes? We bought your book, so we each bought a little tiny piece of your soul. Now you have to tell us what you had for breakfast, your views on the current political situation, and whether or not you like Labradoodles.

The fascination with Salinger's relentless solitude far outstrips interest in his work (what little of it there was, after all). The same is true for Thomas Pynchon, another author invariably described as a "recluse," which puts one rather in mind of a poisonous spider. The fact that they've made a point of anonymity and silence seems to offend people, who then become quite determined to scale the walls (literally and figuratively--people were apparently always trying to get into the Salinger estate--which is usually described as a "compound," a word one tends to associate with cults, and which doesn't get applied to, say, Oprah's house in Santa Barbara). It is strange, because by and large most Americans don't care at all about authors, and wouldn't recognize John Updike if he foisted his aged, impotent alter ego on them at Starbucks.

Americans do not do well with rejection (which is why we dislike the French so much--because they don't seem to like us), so to want nothing so much as to be left alone is taken as more than writerly reticence. It causes unease as it implies the rejection of taken-for-granted values; self-evident truths, if you will. The point of writing a book (or any other endeavor not directly associated with commerce), is to get acclaim if not wealth (though preferably, of course, both). It is to get a seat at the table of influence. It is to elevate oneself. Otherwise, what is it all for? Why bother? That someone could not want to eat the bitter fruit of fame, that they would refuse to be the object of adoration or idolization, that they would wish to keep some part of themselves to themselves: this is now anathema to the American public, almost all of whom would gladly trade their life story for shekels and spotlights.

Salinger's withdrawal, and his refusal to write for public consumption, is therefore puzzling and disconcerting. He wouldn't even give interviews to explain why he wouldn't give interviews. His solitude obliquely critiqued our national obsession with attention, our perpetual toddler-hood. When asked what we want, all we can say is "More!" And Salinger said, instead, "Enough."