Hapworth ...
Brian Gross (bgross@worldweb.net)
Tue, 15 Jul 1997 15:05:56 -0400
I came across this in my files and thought I'd share it with the list.
Brian
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NPR
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
FEBRUARY 24, 1997, MONDAY
Salinger's Book
HIGHLIGHT:
"Hapworth 16, 1924" is the title of a J.D. Salinger nove originally published
in 1965 in the New Yorker magazine. A small press in Virginia is planning to
publish a hardcover edition. It will be the first 'new' Salinger work to be
published in 34 years. NPR's Susan Stamberg reports on the 'advance' reviews
of the book.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Linda Wertheimer.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: And I'm Robert Siegel.
For the first time in more than three decades, there may soon be a new book out
by J.D. Salinger. Word is that the last short story Salinger published, which
took almost an entire issue of The New Yorker when it appeared in 1965, is to
come out in book form.
Salinger's novel "Catcher in the Rye" and his short stories written in the
1940s and 50s have attained cult status. But the 78- year-old author has
lived in seclusion since he moved to New Hampshire in 1953.
The possibility of a new Salinger hardcover has spawned the kind of media
attention that the reclusive writer would most dislike.
NPR's Susan Stamberg reports.
SUSAN STAMBERG, NPR REPORTER: Want to know about Salinger fans? They razor
blade his stories out of library copies of old New Yorkers. They go back to
1940s Collier's magazines, thermo-fax early works, set them in type -- all of
this is totally illegal -- and publish the purloined prose privately for
friends.
I, myself, in 1955, bought two copies of the November 19th New Yorker so I
could cut up Salinger's "Raise High The Roof Beam Carpenters" and paste it with
immense care into three small notebooks to keep for eternity.
So with excitement, I phoned the tiny publishing company in Alexandria,
Virginia that is putting Salinger's last story, "Hapworth 16, 1924" between
hardcovers.
PHONE TAPE MESSAGE, PUBLISHER OF "HAPWORTH 16, 1924": This is Orkeisey's (ph)
Press. There has been a delay in the publication of "Hapworth 16, 1924."
Definite publication information is not available at this time. We apologize
for the indefiniteness and the confusion...
STAMBERG: It's the third delay. At first, Hapworth was said to be coming out
in January, then early March. Now, Roger Lathbury (ph), who runs Orkeisey's
Press, says the problem is his -- some kind of glitch. The book will be out
in the first part of the year.
This is the first part of the year. You mean by July? I hope so. How many
copies? No answer. How'd you get permission to publish? No answer. Roger
Lathbury, who also teaches American Lit at George Mason University in
Virginia, is the J.D. Salinger of publishers. He just won't talk.
People connected to Salinger are like that. The writer William Maxwell, for
instance. He was a fiction editor at the New Yorker for 40 years.
Do you remember this particular story, this Hapworth story?
WILLIAM MAXWELL, FORMER FICTION EDITOR, THE NEW YORKER
MAGAZINE: Oh, yes.
STAMBERG: Yeah. What -- what was your reaction to it?
MAXWELL: I'd rather not talk about it, actually. I have been, and I hope still
am, a friend of Salinger, and he doesn't really like to be talked about. So
I'd just rather not do it.
STAMBERG: William Maxwell did tell one story from Salinger's early days with
the New Yorker. Maxwell was his editor then. Once, as the magazine was going
to press, the head proofreader pointed out a sentence she felt needed a comma.
MAXWELL: And I tried to get Salinger on the phone and couldn't reach him. And
she convinced me that it was vitally necessary, so I said go ahead, and they
put it in. And he was mournfully forgiving about it, because he didn't want a
comma in that place. He didn't really need editing. He was a perfectionist.
STAMBERG: Jerome David Salinger's long-standing editor at the New Yorker was
William Shawn (ph), who ran the magazine. In a 1961 dedication, Salinger urged
that quote "lover of the long-shot, protector of the un-prolific, defender of
the hopelessly flamboyant, to accept this pretty skimpy looking book."
The book was "Franny and Zooey," two stories that had first appeared in the New
Yorker in 1955 and '57 -- stories about the Glass family. That family -- Les
and Bessie, retired vaudevillians, and their seven gifted children, Seymour,
Buddy, BooBoo (ph), the twins Walt and Waker, Zooey and Franny, figure in a
number of Salinger stories, including one that is considered a masterpiece: "A
Perfect Day For Banana Fish."
SOUND OF A CROWD
SUSAN SHREVE (PH), NOVELIST: One of the things it does is just knock your socks
off every time, even though you know the end.
STAMBERG: At a party in Washington, novelist Susan Shreve talked about
Salinger. She teaches him at George Mason -- that's publisher Roger Lathbury's
university. "A Perfect Day For Banana Fish" is the story of Seymour Glass, the
eldest son, and his last day on earth.
On vacation with his wife in Florida, Seymour chats on the beach with a little
girl, then goes back to his hotel room and fires a bullet through his right
temple. He is 31 years old. The loss of
Seymour, the life of Seymour -- brilliant, mystic, Zen-like, and saintly --
dominates the Glass family in story after story.
The Glass's are New Yorkers, upper middle class, very urban -- educated,
obsessively devoted to one another. But despite those particularities, Susan
Shreve says the Glass's are universal.
SHREVE: There was something about that family, and the loneliness and isolation
of that family, that was as true in the sort of lower middle class, Middle
West, as it was in New York City -- a different place, but a similar, sort of,
sadness.
STAMBERG: That sadness -- the loneliness and Glass family love -- is part of
the last story Salinger published, "Hapworth 16, 1924."
SOUND OF PAGES TURNING
In her sunny Washington living room, writer Faye Moskowitz (ph), who teaches
Salinger at George Washington University, sorts through a pile of xeroxed pages
-- a copy of Hapworth sent to me years ago by a listener. I've asked Faye
Moskowitz to evaluate the story.
FAYE MOSKOWITZ, SALINGER EXPERT AND TEACHER, GEORGE
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: If I were a writing teacher talking to Salinger
about this piece, I would say: Darling, cut, cut, cut.
STAMBERG: Hapworth is a very long story. It's a letter seven- year-old Seymour
Glass writes from summer camp -- Camp Simon Hapworth on Hapworth Lake in
Hapworth, Maine.
Like most campers, Seymour complains about the food, but his complaints don't
sound like other kids: "While the food itself is not atrocious, it is cooked
without a morsel of affection or inspiration. Each string bean and simple
carrot arriving on the camper's plate quite stripped of its tiny vegetal soul."
MOSKOWITZ: Tedious. I missed the point of it. I didn't feel there was
anything climactic it. And, in short, it bored me to tears.
STAMBERG: You realize, but not right away, that little Seymour Glass is
miserable at Camp Simon Hapworth. He is wracked with homesickness, but braving
through it with his interminable letter.
Written in the self-conscious language of a brilliant little kid who memorizes
25 new difficult words a day, and then just has to keep using them. Young
Seymour, the family saint, has great powers. He can see into the future, and
Zen-like, suggests he's been here before in other appearances.
The charm of Salinger's earlier stories and his coming of age novel "Catcher in
the Rye," is missing. But at the heart of Hapworth is the same sensibility
that continues to draw young people, in particular, to Salinger's writing.
Again, Faye Moskowitz.
MOSKOWITZ: One of the things that does come through seems to me very
Salinger-esque, and that is this notion of the beauty of the innocence of
children. And there is a kind of beauty in their very unawareness of their
situation, and on the other hand, absolutely deeply-felt knowledge that life
is being miserable to them.
So, that is something again that I think will resonate with people who have the
patience to read it.
STAMBERG: And the patience to wait for it in hardcover, if it ever gets
published. There's always the possibility that the reclusive of Hapworth 16,
1924 will quash the deal. All this attention is precisely what he says he does
not want.
J.D. Salinger does not grant interviews, but in 1980 he agreed to meet with a
reporter for the State Times Morning Advocate of Baton Rouge. It was his first
substantive interview in 27 years. Earlier, he'd spoken with a high school
student.
Betty Epps (ph) sent Salinger a letter. He replied in person, walking from the
covered bridge in his small New England town, right up to her car. They spoke
for 25 minutes.
BETTY EPPS, FORMER HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT AND LAST INTERVIEWER
OF J.D. SALINGER: And I realized after we'd been talking about five or six
minutes, that he was speaking pure Zen.
STAMBERG: In other words, you had to fight to understand what he was talking
about?
EPPS: Well, he didn't intend for you to understand it. That was what I came to
know because I asked him why he became a writer. And he looked up into those
green mountains of Vermont, and he said, quote, you know I'll quote what he
said -- paraphrase it: "He said there's so much that can't be known."
STAMBERG: In 1980, Betty Epps told me Salinger said he continued to write.
EPPS: He writes regularly.
STAMBERG: Did you ask him why he's not publishing?
EPPS: Yes I did. He said "I refuse to publish." He said "there is a marvelous
peace in not publishing. " He said "there's a stillness." And the Zen again,
you see. And we talked about that. And he said "when you publish," he said,
"the world thinks you owe them something." He said "if you don't publish, they
don't know what you're doing."
STAMBERG: J.D. Salinger used a Zen saying to introduce "Nine Stories," a
collection of his finest work. "We know the sound of two hands clapping, but
what is the sound of one hand clapping?" In the decades since he last
published, we can imagine that Mr. Salinger has been pondering that conundrum.
If "Hapworth 16, 1924" does become a book, he will again have to contend with
the sound of applause, or its absence.
In Washington, I'm Susan Stamberg.
_____________________________________
Brian Gross ** Washington, D.C.
b g r o s s @ w o r l d w e b . n e t