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The Life and Works of J.D. Salinger · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we want to let you know that we
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  Speaker 2: on Friday, January twenty sixth, right, Chuck.
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• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Okay, welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Jerry's here too. We just want to be alone, which
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: makes this stuff. You should know. That's right. That was
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Greta Garbo doing JD. Salinger.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Oh I've never heard that.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: You never heard Greta Garbo say that I vanted to
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: be alone?
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: No?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I haven't. Oh yeah, another recluse, right.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's why I said that she could really probably
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: identify with JD's Salinger.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what Sallenger? Have you read? If any?
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I read for Esme with Love and Squalor as recently
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: as last night, and it's good.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Huh.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: It was great. I actually feel like I really missed
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: out not reading Salinger twenty years ago or thirty years
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: ago something like that. I just didn't and I don't
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: know why. But yeah, he was really good.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was an English major, so I read a
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: lot of his stuff. Catcher in the Rye was one
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: that I'm actually do because I would. I was doing
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: a thing where I was kind of rereading it every
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: ten years or so, because that's a book wherein your
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: perspective as a reader can really change how you view
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the book. And I found that after I reread it
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the second time, and I was like, hey, wait a minute,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I should reread this thing like every decade or so
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: so I'm definitely due. And then I read nine Stories.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I read almost all of the Glass Family stuff. I
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: read most of this stuff that was popular and widely
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: available and wasn't just like, you know, something in the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: New Yorker that you know was never put in book
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: form or whatever. So I read a lot of stuff.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it sounds like your relationship with Salinger kind
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: of mirrors my relationship with the early works of Adam Sandler.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Rewatch Heavy Gilmore probably every ten years to revisit it,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: see how it's changed, because I've changed.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: You know, that's really funny. But Adam Sandler isn't as
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: complicated and potentially troublesome and problematic as JD. Salinger was
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: as a person. And what we'll get to all that stuff.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: That sounds like somebody who hasn't really looked into Adam
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Sandler's early works. Okay, so yeah, I had no idea
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: about the problematicness of JD. Salinger. I just knew he
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: was a revered writer, a recluse, And now I realized
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: like he was a really great writer too, in the
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: most approachable way. But the thing that struck me about
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: reading about JD. Salinger, which is one of my favorite
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: things to do, like reading about a good movie or
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: reading about an author or something like that, so I
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: got to do that researching this episode. One of the
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: things that struck me is as approachable and almost like
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: folksy as his writing.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Is, uh huh, he is.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Beloved by like literati types as well. Yeah, Normally he
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: would be pooh pooed and look down upon, And I
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: think maybe he was during his career, his actual career,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: by some of the more like literati types, but today
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: he's as revered as anybody, maybe even more so, because
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: I think there's also a bit of affection that people
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: hold for him and his writing in addition to, you know,
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: feeling reverent toward it.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I also think the disappearing act added a
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: lot to his legend. I mean, I'm not the only
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: one that thinks set but it's impossible to say what
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: that would have looked like had he just kept publishing
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: stuff and stayed in the public eye. But when you disappear,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: you're going to add a lot of mystique and interest,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I think, yeah, exactly. And by the way, if you
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: hear some distant construction noise today, there's nothing I can
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: do about that.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, I hope that came through in the Crane episode.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I don't think it did so.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you've never heard of JD. Salinger, we should
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: probably give you a little background. He published The Catcher
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: in the Rye in nineteen fifty one. It dropped like
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: a neutron bomb on America and essentially created the current
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: popular image of a teenager, especially disaffected, disillusioned teenagers who
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: are starting to realize like the world is not what
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: they've been told it is their entire lives up to
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: that point.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Phony.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: Perhaps he started that.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, phony, He is that word a lot.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, phony, and it's hilarious. It's a hilarious word, especially
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: when you use it earnestly.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, I like it.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: But that was like the protagonist of Ketcher in the
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Rye is probably his favorite word. Holden Callfield's favorite word
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: was phony. And that's pretty much all you need to know.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: We can end the episode here, really.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Or we could go back to when he was born.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Jerome David Salinger and Manhattan, New York in nineteen nineteen
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: on New Year's Day to Miriam Sallenger and Soul Sallenger.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: He has a sister, named Or had a sister named Doris.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: It was seven years older that he remained close to,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and he was Sonny to his parents and his sister.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: His dad was Jewish and was he was an executive.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: He worked for a meat and cheese importing business and
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: was not super close to his son. He didn't get
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: his writing. He was sort of that, you know, kind
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: of what you would think of the nineteen twenties and
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: thirties father who just wasn't much of a father, wasn't
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: around much, didn't put a lot, didn't invest a lot
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: of time and his children, while his mom, Miriam, was
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: the opposite. She was a very doting mother, Irish Catholic
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: woman who loved Sonny. Young j D. Thought he was
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: going to be a great writer. He would joke at
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: one point to his friend that she walked me to
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: school until I was twenty four years old. Dedicated Ketcher
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: to his mom. And there's this very sweet story that
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: day found he read a full biography. I think of
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: him for this episode, but when he was eighteen, he
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: was working at writing. He wrote from the time he
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: was very young, and his mom slipped a little message
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: under the door that said, I accept your story. Consider
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: it a masterpiece. Check for one thousand dollars in the
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: mail Curtis Publishing Company. Pretty neat, pretty great.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So he was raised I guess upper middle class,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: and I mean, like that's a that's a pretty typical combination,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: like a distant father and a doting mom. Yeah, that
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: produces a certain kind of kid, and it seemed to
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: have produced J. D. Salinger pretty pretty predictably. But the
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: fact that he grew up on Park Avenue in Manhattan
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: and went to camp with other Jewish kids every summer,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: like he had like a very typical I guess childhood,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: but that seemed to have converged with like a pretty
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: sensitive type. Like he was a sensitive person and that
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: allowed him to kind of see things for you know,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: what they really were, and he also had a talent
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: for putting that into understandable language, and all of that
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  Speaker 2: put together made him the amazing writer that he became.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, he was going by Jerry to his friends
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: and people that he knew personally, and enrolled initially at
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: a place called McBurnie Preparatory School, a private school on
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: the Upper West Side, And he was kind of a
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: kind of a wise acre little sardonic, little sarcastic. He
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: did not make great grades. They pulled him out after
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: his sophomore year and sent him to military school, Valley
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania. And this was a direct
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: model for if you've read Ketcher and the Rye of
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Holden Callfield's Pencey Prep School. It was a very kind
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: of autobiographical in some ways. Take you know, we'll also
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: talk about some ways where he diverged from Holden call
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Field for sure, but he was a big he like,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: he did great. That was one of the big differences
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: his Holden Callfield was not happy at Pency Prep. And
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: it seemed that jad Salinger really got a lot out
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: of Valley Forge and was very, very active.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was. He joined the drama club. He found acting,
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: which apparently was something I think he discovered acting at
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: camp one year and was like, I love this. So
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: he did every play he possibly could. At Valley Forge.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: He was the editor of the yearbook. I mean, like,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: you know, disaffected, isolated types don't usually become editors of
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: the yearbook at their school. Yeah, for sure. It was
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: a real distinction between his experience in Holden Callfield's experience
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: When he got to college, though, it was a different story,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: and probably because Valley Forge was very structured and rigid
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: and he knew what to expect and he thrived in that.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: As we'll see, he also seemed to have drive fairly
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: well in the Army. In college, one of the first
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: things you realize is like nobody's keeping tabs on you,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Like you have to motivate yourself to get up into
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: a class, and that can be really difficult. It's difficult
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: for everybody at first typically, but it can be like
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: like a non starter for some people who are ironically
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: non starters.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember in college, I was eager and I
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: was all in. But you skip your first class and
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: then you're like, oh, wait a minute, you can do that,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: and nobody nobody.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you hit out in your apartment the whole day
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: waiting to get in trouble, and nobody came.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the teachers keep track. I remember in college some
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: of them kept a certain amount of absences were allowed
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: or whatever, but some didn't at all. The big classes
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and the teachers like, hey, you don't have to be
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: here if you don't want to. It's like it's to
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: your detriment, and you will learn that.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: You'd be like, why do you have to say our
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: last part? It was going so well.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: He found that, like you said, at college, he went
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: to NYU, but there in Greenwich Village there were too
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: many other things going on at that time. He flunked out,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: and his father was like, all right, you should get
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: into business, like you know, follow your old man into
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: the meat and cheese business. So he shipped him off
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: to Poland in nineteen thirty seven to study under the
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: bacon king of Poland, not the sausage king of Chicago.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: And Salinger was like, this is gross. I'm not doing this.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: He went to Vienna and lived with a Jewish family
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: and fell in love. He learned German and fell in
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: love with their daughter, and very sadly that family did
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: not make it through the war. He left in nineteen
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: thirty eight, just before the Nazis came into power, and
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: that family did not survive, and he wrote a short
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: story a sort of fictionalized version of that many years later,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: called A Girl I Knew.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he tried college again here going to a place
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: called Ursinius, Orsinius Ursinus. That's what I'm going with your
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: valley Fords in Pennsylvania and didn't work out again. Then
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: he when he came back home, he said, all right,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to become a writer. And his mom
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: was like, all right, that's cool, and his dad was like, no,
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: you're going to get in the ham and cheese business,
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: like I said. And apparently they came up with a
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: compromise that he would take writing classes at NY you
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: were Columbia. I can't remember which one. I think Columbia
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: and he locked out by taking a class by given
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: by the editor Whitburnett. And Whitburnett had a knack along
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: with his wife, who also edited this magazine Story Magazine,
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: his wife Hallie or Hayley, they had discovered or would
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: go on to discover some pretty like a pretty amazing
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: stable of writers.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: If you ask y, Yeah, for sure you should go
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: ahead get such a great setup, set yourself up.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Oh oh thanks. There was Williams Common Tennessee mm HM
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Truman Capote who well known for his his rough and
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: tumble westerns, and Norman Mahler who wrote The Jeffersons.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you've got you've got Norman Maylor, Treatman Compodi Tennessee,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Williams and J. D. Salinger on your list of writers
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: you've discovered, you're doing pretty well.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing, like they basically discovered the who's who
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: of twentieth century men writers.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so he at well, how'd you say it, personists?
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Or yeah, yeah, at ersiness. It was sort of like
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: other college He wasn't taking it super seriously until one day,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: as the story goes, wit Burnett was reading aloud the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Faulkner short story that evening sun and he didn't apparently
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: didn't like read it very dramatically. He just sort of
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: read it straight, just read the words as they were,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: and Sallenger something about that really to hold of him,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: and he said, this is the way forward for me.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: I want to write in a way that doesn't get
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: in the way of a reader want I want the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: reader to discover the emotion and the meaning by reading
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: it in you know, maybe a podcaster one day. We'll
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: read Catcher in the Rye every ten years and take
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: a different meaning because I han't explicitly sort of said
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: what the meaning is, and like you were saying that
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: his writing was. It wasn't fancy. It was very sort
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: of plain and accessible, and that's I think why he
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: got through to so many people.
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, The thing is is, I don't know if it's
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: his attention to detail or is I for detailers as
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: ability to describe things in detail without becoming bogged down
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: by them.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Who knows, But I just think that it's such an
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: amazing epiphany to realize that probably up to that point
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: he'd been trying to lead readers along around by the
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: nose feel this, like you should be feeling this right now.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Instead to realize like, no, you can write in a
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: way where you leave it up to the reader, Like, yeah,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: that's probably one of the best epiphanies a writer can
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: possibly have. And I haven't run across that very often,
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Like it's rare, I think to see there's a specific
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: epiphany that creates the writer that everybody comes to love.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: That's not everybody has that kind of thing.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he stopped ending every chapter with get it.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: What's funny is he didn't. He decided to just kind
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: of get out of the reader's way and let them
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: figure it out for themselves. But he was also the
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: king of italics to emphasize points like oh this word,
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: this is an important word. That's what italics says, and
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: he used italics like constantly.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So he failed that class, but he re enrolled
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: in that same class, this time with a little more spunk,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I think, and gave Burnett some of his stories, and
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Burnett immediately knew that he had a pretty sharp talent
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: on his hands and mentored young Salinger and published his
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: first work, called The Young Folks in the spring nineteen
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: forty edition of Story, in which he was paid twenty
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: five bucks, which is a little more than five hundred today,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: not bad. And he just kept writing, just writing and
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: writing and writing. One thing has been made clear about J. D.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Salinger up to his death at ninety one years old
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: is that he loved to write and wrote and wrote
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: and wrote and wrote always. He didn't publish a lot,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: and we'll get to all that, but doesn't mean he
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't writing. He was writing from the time he was
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: a teenager un till he died. He always wanted to
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: be published in the New Yorker. That was this big dream.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: They turned him down seven times until they accepted Slight
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Rebellion off Madison and forty one, which had the character
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: of Holden call Field, the first story that had Holden
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: and very disappointingly after Pearl Harbor, they shelved the story
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: for five years, and you know, it just wasn't a
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: time to publish a story like that.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, no, for sure. They said, don't you know,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: there's a war going on, and I say, we take
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: a break and come back and join JD. Salinger in
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: the war.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, So JD. Salinger when war broke out, When America
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: entered World War Two, he signed up, He enlisted. He
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: actually tried to go to Officers School and they were like, nah,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: you're a little a little too fresh for us.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: So we ended up think you nowadays you have to
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: have a college degree to get into OCS. I don't
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: know if it was the case back then.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: It could have been, who knows, but he was. He
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: just went from you know, base to base, just doing
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: mundane stuff, probably not loving life too much, but I'm
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: sure he had a lot of free time to write
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: and wrote wrote. And then it wasn't until I think
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: nineteen forty four that he ended up on in Europe
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: and his movements and the participation of the events that
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: he took place in from June of nineteen forty four
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: through the winter of nineteen forty five. He was basically
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: at every major event in the European theater, everything from
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: landing on Utah Beach in Day Day to liberating the
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: camp at Dachau. Like he was literally there and participated
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: in all of that stuff. And the fact that he
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: survived is intense. Like he was in some of the
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: most intense fighting that the entire war saw over the
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: course of like you know, a year.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, that reminds me of how maybe Jerry can
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: bleep this The great line from Rushmore when Max first
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: meets Bill Murray's character and he says he was in Vietnam.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: He goes, were you in the Yeah, I was a
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: good line. J. D. Salinger certainly was, like you said.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: And interestingly he had when he stormed the beach at
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Utah Beach on D Day, he had the beginnings of
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Ketcher and the Rye in his knapsack. He was working
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: on that book already. He only wrote about the war
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: through the short story The Magic Foxhole, where he wrote
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: about D Day. He did not talk about it much.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: It is clear that it informed the rest of his life, though,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: And we'll talk about you know, those moments you know
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: as we go along through his life, but I think
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: two thirds of his regiment died within the first few weeks,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: close to two thirds after D Day. So it was
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: pretty brutal stuff, you know, the bleakest battles you can imagine.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Being pinned down in the hurricane forest in Germany, thousands
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: of people were freezing to death. He survived that, and then,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: like you said, at Dachau in nineteen forty five, apparently
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: on the same day that Hitler shot himself, they came
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: upon Dachau and he talked about never in your life
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: not being able to, you know, get the smell of
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: burning flesh out of his nose.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He was also in the Battle of the Bulge
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: that finally turned the tide against the Germans in World
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: War Two, where seventy five thousand German soldiers died. Like
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: this was over the course of weeks, tens and tens
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: of thousands of people dying all around you all the time.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: He was there for all that, and he eventually became
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: I guess, an officer at the very Yeah, he was
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: a counterintelligence officer. His specialty was interrogating people. He used
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: the German that he picked up when he with that
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: family in Vienna just before the Nazis came to power
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: to interrogate Nazis that he ended up capturing, you know,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: less than a decade later. Quite a turn of events
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: if you think about it.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and pretty heavy stuff. And for all of this,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: on V Day they say stick around. We don't want
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: you to go home. We'd like you to stick around
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: for a denazification mission. So all of a sudden he
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: was pulled away from his twelfth Regiment and the friends
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: he had met there, and he got depressed, and you know,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: he was clearly affected with PTSD. They call it battle
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: fatigue at the time, and he checked himself into a
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: hospital at Nuremberg for PTSD treatment and eventually, well you
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: read it for Esme with love and Squalor is a
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: story about a World War two vet recovering from PTSD
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: in Germany.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a wonderful story.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: You know what.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: I just realized his stories, or at least the one
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: I read, But from reading about other stories, they seem
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: to have kind of like an O Henry quality of
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: things surprisingly turning out for the best in the end.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Is that correct?
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah?
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Like he was optimistic, hopeful, like eventually he was hopeful.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: It seems like in most of his stories, maybe not
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: a good day for banana fish, but some of the
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: other ones. All the most of the other ones, he
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: seemed to just be a sentimentalist. I guess where it
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: just didn't end too bleakly like it was bleak and
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: then in the end it got better at the very least.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: That's how it seemed to me. For Esme with Lovin Squalor.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Well Catcher and the Rye. Well, we can talk about
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the ending a little bit. We don't want to give
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: it away too much. I guess we are gonna give
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: it away a little bit.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: Well where he ends up on a ranch living with
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Trueman Cacody out west.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: We'll give a spoiler warning when that comes up. Okay,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: So he finally got to go home, but he wasn't
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: coming home. He was discharged, but he told us fly, Hey,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I'm going to stay in Germany. I fell in love
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: with a woman named Sylvia and we got married. But
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: they were not married long. It was only eight months,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: and he did not write during that period. So he
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: eventually would go back to New York and started to
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: sort of throw himself into the you know, the nightclubs
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: of the nineteen forties New York and sort of sleeping
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: around with women in New York. But he was you know,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: he was suffering from PTSD at this time for sure.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Just one one little note on Sylvia, his first wife.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: She was a Nazi party official who he arrested during
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: his denotification project and ended up marrying her, and he
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: referred to her as Saliva for the rest of his
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: life whenever he talk.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They his son was like, because there were rumors
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: that he had written stories about that marriage, and his son,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Matt was like, that's a joke. Like that didn't even
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: register in his life hardly. He did not write about it.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: So his his hitting the nightclubs and picking up the
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: dames is not doing it for him. It's not numbing things.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: He's he realizes at some point that he needs a
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: different a different way forward. And I'm not sure where
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: he picks it up, but he started with Zen Buddhism.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know where he was exposed to that, maybe
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: just in Greenwich Village in general, I'm not sure, but
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: that was that was the first step on a path
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: toward a lifelong search for enlightenment. And as we'll see,
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: he came to view writing as ultimately his path toward
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: enlightenment and therapy. But he started out by trying to
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: figure it out using like Zen, Buddhism and later on
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: hindu Vedic spirituality.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And part of the sort of spiritual awakening included, Hey,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: I need to get out of New York if I
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: want to write and I want to finish this book
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: I'm working on this novel. New York is too distracting,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: is too loud. I need more peace and quiet. I
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: need to be able to meditate. And so he left.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: He left New York City nineteen forty nine and went
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: to Westport, Connecticut, and he finished A Catcher in the
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Rye there, his obviously seminal work. And there was a
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: biographer who said J. D. Salinger spent ten years writing
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: The Catcher in the Rye and the rest of his
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: life regretting it. And that kind of puts the nail
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: on the head, because that was that book was such
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: a big deal and it put him in such a
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: spotlight that A he didn't like that spotlight, and b
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: he hated the book in publishing industry and everybody in it.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: It seemed like almost.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, So just a little bit on the publishing of
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Catcher in the Rye right, like it was just an
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: immediate hit from what I can tell, people had been
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: sitting around waiting for it, it almost seems like. And
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: to date it sold something like sixty five million copies.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Sixty five million copies chuck about a half a million
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: every year.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Still, So I got a couple of stats for you
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: if I may. Yeah, yeah, please, that's number eighteen all
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: time for novels. And I was kind of curious, do
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: you have any idea what the number one best selling
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: novel of all time in novel, not book, novel, novel
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: so not the Bible, right right?
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: I would say how the West was won by Truman Capoti.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: No don Quixote, really, which makes sense because it was
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: sort of one of the first great novels. Okay, five
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: hundred million copies, which is more than double the next.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: The Tale of Two Cities is next at two hundred million,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: then Lord of the Rings, the Little Prince and the Hobbit,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: and then Harry Potter dude owns numbers eleven through sixteen. Wow,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: isn't that crazy?
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, that's imagine being a living, a living
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: writer who's just written those things in the last like
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: twenty or so years, and you own that many on
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: the top list. That's nuts.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Well, imagine being Dan Brown then, because he's the modern
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: writer at number ten, the Da Vinci Code is the
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: number ten best selling hub.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: I believe that. Man, everybody was talking about that.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Eighty million books. But yeah, number eighteen sixty five million
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: books and still selling strong is pretty great. Yeah, so
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: please continue.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: And he was able to live off of royalties for
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: the rest of his life. It was like, that's it.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: I just struck. I'm fine for the rest of my life.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure how long it took for that to
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: become clear. Maybe nineteen sixty five, I don't know, but
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: he did. He never needed to work again from that
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: point on, essentially, so when he wrote it, So there
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: was a biographer that likened it to a war novel
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: disguised as a coming of age story. Yeah, And what
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: they were saying was that, like, at least if you're
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: looking at it through the lens of J. D. Salinger,
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: the writer himself writing it like this was his spiritual Catharsis.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: This was him finding a way to put World War
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: two behind him as best he could enough at least
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: to get on with his life, right. And like you said,
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: what he experienced in World War two informed the rest
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: of his life or colored the rest of his life
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: for the rest of his life. But this was like
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: this got out the darkest, gunkiest, worst stuff. It seems
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: like getting Catcher in the Rye out there.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. And you know what, let's not
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: spoil the ending except to say that it does end
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: with some hope it does, because I don't think we
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: should even even say like people should read it. It's
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: just one of those books I think that like people
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: should read. I'm about to do that with Moby Dick.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: I've never read it. And my buddy, our our friend
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Joey Ciara, who did with his brother Andy, did the
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: theme song to this stuff you should know show. He
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: collects Moby Dick's and he's like obsessed with a book
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: and he's like, dude, just read it, just trust me
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: and read it. And I was like, all right, I'll
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: read it, okay. But Catcher in the Rise another one
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I think where you know, just give it a read.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: It's a great book, and it's just one that's I
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: hate to say, like it's an important work, but it
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: is sure.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: We won't give away the end, just suffice to say
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: that he finds the kidney downer he needs.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: That's right. So he has doesn't have a good experience
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: with the publishing process. Like I said, he hated it.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: He fought with the editors. He didn't like the cover
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: of the book. The original cover was that kind of
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: kind of weird looking drawing of a carousel horse with
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: a little small bit of the New York City skyline
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: in the lower left. He didn't like his photo on
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the back. He eventually, I believed, was able to get
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: that removed in the third printing. You can get a
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: lot of money if you got that first edition Catcher,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: then you're holding on to something pretty valuable.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine, Chuck, how much those pages of Ketcher
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: and the Rye that were in his knapsack when he
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: stormed Normandy would be worth if surely they're still out
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: there somewhere. I cannot imagine how much some tech billionaire
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: would pay.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: For those Yeah, no, no, totally. And then like, and
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I'll use it as a rolling paper.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: That's funny.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Nine stories came next. That's a great one too. Most
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: of those were written before Ketcher was actually published, but
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: that was also a bestseller.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Those are short stories, right, a collection?
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nine of them. Strangely, it could also refer to.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: A specific building or something like that.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, it could. I was joking because Ween, we've
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: talked about this. Ween's or ten Golden Country Greats didn't
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: have ten songs so awesome? It was because it was
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: the guys they played with. There were ten of them?
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Or was it twelve? Why can't I remember?
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: I don't remember. I don't know, all right, it's not
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: even a question in my memory, failing me. I didn't
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: have the four knowledge to lose to begin with.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's twelve Golden Country Greats, but there's not
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: twelve songs. And people thought that was Ween making a joke.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: But they were like, no, the's twelve Golden Country Greats
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: with these old timers from Nashville who played with us.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: So wait, one more thing. Well, then that's not a joke.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: That's just a misunderstanding.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Exactly so.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: About the actual title though, of Ween of the Catcher
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: in the Rye, we should tell people about that, because
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: I didn't know until yesterday.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: I guess yeah, this is also a spoiler. So if
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: you don't want to know, then don't listen to this part.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Go ahead. Is it a spoiler, sure, because it's in
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: the book.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Oh it is, okay, forget it, forget it. Just read
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: the book everybody.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: No, no, you should say it because I think people that
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: are like I don't want to bother please tell me.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, well, then the people who don't want to bother.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: The Catcher in the Rye is taken from a Robert
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Burns poem where he talks about when a body meets
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: a body coming through the rye, when a little body
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: catch a body, will somebody die? I think that's how
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: it ends, at the very least that's how David Niven
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: sings it in Murdered by Death. But what he's referring
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: to is the catcher in the Rye is him. He's
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: catching little kids from going off a cliff, little kids
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: playing in a field of rye, and as they're at
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: their most free and reckless in their abandonment, they are
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: in danger of going off this cliff, which would be
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: becoming adults, losing their childhood. And he sees himself as
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: the catcher, the person catching them from going off that
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: cliff so that they can remain children or innocent essentially forever.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: Nice summation, Thank you, thank you, cliff Notes.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Oh we should do one on cliffs Notes. I always
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: wonder who Cliff was.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Great, great idea.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: So maybe we'll take a break here in a minute,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: but we'll just finish by saying that over the next
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: decade after Catcher, he's publishing other things. But that is
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: when things got started to get a little weird for him,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: in that he was a sensation, and there were reporters
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: knocking on his door, and he was just receiving tons
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: and tons of mail from kids who thought he was
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: this guru and like this sage delivering wisdom to a
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: younger generation. And all these other younger writers were inspired
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: to take up writing, and it was just a little
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: too much for someone who was seeking solitude and spiritual enlightenment.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: So we will take a break and let you know
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: what happened right after this, all right, So when we
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: left J. D. Salinger was a literary sensation. The walls
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: were closing in on him as far as his privacy
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: and his sort of search for spirituality anonymity. Well, I
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: don't think he wanted to be anonymous, necessarily because he
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: published work, but he definitely wanted privacy. If you want
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: to be anonymous, he would have published it under a
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: pen name. I would imagine Truman Capodi. In fifty three, though,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: he bought a ninety acre property in Cornish, New Hampshire.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: It's about four hours from Manhattan, a very lovely, quiet
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: farming community back then it probably still is. And he left.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: But Dave is keen to point out, and as our
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: biographers of Salalinger, this wasn't him saying I'm removing myself
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: from the world. I'm going to be a recluse. He
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: just wanted to get out of the hustle and bustle
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: and lived the quiet life. He had friends there. He
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: went into town and got his mail, he went and
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: ate the local lunch place called Harrington Spa. He had friends,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: He had adult friends. He also had teenage friends, which
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: you know, we'll get into you know, the problematic nature
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: of that later, But there was a group of teenagers
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: from the high school there. He was in his early thirties,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: and he had connected with young people in his life
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: and kind of that's why he could write in that voice.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: So easily, I think, and he just you know, they
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: thought he was one of the gang, and they loved
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: his advice, and so they would kind of all hang
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: out here and there. And so it's not like he
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: disappeared completely at that point.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: No, he didn't need to. He just was getting away
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: from the people who really wanted something from him, and
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: instead he introduced himself to a place where he could
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: just be Jerry basically. And it's not like the people
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: there didn't know who he was. They just weren't necessarily
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: as starstruck or seeking him as a guru like other
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: people were, and people would still come visit him from
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: time to time. He was known to sometimes just be like, look,
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: I'm not a guru. I don't know anything that you
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: don't know. I just wrote a book. I can't give
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: you anything. To answering the door with a shotgun, you know,
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: and being like, get off my property. It depended, i'm sure,
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: in his mood. But he had fashioned a life for
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: himself and he wasn't the recluse that he's famous for now.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Like you were saying, there, there was actually one specific
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: incident that triggered that reclusiveness that hadn't been there before
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: and he stayed in Cornish. She didn't move from Cornish.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: But if a person can withdraw from the world more
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: than he had by moving to Cornish, he did it masterfully.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: And it all is to blame on a girl named
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Shirley Blainey.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So she was a teenager who worked for the
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: school newspaper or wrote for the school newspaper and said,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: kind of interview you for the school newspaper. And he
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: did not do press at all, but he was like, sure,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: I'll do this thing for the local school paper. And
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: because he you know, he believed in that kind of thing. Instead,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: it was published in the regional newspaper, the Daily Eagle,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Twins State Telescope, and that was it for him. He
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: was like, I can't even trust this kid to interview
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: me for a school paper. Everybody wants something from me.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: It's unforgivable. It was a betrayal and so that was it.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: He built a fence around his property. He quit going
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: into town, he quit throwing and going to parties. When
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: those his little teenager buddies would come around to hang out,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: he wouldn't come to the door anymore. And that's when
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: his life as the recluse started, even though his son
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Matt will say, you know, all this is written about
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: his reclusiveness and he just didn't want to be around.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's what a recluse is. But he said
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: they made it out to be like he was just
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: this crazy hermit, and he was like, he just didn't
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: want to be bothered and he just wanted to write
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: without all the noise. Yeah, was his son's take.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: But his social life seems to have been definitely objectively
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: curtail after that, Like he was much more social up
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: until that point.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, no, one doubts that.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, his famous quote was surely Blainey a real phony.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Was it really?
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: No, it wouldn't surprise me, it'd be great. So he
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: becomes that kind of recluse, and to some people that
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: was like, oh, we gotta really find him now. There
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: was a nineteen sixty one Life article on him where
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: they the I guess the author came to his house
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: and took pictures of his mailbox, got a picture of
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: him working in his yard, like really intrusive stuff. People
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: felt like, okay with doing that just because he was
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: a recluse, you know what I mean. Yeah, and that's
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: a really difficult thing to deal with for him, but
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: he still sought connection with certain people. I think it
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: was just you had to you had to earn his
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: trust or he had to find you attractive.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a pretty small circle. He got together
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: with a young woman named Claire Douglas. They had met
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: when she was sixteen and he was thirty two, and
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: they kept in touch via letters and things, and they
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: started dating when she was nineteen at Radcliffe student at Radcliffe.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: They bonded over religion. You mentioned early Vedanta and Hinduism.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: That is what they really got into at that point,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: and he really immersed himself into sort of that sort
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: of religious study in philosophy, and the basic tenets of
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: which are that God is in everything, God is everywhere,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: God is you, God is me. That kind of thing
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: very George Harrison, I think.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but like at least a decade before George Harrison
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: was ever exposed to this stuff, Like this guy was
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: doing this.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: In like the mid the sixties. Oh okay, I thought
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: it was no sixties.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: He and Claire got married in nineteen fifty five, so
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: like he was into it in the early midfifth at
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: the latest. So yeah, yeah, he was definitely into that,
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: and his son I think no. No. His daughter, who
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: will meet in a second, later said that she believes
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: that he got in over his head. Essentially, he took
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: it all to too much to heart, and he turned
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: his back on the world and became a quote strange
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: man because of the degree to which he exposed himself
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: to religion. I get the impression. Doesn't matter what the
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: religion was, it was the degree.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean his kids have two different takes. His daughter,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Margaret would write a book that was not very flattering,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: said that, you know, he basically held my mom hostage there.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: He did disturbing things. He drank urine, he spoke in tongues.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: He became a very strange man that she didn't recognize.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: And this is she had grown up really loving her father.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Whereas Matt Sallenger who played Captain America No the nineteen
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: ninety film Captain America and was in Revenge of the Nerds.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: Which who was he in Revenge of the Nerds.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: He was one of the guys in the in the frat,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: the hot frat, Yeah, with not the nerds. Hell yeah.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Married what was his last name? Oh, I don't remember.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: He's great though I love that guy, wonderful. But yeah,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Matt s Allener was an actor and producer for a while.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: But he he says that his sisters. There's a great
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: article from The Guardian from a few years ago, twenty nineteen.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: I think with Matt where he said his sister Margaret,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: he loves her and respects her. But he says those
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: accounts are gothic tales. So it's kind of one of
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: those things where two kids have two different takes on
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: their famous slash weird parent.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Right, But I mean like those are pretty at odds
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: with one another, pretty diametrical, you know.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: I agree. I don't think Matt said he was some
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: great dad either, because he would He built a bunker
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: basically to write it in a writing studio, and was
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: not a doting father, and you know, writing was his
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: most important thing. He used to say, do not disturb
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: me unless this, unless the house is burning down, like
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: leave me alone, family, so I can do my important work.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: So two things, One, it's Teed McGinley. Two, the image
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: of JD. Salinger that people popularly hold is still very
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: much widespread, the one that they've they've held forever, essentially
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: since he became a recluse, but like a brilliant writer
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: and blah blah blah. The I guess a different kind
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: of piggy esque view that his daughter has of him
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: started to emerge in the nineties. Peggy wrote a book
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: called Dream Catcher, which you mentioned. I think it came
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: out in two thousand.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Who's Peggy?
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Peggy is his daughter Margaret?
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Oh oh, that was her nickname.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And in the book she talks she talked at
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: length about how her mother was treated and her mother
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: was that Ragcliffe co ed Claire, right, is it Claire Douglas, Yes,
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Claire Douglas And apparently J. D. Salinger drove Claire Douglas
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: like to the brink of insanity. They got divorced in
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven, and according to her side of the story,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: he was extremely emotionally abusive to her. He would tell
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: her that he didn't love her. He made her like
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: live in this like it wasn't necessarily her choice to
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: live without heat or hot water and grow their own
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: food and be quiet because we're thinking about, you know, enlightenment.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: Like she went along with it because she was nineteen
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: and he was in his early mid thirties. So the
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: stuff that has come out about him, starting in about
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: the late nineties and then continuing on as different women
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: in his life life over time have kind of come
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: forward and been like yes, and there's also this, there's no,
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: there's not like a smoking gun, right, it's not like
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: anything like on a Harvey Weinstein level. But his image
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: has definitely turned a little bit because it has become
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: clear that he used his age and experiences as an
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: older person to control and manipulate younger girls to his
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: to often their detriment, for his short term pleasure.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Essentially, yeah, absolutely, it seem like the move was, like,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's called grooming, is what the word we
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: use today. But find someone in their mid teens and
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: begin a friendship with them and write letters and pay
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: them a lot of attention and stuff like that, and
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: then get together, try and get together with them at
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: least or get together with them in a physical way
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: when when they're legally able to do so. So that
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: happened a few different times. There was a fourteen year
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: old named Jane Miller. He was thirty at the time.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: He pursued her via friendship in letters and then which
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: she was nineteen, they had sexual intercourse, and he dumped
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: her immediately afterward. She came out and wrote about it
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: after he died. She said that she didn't want to
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: write about it while he was still alive. And then
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: he eventually started dating a freshman at Yale named Joyce
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Maynard in nineteen ninety eight. She wrote a lot about
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: their relationship. I think they were together about a year.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Said he was very manipulative and that he would take
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: advantage of naive young women, and then I believe he
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: finally married remarried again in ninety two. He was to
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: a woman named Colleen O'Neil. She's like my age basically
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: at the time, she was twenty one years old and
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: he was sixty nine years old. And they stayed married
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: for what eighteen eighteen years until he died.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and she was a nurse and apparently was also
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: a bit of a nurse to him as well as
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: a wife from what I can tell. Like a good
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: example I saw was that he had gone very much
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: death essentially very hard of hearing, but he was too
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: vain to wear a hearing aid, so she would have
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: to repeat to him in a louder voice with somebody
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: you know had just said to him when they were
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: out and about in town or whatever. Right, so, you know,
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: twenty one year old, sixty nine year old type stuff.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: But she apparently is I guess, the least affected of
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: all of his wives or girlfriends. She co is co
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: trustee of his work with his son Matt. She's still
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: very much in the JD. Salinger pro Sallenger camp, clearly,
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: but I guess kind of the antithesis to her would
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: be Joyce Maynard, who was the freshman at Yale, and
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: she has written about their relation ship so much that
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: people have come to look at her as an opportunist,
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: somebody who's basically just trading on the one year she
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: spent with J. D. Salinger. She's been trying to make
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: money off of that or get fame or publicity off
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: of it for years. Another interpretation that's kind of come
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: around lately is that she's been telling the story of
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: a victim who was manipulated by an older man, and
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: when you dig into her story, she was like suddenly
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: the hot New York literati it girl all of a sudden.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: When when they met, she had just been on the
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: cover of New York magazine, on the cover with a
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: cover story, but they also put her picture on the cover,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: and he got in touch with her and said like, hey,
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: I think you're writing's great, and they started to write
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: letters back and forth. He convinced her to drop out
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: of Yale with just a few months before graduating, to
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: give up her her job working as a New York
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Times writer, which she'd just gotten, and to blow off
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: a book tour that was going to start her career
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: and instead moved to Cornish, New Hampshire with him.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: And she did.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: She was nineteen at the time, very much like Claire
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: Douglas and at the very least, even if he wasn't
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: overtly manipulating her like her life went off the rails
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: because she got involved with this incredibly revered older man
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: who she thought loved her, and after a year he
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: was done with her and she moved out. Apparently it
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: was over kids or something. Ostensibly she wanted kids, he didn't,
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: and they were like, no, this isn't going to work.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: But yeah, Joyce Mayard has gone through a bit of
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: a reform over the last several years, at least as
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: far as some people are concerned.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And you mentioned tech bros buying things Maynard,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: she sold fourteen. She auctioned fourteen personal letters from Salinger,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: and Peter Norton of Norton Antivirus bought them for two
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars. He offered to give them back to JD.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Soudlenger or to burn them, and I think wasn't even answered,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: so he just locked them up, and I think still
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: has possession of them.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and supposedly that was a dime a dozen kind
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: of thing other women came for and was like, I
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: had treasured letters that he wrote to me too. It
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: was Yeah, So he's become a study in one of
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: those things where it's like, Okay, this guy was a
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: little more complicated and like you said, at the outset
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: problematic than anyone knew or realized, and yet his work
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: is still just as amazing as it was before. You
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: know what I mean.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he quit publishing completely and like I said,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: kept writing. In a one later interview, he did not
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: do many but he said, there's a marvelous piece in
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: not publishing. It's peaceful. Still, publishing is a terrible invasion
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: of my privacy. I like to write, I love to write,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: but I write just for myself. And my own pleasure.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: I pay for this kind of attitude. I'm known as strange,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: as a strange loof kind of man. But all I'm
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: doing is trying to protect myself and my work. And
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: that article with Matt Salinger, like there is a lot
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: of work that he did, and he, Matt Sallenger, is
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: going to publish some of it. Apparently he was directed
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: to publish some of it. I read an article years
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: ago right after he died where they said between twenty
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: ten and twenty fifteen, there will be five new novels.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: And you know, none of that has happened yet, nothing
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: has come out, and Matt Salinger is just like you
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: know it. It's gonna take as long as it's gonna take.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: Like there's tons of stuff, and I respect my father's work,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: and it's we're never gonna license stuff. You're never gonna
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: see it catching the right coffee mug. It's not going
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: to be a movie. But like, I want to publish
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: this stuff correctly, and that takes a lot a lot
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: of time, and like back.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: Off, Yeah, so what else you got anything else?
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: I got nothing else? I mean, new new stuff's going
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: to come out at some point. Curious to see what
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: that looks like. I bet some will be about the
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Glass Family. I think for sure that was the family
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: and many of those short stories that he wrote about
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: recurring characters Franny and Zooey and stuff like that. So
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: I imagine there's more Glass Family stuff in there. I
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: think that's been confirmed.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: Dave turned up a really great analysis of JD. Salinger's
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: writing by a guy named Michichi Michiko Kakutani. It's really
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: insightful and also just as approachable as JD. Salinger's writing is.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: It's really really good stuff. So I thought it was
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: a pretty good introduction to JD. Salinger and the whole
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: It takes a look at like the whole his whole career,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: from you know, how lauded it was to how it
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: kind of at the end some of the last stuff
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: he published, people were like, what's going on here? Like
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: this is a little odd, you know what I mean?
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah to me that I like to check that.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: I will send it to you. Since Chuck asked me
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: to send something and we're out of stuff to talk
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: about J D. Salinger, I think think that means it's
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: time for a listener, mayl.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: I'm going to call this Red Stripe confirmation for joshus. Hey, guys,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: you mentioned red Stripe beer on the recent episode about
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: scuba and reminded me of a story worked at a
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: country club in Granger, Indiana as a banquet ship. I
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: think it said shift, I know it's not scheft. By
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: the way, We did a Caribbean Island themed event for
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: the members and the bar manager, and the bar manager
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: ordered a couple of cases of Red Stripe, told the
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: bartenders to push it so it would sell through. The
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: first guy to a bottle tasted it and said it
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: was terrible instead of the bar and told everyone not
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: to get it. We only sold two bottles. A few
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: months later, we did an invitational event just after it
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: was in the movie The Firm, where two guys were
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: drinking it before they went scuba diving as part of
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: an escape plan. As Josh mentioned, the bartenders were asked
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: again to push the Red Stripe and I was putting
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: out appetizers and one of the first guys to come
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: off the golf course said, Hey, that's that beer they
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: were drinking in that and he said it was pretty
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: good and was telling his buddies about the movie and
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: Red stripe and it sold out in an hour, same
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: group of people. That recognition from the movie really helped
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: sell the beer. So Josh was right, ever underestimate the
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: power of marketing. And that is from Steve.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: Thanks Steve. I love it when I'm right. I especially
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: love him when people write in to tell me I
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: was right.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: You know good stuff.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: If you want to be like Steve and tell me
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: that I was right, bring it on. You can send
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: it via email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.