J.D. Salinger, the exhibit

Walk through the glass doors of the New York Public Library exhibition titled J.D. Salinger — after checking the phone with which you assumed you could take photographs — and you’ll see a long glass case. Front and center, an elderly manual typewriter, a Royal, in remarkably good condition. To the left, a metal Study-Stand, much the worse for wear, for holding books or manuscript pages. To the right, a cup full of yellow crayons (proto-highlighters) and a pair of wire-frame bifocals. If you’re so disposed (I wasn’t), you can step to the side of the case, turn, crouch, and attempt to see the world through J.D. Salinger’s lenses.

Elaine and I visited this exhibition last week, as part of a day in Manhattan with our friends Jim and Luanne. The NYPL has done the Salinger reader a great service, presenting, among other things, family photographs, a copper bowl made at summer camp, war memorabilia, letters (to William Maxwell, William Shawn, WWII comrades, the occasional member of the public), a film projector and small selection of films (The 39 Steps on enormous reels), pipes, a tin of Balkan Sobranie tobacco, a revolving bookcase (detective fiction, folk medicine, Christian Science, Vedanta, Zen), manuscript pages, recipes, pocket notebooks with typed spiritual texts and Salinger’s handwritten commentary, and — here and there — evidence of a writer long at work after he stopped publishing. See, for instance, a key ring with small tabs (cut from a manila folder?) holding phrases and sentences for use in some work(s) of fiction.

Again and again, the materials of Salinger’s life belie the media image of a hermit or recluse. Did Salinger insist on privacy? Indeed. But here he is, writing with immense kindness to decline an invitation to speak to a graduating class of six high-schoolers. Here he is, writing to a WWII comrade and promising “an enclosure” by overnight mail (the comrade had asked, not for the first time, for financial help). Here he is, sitting in a park in Cornish, New Hampshire. Here he is playing with a grandchild, with shelves of detective fiction and a Sesame Street farm in the background.

This exhibition, assembled by Salinger’s widow Colleen Salinger, and his son Matt Salinger, is a portrait of the artist with some elements absent. There’s nothing here of Salinger’s marriages, nothing of his relationship with Joyce Maynard, almost nothing of his daughter Margaret, whose memoir Dream Catcher offers a pained account of life as her father’s child. And there’s nothing to suggest what unseen writing is forthcoming from the Salinger estate. But the optimist in me (or is it the cynic?) thinks that this exhibition may be meant to stoke interest in some book soon to be announced. That’s me seeing things through my lenses.

Here are links to four reports with photographs or video, from NBC News, The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and Voice of America.

And here’s Elaine’s post about our visit.

Related reading
All OCA Salinger posts (Pinboard)