Semi-mysterious J.D. Salinger Boxed Set

This news that an uncollected 1945 Salinger story is about to be reprinted makes me wonder about the contents of the hardcover J.D. Salinger Boxed Set forthcoming from Little, Brown in November 2010. Borders lists it as retailing for $99. Chapters Indigo lists it with must be the dimensions of an individual volume: 7.24 x 9.41 x 0.98 inches. As you might have guessed, there are no photographs of this set.

More interesting: there is no indication as to how many volumes this set will contain. Will there be four — The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters / Seymour: An Introduction? Or will there be a fifth volume with the uncollected stories? The reprinting of a 1945 story would seem to suggest that the Salinger estate has been negotiating with publishers. And the lack of information about this boxed set makes me suspect that something’s being kept quiet, for now. (If that turns out to be the case, you read it here first.)

If the boxed set includes only the four previously published books, it’d be nice to see, say, a Library of America volume with the uncollected stories. I’m optimistic, always. And yes, the uncollected stories can already be had as bootlegs. But a book is better, no?

Update, November 2, 2010: The semi-mysterious boxed set is no longer semi-mysterious. The Borders and Chapters Indigo pages now list the set’s contents — the four books, nothing more.

Related reading
All Salinger posts
Roger Lathbury, Betraying Salinger (New York)

Saturday Evening Post to reprint 1945 Salinger story

The July/August 2010 issue of The Saturday Evening Post will reprint J.D. Salinger’s story “A Boy in France,” first published in The Post in 1945. Says Joan SerVaas, chief executive officer and publisher:

This evocative tale of a young solider struggling to maintain his sanity during the madness of war is just one of the many Salinger short stories tucked away in our archives. We think readers will find this one is as fresh and meaningful now as when it was first published.

[Did you have any idea that The Saturday Evening Post is still publishing?]

Related reading
All Salinger posts

Domestic comedy

After a stint of mowing:

“I don’t think I could ever really say ‘Farm livin’ is the life for me.’ Maybe a farm with hired hands.”

“And feet.”

[With apologies to Green Acres.]

Related reading
All “domestic comedy” posts

Infinite Jest, television

There is no broadcast television in the near-future of Infinite Jest, only cartridges and disks and “Spontaneous Disseminations” from InterLace TelEntertainment. Orin Incandenza misses the old days:

“I miss commercials that were louder than the programs. I miss the phrases ‘Order before midnight tonight’ and ‘Save up to fifty percent and more.’ I miss being told things were filmed before a live studio audience. I miss late‐night anthems and shots of flags and fighter jets and leathery‐faced Indian chiefs crying at litter. I miss ‘Sermonette’ and ‘Evensong’ and test patterns and being told how many megahertz something’s transmitter was broadcasting at.” He felt his face. “I miss sneering at something I love. How we used to love to gather in the checker‐tiled kitchen in front of the old boxy cathode‐ray Sony whose reception was sensitive to airplanes and sneer at the commercial vapidity of broadcast stuff. . . . I miss summer reruns. I miss reruns hastily inserted to fill the intervals of writers’ strikes, Actors’ Guild strikes. I miss Jeannie, Samantha, Sam and Diane, Gilligan, Hawkeye, Hazel, Jed, all the syndicated airwave‐haunters. You know? I miss seeing the same things over and over again.”

David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (Boston: Little, Brown, 1996).

As Orin goes on to explain, the freedom to watch something on disk again and again is not the same: “‘The choice, see. It ruins it somehow. With television you were subjected to repetition. The familiarity was inflicted.’”

Other Infinite Jest posts
Attention : Description : Loveliness : “Night-noises” : Romance : Telephony

Harvey Pekar (1939–2010)

Harvey Pekar was — is — one of the great chroniclers of dailiness in these United States.

I felt like cryin’; life seemed so sweet an’ so sad an’ so hard t’let go of in the end. But this is Monday. I went t’work, hustled some records, came home an’ wrote this. T’night I’ll finish A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Life goes on. Every day is a new deal. Keep workin’ an’ maybe sump’n’ll turn up.

From the story “Alice Quinn,” words by Harvey Pekar, art by Sue Cavey (1982).

Cleveland comic-book legend Harvey Pekar dead at age 70 (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Other Harvey Pekar posts
Good advice from Harvey Pekar
Joyce Brabner, writing, recognition
Harvey Pekar on life and death
Harvey Pekar’s The Quitter
Review: Leave Me Alone!

[Photograph uncredited, found at the Dallas Observer.]

Svend Asmussen, doing very well

Violinist Svend Asmussen, answering the question “How are you doing?”: “I do very well, considering my extremely advanced age.”

He’s ninety-four and still playing.

Rock the mic

[From the Oxford English Dictionary.]

First M.C. to rock (“To handle effectively and impressively; to use or wield effectively, esp. with style or self-assurance”) the mic: Melle Mel, says the OED. Ben Zimmer explains:

When Did We First “Rock the Mic”? (New York Times)

Joyeux anniversaire, M. Proust

Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871.

The philosophers have certainly persuaded us that time is a process of reckoning that corresponds to no reality. We know that, but the ancient superstition is so strong that we cannot escape it, and it seems to us that on a given date we are inevitably older, like the government, which finds that because it should be warm the 1st of April, after that central heating is no longer needed. For a long time we have found this ridiculous of the government, but for age we don’t find it so.

Marcel Proust, in a letter to Geneviève Bizet Straus, October or November 1912. From Letters of Marcel Proust, translated by Mina Curtiss (New York: Helen Marx Books / Books & Co., 2006).

Thanks, Mari, for reminding me of the date.

Related reading
All Proust posts (Pinboard)

Charlie Rose and David Foster Wallace

March 27, 1997: Charlie Rose interviewed David Foster Wallace. These thirty-two minutes (edited from who-knows-how-many-more) appear to have been, to borrow a Wallace phrase, “hellaciously unfun.” Samples:

Rose: I want to talk about David Lynch, who after I read your piece in Esquire — was it Esquire? — no, Premiere, Premiere — I interviewed David Lynch. You never got to interview David Lynch.

More discussion of movies:

Rose: English Patient.

Wallace: You’re seriously asking me for my view on English Patient?

*

Rose: How about Shine? I’m going to go down [a list of] three, David.

Wallace: This is — a lot of this is going to get cut out, right?

Rose: Perhaps. But I’ll make the decision as to what’s cut out.

The best exchange:

Rose: Quit worrying about how you’re gonna look and just be.

Wallace: I’ve got news for you: coming on a television show stimulates your what-am-I-gonna-look-like gland like no other experience.

I’ve never been a fan of Charlie Rose, who often seems more interested in laying claim to authority and expertise than in listening to what his interviewee has to say. (Is it an interview, or is it a competition?) If you watch this interview, you’ll see that the David Lynch bit interrupts Wallace’s patient taking-apart of Rose’s out-of-nowhere assertion that respect is very important to Wallace.

Note too Wallace’s comment about his knowledge of “elementary arithmetic” (he knows that many people praising Infinite Jest could not have had time enough to read it) and his observations about belligerent questions coming out of nowhere after readings.

Me, I finished reading Infinite Jest last night. That’s all I can say right now.

Charlie Rose interviews David Foster Wallace (March 27, 1997)
Charlie Rose talks with David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Mark Leyner (May 17, 1996)

[“Hellaciously unfun”: from the 1996 conversation, Wallace’s characterization of contemporary avant-garde fiction.]

Toy Story 3

Here’s a brief but heartfelt recommendation: go see Toy Story 3 (dir. Lee Unkrich, 2010). And if you or your children grew up with the first two Toy Story films and you think you’re too old: go see Toy Story 3.

Our daughter Rachel and son Ben urged Elaine and me to see 3. We are glad that we did. The film enters deeply emotional, even philosophical territory: objects and their associations, remembrance of things past, and identity. We are ourselves, this film seems to say, only in relation to others.

Most unexpectedly moving moment: holding hands. Meant, I think, to evoke a matter of recent history.