R.I.P. J.D., Cont'd

Here's a great article in the Boston Globe about Salinger, the "recluse."

...to his neighbors in Cornish and surrounding rural towns, he was hardly a hermit. To them, Salinger was simply another small-town resident who valued his privacy, and anyone who knew what he looked like could see he got around.

The tall, angular writer with his recognizable shock of white hair could be seen over the years striding through downtown Hanover, some 14 miles north, where he would duck into the Dartmouth Bookstore on Main Street. On an overcast day, passersby might spot him in the Windsor Diner, across the Connecticut River in Vermont, his profile defined by lights inside as he sat in a window booth overlooking Route 5.

He was such a regular at the fund-raising roast beef suppers at First Congregational Church in nearby Hartland, Vt., that when his health failed and he became too frail to attend, his wife drove over to pick up a take-out order from the basement fellowship hall.

I never knew he was married until I read his obit. I didn't think he was capable of any kind of social interaction. I pictured him as living in a New Hampshire cave, dressed in burlap, eating sticks, wearing a long beard with birds nesting in it. Obviously there was no malice in that image -- I'm a big fan, after all -- but those are the images that sprang up when I thought "recluse."

It makes me realize our attention-craving culture, where people "send up" their children in balloons, crash White House events, make out with strangers just to get on TV, simply doesn't have a vocabulary to describe someone who would, at the height of his fame, walk away from the spotlight and never seek it again. I don't have any desire for fame myself and yet in my mind there was still no option between "famous" and "insane" -- if Salinger shunned fame, clearly there must've been something wrong with him, right? He must've been mentally ill or something. Unhinged. An eater of sticks.

But apparently not.

Sometimes I like to play "If I Were A Genius Writer Which Genius Writer Would I Be?" Steinbeck is my favorite but I wouldn't be him -- he was too adventurous, too curious, diving into the nitty-gritty to report on WWII in Europe, going on his U.S.-long road-trip with no company but his dog and the people he met along the way. I wouldn't be Steinbeck. And what I know of Updike, I wouldn't be Updike -- he was too country-club, too cocktail-party.

I never would've thought it a couple days ago, but huh, I'd be Salinger.