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the compass rose december 2017 skip to main skip to sidebar the compass rose ruminations on literature art politics music photography design architecture and landscape wine and spirits c monday december 11 2017 the private life and the public art salinger and merrill this last year among the various books that i have read were two full length author biographies salinger by david shields and shane salerno and james merrill life and art by langdon hammer the salinger book is like a collection of separately drawn episodes with little attempt to link real life events specifically to salinger s literary works the hammer book is a meticulously rendered account almost a concordance of relationships between the events in merrill s life and the separate poems he wrote both books are honest efforts holding nothing back and following the clues and implications wherever they lead neither book could have been written this way a generation ago which may tell us something about the progress of our public culture what we re comfortable with what we re willing to acknowledge and even accept in our cultural heroes how much truth we can stand to believe my discussion here though doesn t consist of a book review instead i want to focus on the common aspects of the two men whose stories are recounted and to meditate on what those common aspects tell us about artistic production the artistic life and the possible meanings to be derived from such relationships it would help if you knew something about them since i won t recapitulate the life stories of either man much of what is told in these lives is now common knowledge though it wasn t information that was available to most of the general public while they were alive let s start with some parallels merrill was born in 1926 salinger in 1919 both were in the u s army in world war ii both were precocious authors merrill s first book was published without his knowledge or permission by his father when he was 17 salinger began writing short stories while in prep school both men grew up in relative security and comfort salinger s father was a successful food importer and the family lived on park avenue merrill s father was head of the merrill lynch investment firm and was fabulously wealthy merrill would never have to work a day in his life and lived off his inheritance after leaving the service in wwii salinger lived for a few years off his meager writing income from magazine publication until in 1951 when catcher in the rye was published which was so successful that it supported him in style for the remainder of his days both men in effect came to enjoy the negligent independence of means that completely frees the imagination from all aesthetic responsibility free to live how they might choose free to create whatever kind of literature they wanted and free from the ordinary ethical or formal restraints that are imposed on those of lesser means from a literary point of view neither writer has ever been regarded as a formal innovator salinger learned his art by writing for popular middle class magazines merrill s poetry was always formally traditional working within the confines of historical rhyme and meter never challenging syntactic or grammatical correctness both men underwent difficult psychological crises during their lives salinger suffered a nervous breakdown during his war experience and even was briefly hospitalized over the next decades he would go through two troubling marriages and divorces would conduct a weird affair with a child mistress half his age and would live out his days in a state of mental and physical hibernation from the world at large cooped up in a compound in rural new hampshire fending off vain attempts by the media and his fans to reach him and refusing to publish anything during the last 45 years of his life merrill a homosexual all his life suffered through the embarrassment and shame of his secret shadow existence attempting to hide his sexuality from his parents and from the world at large and went through extended periods of psycho analysis while he followed his writing career he spent the better part of his adult years pursuing young men sexually living a life style designed to placate his insatiable lust salinger appears to have become obsessed sexually with pre pubescent girls in a repeated pattern he seemed powerless to resist there are possible explanations for this in his psychology given his relative freedom he could indulge his obsession away from the public eye the seclusion and indulgence seem to have fed off each other meanwhile his fiction became more and more claustrophobic as his fictional glass family memoirs drew him in further and further into the magic realism of their fantasy world merrill unable to establish a true lasting relationship despite the outward model of his prolonged partnership with the failed writer david jackson finally submerged himself in a fantasy world of spirit communication described in detail in his ambitious long poem the changing light at sandover a common thread is evident in both men of a shameful private sexual obsession which became sharper and more problematic as they matured causing both to involute artistically while their private lives fell into disarray in both cases their financial security enabled them to fend off the world at large while they were free to delve more deeply into the private world of their eccentric secret art both were men of evident personal charm which they used to navigate through the normal world a world which increasingly fell away into obscurity and irrelevance while the private secret world they lived in became more vivid and seductive free to cultivate their bizarre private worlds their work became more and more trivial to the ordinary reader all of which is not to say that the work of their later years is unworthy or invalid our verdict regarding salinger s work will have to wait until his literary executors release his private archives to publication in merrill s case the long ouija board epic may never have enough readers to be considered worthy though it has its admirers there are dangers to artists and writers who either are born into financial security or who achieve freedom through strong early sales ordinarily we think of the freedom artists need to create as a positive aspect but once need is removed from the equation the tendency to indulge in private obsession may cause tangential distraction especially if it is accompanied by deviant or suspicious emotional tendencies a writer like henry miller may decide at the outset to capitalize on his obsessions as he did with his curiosity and lustful desires charles bukowski looking hopelessness and degradation straight in the face built an entire literary career out of a skid row drunk s life john cheever spent the first half of his life writing decent stories for decent people in the new yorker while inside he struggled with his demons alcohol bi sexualism adultery artistic jealousy until they finally overcame his resistance what we know of the private lives of artists and writers may or may not tell us something we need to know to understand the ultimate meaning of their works in the case of salinger or merrill i m not sure that finding out the unpleasant underlying backstory brings anything useful to our appreciation of catcher or sandover in the end the works have to stand on their own a couple of centuries from now will any possible reader need to know that the author of catcher in the rye had a thing about little girls will our understanding of phoebe holden caulfield s sister or of the young prostitute whom holden sees in his new york hotel room be enhanced by knowing about joyce maynard s year living in salinger s household is it important that we know the details of merrill s affairs with young greek boys in athens to more fully comprehend what the imaginary deities or ghosts are telling merrill he must think about his life in sandover perhaps not is there some important lesson to be gained by noting that great art may be the result of a kind of friction between intense private obsessions and the public at large to whom these private fictional worlds are offered guilt and embarrassment the need to tell a palatable version of a private reality may indeed be the strongest drivers of vivid artistic invention posted by curtis faville at 9 22 am no comments newer posts older posts home subscribe to posts atom archives may 1 october 1 march 1 february 1 december 2 october 1 august 1 july 4 june 1 may 3 april 1 march 3 february 3 january 1 december 3 november 1 september 1 august 1 july 1 may 2 march 1 january 1 december 1 november 2 october 1 september 1 july 2 june 2 may 1 april 1 march 2 february 2 january 5 december 1 november 4 october 2 september 3 july 3 june 1 may 3 march 4 february 1 january 5 december 4 november 2 october 2 september 3 august 4 july 3 june 4 may 1 april 2 march 6 february 2 january 3 december 3 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