Michael Davidow's Blog: The Henry Bell Project - Posts Tagged "j-d-salinger"
The Price of Things
“We aren’t that different, Henry. You and I. Not in the long run, and not in the short run. I think we should be better friends.” “We’re ad-men,” Bell told him, close to being insulted. “Just because we sell something, doesn’t mean we have to buy it.”
There’s an article in today’s Times about how cynical we have become in our feelings about politics. Every new television show flaunts our disdain for that profession. There is no more Frank Capra, no more Mr. Smith. If you want to see good guys, says cultural critic Alessandra Stanley, you should watch a show about cops or doctors.
The fact is, cynicism has been a growth industry for a long time now. The Second World War, for instance, featured approximately eighteen million Americans in uniform, a few of whom were smart kids, and who found (to their chagrin) that the United States Army was filled with jerks. These guys had names like Norman Mailer, J.D. Salinger, and Joseph Heller. They wrote about their discovery in some pretty good books.
Then, in the fifties, another group of people realized that their post-war suburban neighborhoods were populated with alarmingly empty souls. Then, in the sixties, another cohort figured out that Wall Street had issues... and so on and so on, until you hit our own time -- in which a popular television program dares to suggest that the advertising business (wow) might lack depth. (“‘I have children,’ the Tolle man confessed. He looked at Bell like a church-goer looks at stained glass; soulful, softened at the core. ‘I have two,’ he said. ‘One of each. A boy and a girl. And I’ll tell you this, Henry. This world is full of crap.’”)
You can go back further, too. The Book of Ecclesiastes has some words to say on this subject.
There is a danger in high quality cynicism. It turns glossy fast, and it starts getting attractive. A lot of books, a lot of shows, and a lot of art -- they seem devoted to that trap. It has the mark of youth about it. It has vitality. And who can deny that the world is full of fakers? (“A teenager needs to rebel,” Bell tells the Tolle man. “I wouldn’t trust a kid who didn’t.”)
The question is what to do about it, after you find that out. And while great work often follows after that first blush of contact with the world-- when its cruelty and unfairness still seem fresh, and revelation alone suffices -- I wonder if an older artist can still go that route. I found that I could not.
If Alessandra Stanley wants a non-cynical hero, Henry Bell is her man.
There’s an article in today’s Times about how cynical we have become in our feelings about politics. Every new television show flaunts our disdain for that profession. There is no more Frank Capra, no more Mr. Smith. If you want to see good guys, says cultural critic Alessandra Stanley, you should watch a show about cops or doctors.
The fact is, cynicism has been a growth industry for a long time now. The Second World War, for instance, featured approximately eighteen million Americans in uniform, a few of whom were smart kids, and who found (to their chagrin) that the United States Army was filled with jerks. These guys had names like Norman Mailer, J.D. Salinger, and Joseph Heller. They wrote about their discovery in some pretty good books.
Then, in the fifties, another group of people realized that their post-war suburban neighborhoods were populated with alarmingly empty souls. Then, in the sixties, another cohort figured out that Wall Street had issues... and so on and so on, until you hit our own time -- in which a popular television program dares to suggest that the advertising business (wow) might lack depth. (“‘I have children,’ the Tolle man confessed. He looked at Bell like a church-goer looks at stained glass; soulful, softened at the core. ‘I have two,’ he said. ‘One of each. A boy and a girl. And I’ll tell you this, Henry. This world is full of crap.’”)
You can go back further, too. The Book of Ecclesiastes has some words to say on this subject.
There is a danger in high quality cynicism. It turns glossy fast, and it starts getting attractive. A lot of books, a lot of shows, and a lot of art -- they seem devoted to that trap. It has the mark of youth about it. It has vitality. And who can deny that the world is full of fakers? (“A teenager needs to rebel,” Bell tells the Tolle man. “I wouldn’t trust a kid who didn’t.”)
The question is what to do about it, after you find that out. And while great work often follows after that first blush of contact with the world-- when its cruelty and unfairness still seem fresh, and revelation alone suffices -- I wonder if an older artist can still go that route. I found that I could not.
If Alessandra Stanley wants a non-cynical hero, Henry Bell is her man.
Beginner's Luck
He had often needed to stand still until a hand could reach down for him through the stepped-back apartment buildings, the patchwork brick alleyways, the asphalt circuits of New York City; a hand to prop him up, and keep him safe. He would be one moment on a wharf by Sutton Place, or a bar in Yorktown, or an automat in Times Square, then the next moment, he would be in bed, his wife’s white arms around his middle…
There was a charming piece in today’s Times (no, not more of Allesandra Stanley, waxing rhapsodic about the charm of Watergate): a little story about the Morgan Library’s purchase of some letters written by J.D. Salinger to a woman named Marjorie Sheard. They corresponded about their respective writing careers when they were young. Salinger went on to fame and fortune; Ms. Sheard folded away her manuscripts. But she kept those letters, all these years.
I never wrote to famous writers when I was young. I wish I had. But when I started my writing career, after law school, you could still send your manuscripts to actual editors, and a striking number of those people actually wrote back to me. Morgan Entrekin was friendly and encouraging. So were Ann Godoff and Nan Graham (whose telling me that I wrote with “grace and precision” probably made me write another two novels-- gracefully, and precisely). And more. A baker’s dozen were friendly in this fashion.
It’s amazing, really, because when I recall them, my first stories were pretty traditional affairs. The females were beautiful and broken; the males were sensitive and torn. Stoic suffering abounded. So did epiphanies. I can no longer write that way. I can only have sympathy.
So strong is that sympathy, however (“You understand, though. Don’t you, Henry. Every flower in every field. Every Maybelline eyelash, and every Revlon mouth. Every drop of Fanta Orange spit, in every kiss you ever stole. Tell me you understand, man. Please.”), that I find the Salinger-Sheard correspondence to be truly touching. Salinger is a guy I admire, and I miss him, and I’m glad he was nice to Marjorie Sheard.
And now that I think of it, the New York City of Henry Bell belongs to the forties even more than to the seventies. So maybe he overlaps with Holden Caulfield after all.
There was a charming piece in today’s Times (no, not more of Allesandra Stanley, waxing rhapsodic about the charm of Watergate): a little story about the Morgan Library’s purchase of some letters written by J.D. Salinger to a woman named Marjorie Sheard. They corresponded about their respective writing careers when they were young. Salinger went on to fame and fortune; Ms. Sheard folded away her manuscripts. But she kept those letters, all these years.
I never wrote to famous writers when I was young. I wish I had. But when I started my writing career, after law school, you could still send your manuscripts to actual editors, and a striking number of those people actually wrote back to me. Morgan Entrekin was friendly and encouraging. So were Ann Godoff and Nan Graham (whose telling me that I wrote with “grace and precision” probably made me write another two novels-- gracefully, and precisely). And more. A baker’s dozen were friendly in this fashion.
It’s amazing, really, because when I recall them, my first stories were pretty traditional affairs. The females were beautiful and broken; the males were sensitive and torn. Stoic suffering abounded. So did epiphanies. I can no longer write that way. I can only have sympathy.
So strong is that sympathy, however (“You understand, though. Don’t you, Henry. Every flower in every field. Every Maybelline eyelash, and every Revlon mouth. Every drop of Fanta Orange spit, in every kiss you ever stole. Tell me you understand, man. Please.”), that I find the Salinger-Sheard correspondence to be truly touching. Salinger is a guy I admire, and I miss him, and I’m glad he was nice to Marjorie Sheard.
And now that I think of it, the New York City of Henry Bell belongs to the forties even more than to the seventies. So maybe he overlaps with Holden Caulfield after all.
