The continuing saga of Maynard vs. Salinger

Joyce Maynard has made a kind of cottage industry out of her long-ago relationship with J.D. Salinger, who seduced her when she was a wunderkind of 18 and he a famous writer of 53 and then abruptly threw her out, leaving her to lick her wounds, seemingly recover, and then write a tell-all memoir some thirty or so years later.

Now she’s written a curious article in the NY Times that works a variation on the theme. It begins with a paragraph that says something about writing, fame, and fans:

IN the 50 years since J.D. Salinger removed himself from the public eye and stopped publishing, he has been viewed ”” more accurately, worshiped ”” as the human embodiment of purity, a welcome antidote to phoniness. To many, he was a kind of god.

Really? Many? No doubt some; I know there were (and perhaps still are, even though the elusive Salinger himself is now gone and not just secluded) people who felt that way, who revered him in a manner that seemed both excessive and unhealthy, and who considered his self-imposed exile a tease and an invitation to pry into it. But “the human embodiment of purity”—rather than just a really famous guy who wrote a really famous book and who, like Garbo, wanted to be left alone? Surely this was a fringe group of near-lunatics?

At any rate, there’s little doubt (knowledge in part thanks to Maynard’s revelations) that Salinger was not especially “pure” (whatever that means): he was an older guy who dug younger chicks. That’s not in itself a crime, especially because it seems Salinger was careful not to bed them till they had passed the legal age of consent (Maynard mentions a 14-year-old, but it appears—although it’s not clear from her article—that he probably only corresponded with her until she was of legal age). If that’s true, then the greater beef, it seems to me, is that he loved ’em and left ’em—or rather, he asked them to leave after a fairly short time—and was a controlling guy during the relationships as well. And they were young and malleable and generally controllable; or at least Maynard was.

Like a lot of other not-so-admirable people, Salinger seems to have hurt quite a few of his fellow-humans. But he was neither priest nor teacher nor doctor nor therapist nor anyone in the sort of special relationship of trust and authority who would have been legally barred from sexual interactions with the people (young or old) in his charge. So Salinger’s relationships with women such as Maynard fall under the heading of consensual sex with adults who looked up to him as some sort of sage, and who were ultimately hurt by him. They might instead have been hurt by contemporaries who were not famous (or even older guys who were not famous) with whom they slept, but it was instead Salinger who did the deed. And because they looked up to him, he probably had greater power than usual to hurt them.

Maynard has another curious thing to say about it all:

I am as troubled by the use of the word “woman” to describe the 18-year-old object, briefly, of a 53-year-old’s affections as I am by the use of the word “lover” to describe my 18-year-old self, in the context of that relationship.

I wonder what Maynard’s suggested remedy would be. Move the age of consent to 21 or even older? Somehow I very much doubt it. Ban sexual relations between older men and much-younger women (or the reverse)? Or does she want to ban sexual relations between all those of unequal power?

Perhaps not; perhaps she just wants us to hate Salinger for what he did to her. In that pursuit, she’s free to use the power of her pen to do the job.

[NOTE: Cross-posted at Legal Insurrection.]

I looked up the Wiki article on Joyce Maynard. And I quote:

Maynard grew up in Durham, New Hampshire, daughter of the Canadian painter Max Maynard and writer Fredelle Maynard. Her mother was Jewish (daughter of Russian-born immigrants) and her father was Christian.[1][2] She attended the Oyster River School District and Phillips Exeter Academy. She won early recognition for her writing from The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, winning student writing prizes in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970, and 1971. While in her teens, she wrote regularly for Seventeen magazine. She entered Yale University in 1971 and sent a collection of her writings to the editors of The New York Times Magazine. They asked her to write an article for them, which was published as “An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life” in the magazine’s April 23, 1972 issue. The article prompted a letter from J. D. Salinger, then 53 years old, who complimented her writing and warned her of the dangers of publicity.

I went to the link at “An 18-Year Old Looks Back on Life”, and found the following:

We in Durham, where the state university stands, were a specially hated target, a pocked of liberals filling the minds of New Hampshire’s young with high-falutin, intellectual garbage. And that was why the archaic New Hampshire Legislature always cut the university budget in half, and why my family had only one car, second-hand (my father taught English at the university).

According to the NYT article that Joyce Maynard authored which Wiki links to, her father taught English at the University of New Hampshire, yet the Wiki article says that Joyce Maynard’s father was a painter. This doesn’t speak well for Wiki. Link 1 from Wiki, shown in boldface, which Joyce Maynard also authored, stated that her father was a painter and “taught at the university,” but doesn’t state which department he taught in. Given those descriptions that Joyce Maynard wrote, it is not difficult to see how the Wiki author gave an incomplete description of the occupations of Joyce Maynard’s father.

For a more complete story on her father’s skills, Joyce Maynard authored My Father Was a Painter.[not a Wiki link]

During all the years that I was growing up, my father earned a living as an assistant professor of English at a medium-sized state university, but in fact what he really was, was a painter. As a young man born with the century, my father had come of age on the western coast of Canada, in the midst of an artistic revolution. In those days it was dangerous, radical stuff, being a modern artist, but that was the art he loved and the kind of art he wanted to make, himself. In my father’s family, any art would have been bad enough.

Her father was both an artist and a university [assistant, I believe] professor of English. I wish that Wiki would have gotten this right but so it goes. As this example shows, Wiki is not 100% accurate.

http://joycemaynard.com/audio-stories/my-father-was-a-painter.shtml My Father Was A Painter.

Comments

The continuing saga of Maynard vs. Salinger — 9 Comments

artfldgr on September 16, 2013 at 2:50 pm said:

Surely this was a fringe group of near-lunatics?

how do you divide them up?

the mysterious?
Salinger..
Emily Bronte
Bill Watterson
Emily Dickinson
Glenn Gould
Greta GarboHarper Lee

by their loss of sanity?
Howard Huges…
Micheal Jackson…
Syd Barrett
Nikola Tesla

by their talents?
Bobby Fischer
Oliver Sachs
John Swartzwelder

By their medical conditions?
Joseph Merrick

by their hating man?
Theodore Kaczynski
Phil Spector

Axl Rose
Brian Wilson
David Bowie
often left out is van morrison
Terrence Malick
Sly Stone

here is a clue…
they often can fit in many areas
however, one common thread…

they are all creatives who wanted to create (compulsivly – as i have said that art is an acceptable form of OCD)

but did not care for the public eye that came with it
once divided by that, then you can list the opposite which are those celebs who are a narcisists narcacist
neo-neocon on September 16, 2013 at 3:29 pm said:

arfldgr:

The “fringe group of near-lunatics” I was referring to were the worshiping FANS, not the writers themselves.

Although perhaps it would work for either group :-).
vanderleun on September 16, 2013 at 3:32 pm said:

Poor Joyce….. after all this time,…. all these years….. she’s got…. well…. nothing.
Ann on September 16, 2013 at 4:19 pm said:

Several years ago, I read Maynard’s 1999 memoir in which she spilled the beans about Salinger. It didn’t leave me feeling that Salinger was so much a sexual predator, as just extremely odd; he would eat almost nothing but semi-rare lamb, for instance.

Maynard herself left me with mixed feelings. For one thing, both she and her mother, as I recall, worked together on hooking her up with Salinger. Her mother even made her a little-girl kind of dress to wear for her first meeting with Salinger. This was after all the letters Maynard had exchanged with him, letters in which he had exhorted her to remain childlike. Also, if I’m remembering correctly, in the book Maynard spent some time pondering the meaning of her mother’s involvement.

I didn’t read the linked NY Times piece (have used up my monthly freebie quota), so hope I didn’t just repeat what was said there.
Gringo on September 16, 2013 at 5:10 pm said:

I looked up the Wiki article on Joyce Maynard. And I quote:

Maynard grew up in Durham, New Hampshire, daughter of the Canadian painter Max Maynard and writer Fredelle Maynard. Her mother was Jewish (daughter of Russian-born immigrants) and her father was Christian.[1][2] She attended the Oyster River School District and Phillips Exeter Academy. She won early recognition for her writing from The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, winning student writing prizes in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970, and 1971. While in her teens, she wrote regularly for Seventeen magazine. She entered Yale University in 1971 and sent a collection of her writings to the editors of The New York Times Magazine. They asked her to write an article for them, which was published as “An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life” in the magazine’s April 23, 1972 issue. The article prompted a letter from J. D. Salinger, then 53 years old, who complimented her writing and warned her of the dangers of publicity.

I went to the link at “An 18-Year Old Looks Back on Life”, and found the following:

We in Durham, where the state university stands, were a specially hated target, a pocked of liberals filling the minds of New Hampshire’s young with high-falutin, intellectual garbage. And that was why the archaic New Hampshire Legislature always cut the university budget in half, and why my family had only one car, second-hand (my father taught English at the university).

According to the NYT article that Joyce Maynard authored which Wiki links to, her father taught English at the University of New Hampshire, yet the Wiki article says that Joyce Maynard’s father was a painter. This doesn’t speak well for Wiki. Link 1 from Wiki, shown in boldface, which Joyce Maynard also authored, stated that her father was a painter and “taught at the university,” but doesn’t state which department he taught in. Given those descriptions that Joyce Maynard wrote, it is not difficult to see how the Wiki author gave an incomplete description of the occupations of Joyce Maynard’s father.

For a more complete story on her father’s skills, Joyce Maynard authored My Father Was a Painter.[not a Wiki link]

During all the years that I was growing up, my father earned a living as an assistant professor of English at a medium-sized state university, but in fact what he really was, was a painter. As a young man born with the century, my father had come of age on the western coast of Canada, in the midst of an artistic revolution. In those days it was dangerous, radical stuff, being a modern artist, but that was the art he loved and the kind of art he wanted to make, himself. In my father’s family, any art would have been bad enough.

Her father was both an artist and a university [assistant, I believe] professor of English. I wish that Wiki would have gotten this right but so it goes. As this example shows, Wiki is not 100% accurate.

http://joycemaynard.com/audio-stories/my-father-was-a-painter.shtml My Father Was A Painter.
mizpants on September 16, 2013 at 7:14 pm said:

I saw Joyce Maynard at a party at a literary festival about 5 years ago. She swept into the room like a diva, surrounded by 3 thuggish-looking, muscular men, all in black. I remember wondering if they were actually bodyguards. They did a few rotations, spoke to no one. She struck me as arrogant and unsavory.
blert on September 16, 2013 at 9:17 pm said:

Her true beef with Salinger is that he terminated her bonding to an apex Alpha male.

Her hamster has never recovered, which is what you’d expect.

Monica Lewinsky has traversed most of the same story arc.

After licking Bill Clinton, she’s had no love life. Imagine the horror of losing your lover to a lesbian twenty-years older than yourself!
Sam L. on September 17, 2013 at 11:52 am said:

As one who never read Salinger, but did see a few of Maynard’s columns, it is as much as I care to make this inane comment.
Ymarsakar on September 18, 2013 at 1:02 pm said:

Because she cannot change herself, she demands the entire world change to suit her desires.

Such is the mind of a megalomaniac.

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The New Neo

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The continuing saga of Maynard vs. Salinger

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The continuing saga of Maynard vs. Salinger — 9 Comments

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