Grim Reader, Jan. 29, 2010: J.D. Salinger, Louis Auchincloss and Jean Simmons
by Michael Schaffer
JANUARY 29, 2010 TAGS:
J.D. Salinger shunned publicity. But if this was supposed to make people focus only on his books, it didn’t work. In the Obitosphere this week, his flight from fame became the story itself, as Salinger was remembered for being, in the New York Times’ words, “the Garbo of letters, famous for not wanting to be famous.” The Times, in fact, is about the only one of the major early obits — Salinger died just before Grim Reader’s deadline — not to use the word “recluse” in the top paragraph (it was in the headline). The Los Angeles Times calls him “one of contemporary literature’s most famous recluses”; the Washington Post goes with “celebrated author and enigmatic recluse”; USA Today and Reuters go with “reclusive writer” and “reclusive author,” as if those were professional categories.
All the pieces recount Salinger’s early literary fame and his subsequent retreat to New England seclusion, where he published nothing, avoiding the media types who occasionally broke news about his embrace of eastern mysticism or his romance with a Yale undergrad. Some rumors had it that he wrote furiously and then burned the results. But, of course, despite a steady trickle of reporters into Cornish, N.H., no one knew for sure. (The Providence Journal posts its own contribution to the stalking-Salinger library, a nice 1987 Mark Sennott piece that chronicles Salinger’s lawsuit over an unauthorized biography.)
As for Salinger’s own literary endeavors, most of the obits focus on how “Salinger influenced untold numbers of disaffected youth,” in the Wall Street Journal’s words, via the bestselling Catcher in the Rye. The New York Times’ Charles McGrath, though, goes deeper into his later work, especially his Nine Stories, which “demolished whatever was left of the traditional architecture of the short story — the old structure of beginning, middle, end — in favor of an architecture of emotion.” Fittingly, there are lots of snarky online critics, too: “JD Salinger is dead,” blogs Philadelphia Weekly’s Joel Mathis. “His being overrated, though, is immortal.” Otherwise, the analysis is mostly directed towards Salinger’s role as mid-century social observer, his books assigned by the likes of Harvard sociologist David Reisman in his class on American social structure.
And, of course, in what is becoming a standard set of obituary data points when a pop culture figure dies, the Associated Press’ send-off includes a rundown of the instant reaction on Twitter, where “Salinger” and “Holden Caulfield” were top trending topics. “JD Salinger has just decided to become extra reclusive,” tweeted comedian John Hodgman.
Salinger’s death overshadows the passing of another mid-century fiction-writing social observer: Louis Auchincloss, whose tales of East Coast WASPdom, nearly every obit notes, earned him the title of “America’s foremost novelist of manners.” Of course, the Associated Press’ version points out that this was “not unlike being called ‘America’s premier polo player’ or ‘America’s finest maker of top hats.’” The Washington Post is also quick to cast him as a relic of the blue bloods’ exotic heyday: With “citizens of every ethnicity and creed holding positions of power all across the country, Mr. Auchincloss’s oeuvre had taken on a patina of yesteryear,” writes Dennis Drabelle.
Or maybe not. “Auchincloss is the only one who tells us how our rulers behave in their banks and their boardrooms, their law offices and their clubs,” the New York Times quotes Gore Vidal as saying. That old passage also anchors a smart Gawker appreciation that explains Auchincloss’ current relevance. “The rage being directed at Goldman Sachs, AIG, Timothy Geithner, et. al. is a reaction against another colossal failure of Auchincloss’ class of people to competently manage the power and resources that they were born into, a dynamic with which he was familiar,” the piece concludes.
Auchincloss-type characters were in short supply in the work of Howard Zinn, the leftist historian who “inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience,” according to a Boston Globe obit. In Zinn’s bestselling A People’s History of the United States, the piece notes, heroes included “the farmers of Shays’ Rebellion and union organizers of the 1930s,” rather than our aristocratic founding fathers. Alas, Zinn’s Obitosphere eulogists don’t include pitchfork-wielding rebels. Instead, the Globe quotes Ben Affleck, who grew up near Zinn. “He taught that history was made by the everyman, not the elites,” the actor explains.
America loves political boundary-crossers, and this week’s glowing obits for former Maryland Sen. Charles McC. Mathias are no exception. The front-page write-up in the Washington Post focuses almost entirely on the many places that “one of the last unabashed Senate liberals in the GOP” differed with mainline Republicans: Vietnam, abortion, Nixon’s Southern Strategy. The pieces all reference Mathias’ moniker as “the conscience of the Senate,” and the Baltimore Sun headlines with the word “Maverick,” Grim Reader’s least favorite political descriptor. A better question might have been why he stuck with his party. Most of the write-ups include a cursory reference to his general agreement with GOP economic policies, but if that issue was so important to Mathias, it’d be nice to hear more about it.
Robert Mosbacher, by contrast, will never get political-saint treatment. The Wall Street Journal’s first-paragraph descriptions include “oil tycoon” and “presidential money man,” two distinctly non-beloved roles. George H.W. Bush’s Commerce secretary is remembered by the Houston Chronicle as “perhaps the Republican Party’s greatest fundraiser.” The lengthy piece chronicles a privileged New York upbringing and triumphs in the oil world, not to mention the successful defense of yachting’s America’s Cup. It also details how his openly gay daughter publicly rebuked the gay-baiting 1992 GOP campaign Mosbacher helped fund. “The criticism placed her father in an awkward spot, especially since neither he nor Bush really supported the anti-gay agenda,” the paper says, without elaborating. The obits also note that Mosbacher and his socialite wife had a tabloid divorce. Unfortunately, only the Washington Post follows through with dirt-dishing detail (it’s not that sexy). But the gossip apparently continues: A Page Six item this week reports that Georgette has “decided she got enough ink in the obits for Robert Mosbacher, and isn’t going to the funeral.”
Everyone notes the execution of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the onetime Saddam Hussein henchman known as “Chemical Ali.” Though accounts in the U.S. papers mainly carry news of the killing, English accounts read more like real obits. The Times of London features the fullest take on “one of the cruelest men in a cruel regime” who “delighted in devising hideous tortures and deaths.” Majid was once even sacked for excess lawlessness. “The act certainly did not indicate any reduced reliance by Saddam on the repressive talents of his bloodthirsty cousin,” the piece archly notes: Majid was soon back in the inner circle, tasked with — among other things — murdering the dictator’s turncoat sons-in-law. Majid went to the gallows for the infamous 1988 genocide against the Kurds. But in a sign of how Iraq has fallen off the American political radar, there is no mention of his passing in neocon outlets like the Weekly Standard, which once cited the prosecution of genocidal brutes as an argument for the wisdom of the 2003 invasion.
Majid might have fared better in court had he hired Jack T. Litman, who the New York Times remembers for “cerebral, cool and aggressive defense of notorious murder defendants,” including “preppy killer” Robert Chambers. “Mr. Litman became synonymous with a so-called blame-the-victim defense and was a lightning rod for criticism from feminists, the relatives of the victims in his cases and large swaths of the public,” the obit says.
Actress Jean Simmons’ “talent exceeded the parts she played,” according to a New York Times headline. That statement might unsettle readers of the Washington Post, whose headline touts Simmons’ role of Ophelia in Hamlet. The ensuing obits offer unusually smitten descriptions of her looks: “known for her beguiling beauty and demure British manners” (the Times of London) or “large, saucy eyes and a mouth that began to turn up at the corners as she imagined mischief” (the Guardian). The languid prose is all too common: In an R-rated age, some folks never forget their first big-screen naked lady. Just as last year’s obits for Farrah Fawcett all referenced her 1970s pin-up poster, “for men of a certain age, the memory of seeing Simmons naked from the back in the 1960’s ‘Spartacus’ ranks high among their early carnal thrills,” explains the Los Angeles Times.
Also in entertainment, Pernell Roberts, a “ruggedly handsome actor,” is remembered by the Associated Press for having left TV’s Bonanza at its 1965 ratings peak, wandering a wilderness of guest-star gigs until he led a new show, Trapper John, MD, in the ’80s. The wire service ignores, though others mention, that the Georgia-bred Roberts was a civil rights activist, marching on Selma with Martin Luther King. … And the Obitosphere remembers James Mitchell, the domineering patriarch of soap opera All My Children. “Every soap needs that guy: the father who controls and schemes, but out of love (sort of), and with good intentions (kind of), so that when someone really and truly evil comes on the scene, you can be glad he's around (mostly),” blogs Linda Holmes for National Public Radio. “Mitchell had it down pat.”
Finally, it’s the run-up to the Super Bowl — and the week of yet another excessively hyped Apple product launch — which makes it a perfect time to remember Guy Day, the ad man best known for crafting the 1984 Super Sunday TV spot that launched Apple’s Macintosh, in the process “creat[ing] the tradition of the Super Bowl commercial showcase,” according to Adweek. He was apparently an interesting guy, too: The Wall Street Journal reports that he dropped out of the ad game several times to work on painting and fiction.
Michael Schaffer’s Grim Reader appears Friday in Obit. He is the author of One Nation Under Dog, about culture and the American pet industry.
All the pieces recount Salinger’s early literary fame and his subsequent retreat to New England seclusion, where he published nothing, avoiding the media types who occasionally broke news about his embrace of eastern mysticism or his romance with a Yale undergrad. Some rumors had it that he wrote furiously and then burned the results. But, of course, despite a steady trickle of reporters into Cornish, N.H., no one knew for sure. (The Providence Journal posts its own contribution to the stalking-Salinger library, a nice 1987 Mark Sennott piece that chronicles Salinger’s lawsuit over an unauthorized biography.) As for Salinger’s own literary endeavors, most of the obits focus on how “Salinger influenced untold numbers of disaffected youth,” in the Wall Street Journal’s words, via the bestselling Catcher in the Rye. The New York Times’ Charles McGrath, though, goes deeper into his later work, especially his Nine Stories, which “demolished whatever was left of the traditional architecture of the short story — the old structure of beginning, middle, end — in favor of an architecture of emotion.” Fittingly, there are lots of snarky online critics, too: “JD Salinger is dead,” blogs Philadelphia Weekly’s Joel Mathis. “His being overrated, though, is immortal.” Otherwise, the analysis is mostly directed towards Salinger’s role as mid-century social observer, his books assigned by the likes of Harvard sociologist David Reisman in his class on American social structure.
And, of course, in what is becoming a standard set of obituary data points when a pop culture figure dies, the Associated Press’ send-off includes a rundown of the instant reaction on Twitter, where “Salinger” and “Holden Caulfield” were top trending topics. “JD Salinger has just decided to become extra reclusive,” tweeted comedian John Hodgman.
Salinger’s death overshadows the passing of another mid-century fiction-writing social observer: Louis Auchincloss, whose tales of East Coast WASPdom, nearly every obit notes, earned him the title of “America’s foremost novelist of manners.” Of course, the Associated Press’ version points out that this was “not unlike being called ‘America’s premier polo player’ or ‘America’s finest maker of top hats.’” The Washington Post is also quick to cast him as a relic of the blue bloods’ exotic heyday: With “citizens of every ethnicity and creed holding positions of power all across the country, Mr. Auchincloss’s oeuvre had taken on a patina of yesteryear,” writes Dennis Drabelle.
Or maybe not. “Auchincloss is the only one who tells us how our rulers behave in their banks and their boardrooms, their law offices and their clubs,” the New York Times quotes Gore Vidal as saying. That old passage also anchors a smart Gawker appreciation that explains Auchincloss’ current relevance. “The rage being directed at Goldman Sachs, AIG, Timothy Geithner, et. al. is a reaction against another colossal failure of Auchincloss’ class of people to competently manage the power and resources that they were born into, a dynamic with which he was familiar,” the piece concludes.
Auchincloss-type characters were in short supply in the work of Howard Zinn, the leftist historian who “inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience,” according to a Boston Globe obit. In Zinn’s bestselling A People’s History of the United States, the piece notes, heroes included “the farmers of Shays’ Rebellion and union organizers of the 1930s,” rather than our aristocratic founding fathers. Alas, Zinn’s Obitosphere eulogists don’t include pitchfork-wielding rebels. Instead, the Globe quotes Ben Affleck, who grew up near Zinn. “He taught that history was made by the everyman, not the elites,” the actor explains. America loves political boundary-crossers, and this week’s glowing obits for former Maryland Sen. Charles McC. Mathias are no exception. The front-page write-up in the Washington Post focuses almost entirely on the many places that “one of the last unabashed Senate liberals in the GOP” differed with mainline Republicans: Vietnam, abortion, Nixon’s Southern Strategy. The pieces all reference Mathias’ moniker as “the conscience of the Senate,” and the Baltimore Sun headlines with the word “Maverick,” Grim Reader’s least favorite political descriptor. A better question might have been why he stuck with his party. Most of the write-ups include a cursory reference to his general agreement with GOP economic policies, but if that issue was so important to Mathias, it’d be nice to hear more about it.
Robert Mosbacher, by contrast, will never get political-saint treatment. The Wall Street Journal’s first-paragraph descriptions include “oil tycoon” and “presidential money man,” two distinctly non-beloved roles. George H.W. Bush’s Commerce secretary is remembered by the Houston Chronicle as “perhaps the Republican Party’s greatest fundraiser.” The lengthy piece chronicles a privileged New York upbringing and triumphs in the oil world, not to mention the successful defense of yachting’s America’s Cup. It also details how his openly gay daughter publicly rebuked the gay-baiting 1992 GOP campaign Mosbacher helped fund. “The criticism placed her father in an awkward spot, especially since neither he nor Bush really supported the anti-gay agenda,” the paper says, without elaborating. The obits also note that Mosbacher and his socialite wife had a tabloid divorce. Unfortunately, only the Washington Post follows through with dirt-dishing detail (it’s not that sexy). But the gossip apparently continues: A Page Six item this week reports that Georgette has “decided she got enough ink in the obits for Robert Mosbacher, and isn’t going to the funeral.”
Everyone notes the execution of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the onetime Saddam Hussein henchman known as “Chemical Ali.” Though accounts in the U.S. papers mainly carry news of the killing, English accounts read more like real obits. The Times of London features the fullest take on “one of the cruelest men in a cruel regime” who “delighted in devising hideous tortures and deaths.” Majid was once even sacked for excess lawlessness. “The act certainly did not indicate any reduced reliance by Saddam on the repressive talents of his bloodthirsty cousin,” the piece archly notes: Majid was soon back in the inner circle, tasked with — among other things — murdering the dictator’s turncoat sons-in-law. Majid went to the gallows for the infamous 1988 genocide against the Kurds. But in a sign of how Iraq has fallen off the American political radar, there is no mention of his passing in neocon outlets like the Weekly Standard, which once cited the prosecution of genocidal brutes as an argument for the wisdom of the 2003 invasion.
Majid might have fared better in court had he hired Jack T. Litman, who the New York Times remembers for “cerebral, cool and aggressive defense of notorious murder defendants,” including “preppy killer” Robert Chambers. “Mr. Litman became synonymous with a so-called blame-the-victim defense and was a lightning rod for criticism from feminists, the relatives of the victims in his cases and large swaths of the public,” the obit says.
Actress Jean Simmons’ “talent exceeded the parts she played,” according to a New York Times headline. That statement might unsettle readers of the Washington Post, whose headline touts Simmons’ role of Ophelia in Hamlet. The ensuing obits offer unusually smitten descriptions of her looks: “known for her beguiling beauty and demure British manners” (the Times of London) or “large, saucy eyes and a mouth that began to turn up at the corners as she imagined mischief” (the Guardian). The languid prose is all too common: In an R-rated age, some folks never forget their first big-screen naked lady. Just as last year’s obits for Farrah Fawcett all referenced her 1970s pin-up poster, “for men of a certain age, the memory of seeing Simmons naked from the back in the 1960’s ‘Spartacus’ ranks high among their early carnal thrills,” explains the Los Angeles Times. Also in entertainment, Pernell Roberts, a “ruggedly handsome actor,” is remembered by the Associated Press for having left TV’s Bonanza at its 1965 ratings peak, wandering a wilderness of guest-star gigs until he led a new show, Trapper John, MD, in the ’80s. The wire service ignores, though others mention, that the Georgia-bred Roberts was a civil rights activist, marching on Selma with Martin Luther King. … And the Obitosphere remembers James Mitchell, the domineering patriarch of soap opera All My Children. “Every soap needs that guy: the father who controls and schemes, but out of love (sort of), and with good intentions (kind of), so that when someone really and truly evil comes on the scene, you can be glad he's around (mostly),” blogs Linda Holmes for National Public Radio. “Mitchell had it down pat.”
Finally, it’s the run-up to the Super Bowl — and the week of yet another excessively hyped Apple product launch — which makes it a perfect time to remember Guy Day, the ad man best known for crafting the 1984 Super Sunday TV spot that launched Apple’s Macintosh, in the process “creat[ing] the tradition of the Super Bowl commercial showcase,” according to Adweek. He was apparently an interesting guy, too: The Wall Street Journal reports that he dropped out of the ad game several times to work on painting and fiction.
Michael Schaffer’s Grim Reader appears Friday in Obit. He is the author of One Nation Under Dog, about culture and the American pet industry.
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