Matt’s Comments (group member since Mar 06, 2009)

Matt’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

your thoughts to the publisher pulling 'Last Train to Hiroshima' off the shelves



http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2010/03/04/...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/...



and or discuss the salient points raised by David Shields 'Reality Hunger'



http://www.avclub.com/articles/david-...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio...

http://popserial.wordpress.com/2009/1...

http://www.themillions.com/2009/08/a-...

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200...

or as Charles Pelligrino might say: when writing a work of non-fiction feel free to make shit up

how about this instead: if you witnessed something that terrible is it possible that in order to cope with it you might turn it into something a little less realistic? a little more of a fantasy, like something out of children's book turned terribly wrong

http://www.slate.com/id/2243004/

"...Salinger, the Times headline says, "turned his back on success." We, in turn, have turned our back on those who turn their back on success, in compensation for which we sentimentalized Salinger's reclusion all out of proportion to its importance. So the man didn't like publicity; so the fuck what? We might withdraw some of the energy spent keeping that nimbus afloat, and concentrate instead on the man's actual legacy."

hmm

http://www.slate.com/id/2243564/

"...I know it's wishful thinking, but I wonder whether there's a clue in a little-known, unpublished—at least, not in book form—story that I came on the first time a day after Salinger's death. A story called "Go See Eddie."

You're not supposed to know about this particular Salinger story. Very few do, and those who do will probably become fewer still, thanks to what seems like a strange and hasty Web cover-up maneuver someone pulled off last weekend.

"Go See Eddie," was J.D. Salinger's second published story, the one that first appeared in an obscure journal called Kansas City Review in December 1940 and then disappeared into musty library stacks for a nearly a quarter-century until an archivist in the Midwest uncovered it in 1963.

I'd never read "Go See Eddie" before Salinger died, but several years ago, I'd bookmarked a Web site that had links to all the known unpublished (between hard covers) stories of J.D. Salinger. The ones that had mainly appeared in places like The Saturday Evening Post and Mademoiselle. The ones he'd sued people over any attempt to reprint them in book form.

Something funny, weird, mysterious—Salingeresque—happened to that Web site in the weekend after Salinger died. I knew that he had sicced lawyers on someone who had tried to publish an unauthorized edition of these stories. But the Web site had been there for years, so I assumed it was, if not authorized, then tolerated..."

and another thing

in her apologia Halpin says: "I love Salinger's writing! But I don't think honoring him for something he was not aids our understanding of his work"

can anyone else spot the scarecrow wobbling down the yellow brick road and singing "If I only had a brain!" here? Strawman indeed - who the hell is honoring him for being a recluse or for that matter for being saintly towards women? Did I miss something?

Do you know what actually might aid our understanding of his work? an investigation of why he chose to stop publishing and/or dealing with the media in general - with her fatuous misreading and her slanderous inuendo I think Halpin provides an excellent example of why he may have made that decision. Can you say "phoney", Holden sure can.

In fact how the elements of Salinger's (dis)engagement with the world and his choices in that regard relate to the themes of his work is a far more interesting (and should we say direct?)question than whether he had a sour relationship with Joyce Maynard

Shelby wrote: "I think the great stories have beating hearts of their very own."


nicely put - I judge a novel by its own merits - it has to stand alone first as a novel for it to be worth even thinking about the rest of this

another way of thinking about this is that while I believe that a) Roman Polanski is a scum bag who drugged and raped a minor I also believe that b) Chinatown is one of the all-time great movies and for me there is no disconnect there

sure it might be interesting to consider how those elements of scum-baggery in Polanski's own make-up find themselves expressed in creepy old John Houston or how they initially resonated with Towne's script or how nasty a little f-ck he is in the 'nosy little kitty' scene or conversely how his own survivor experience is reflected or refracted by that very scum-baggery BUT...

those are all side conversations and dont have to have a direct correlation to my experience of or engagement with the film

in fact they could actually hinder that engagement in much the same way that constantly thinking 'hey that's Bonnie from Bonnie and Clyde' can get in my way of enjoying Faye Dunaway's performance in the film

http://www.salon.com/books/writing/in...

interesting + a link to the Guardian article

no, no, it's too late... worthy try though... (lol)

I actually thought this was a more incendiary way of getting conversation flowing, guess not

I miss the old files a bit (no offense to those of you game enough to join in here)

that's all - and it smacks of bs - "there is no legal meaning of rape"? "the piece does not equate..."

the piece is above judge for yourselves. Me? I think when you make a list and include an item on the list you are probably doing something like equating - that's how I use language - I dont for instance make a list like this: orange, apple, banana, mayonaise - unless I have something very particular in mind - it is however telling that the author then added Anne Sexton - are we confusing a list of things that have penises with a list of people who were f-d up or is she? and how is Anne Sexton, allegedly the victim of abuse, sufferer of bi-polar disorder and eventual suicide like Picasso or Polanski either? a little tone deaf on Halpin's part

here's the writer's response after several pages of very critical reader response:

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 06:50 AM
quick note from writer
Whoa! you guys get up early. Thanks for reading the piece. A few things I want to clarify:

--The piece does not equate Salinger's actions with those of Picasso or Polanksi. They are offered as hyperbolic examples of other great male artists who had ugly personal lives. As a corrective, I'll add a great female artist who had an ugly personal life: Anne Sexton.

--"Rape" has no legal meaning. Polanski was charged with sexual assault and he pled guilty to a lesser count of assault.

--My title for the piece was "J.D. Salinger, Recluse. Really?" Dunno if that context makes the piece read differently.

--I love Salinger's writing! But I don't think honoring him for something he was not aids our understanding of his work.

Thanks again--Mikki

—mhalpin
Read mhalpin's other letters
Permalink

Jonathan wrote: " . . .why does franzen ALWAYS have to say something that makes him sound like a dick?"

if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck...?

here's my problem(s) with this

a)there's a difference between not doing publicity and refusing to publish and being an actual hermit - anyone reading pieces on Salinger's post publication activity (like those of Ron Rosenbaum that Ive posted in the files) would not be surprised to find that he was engaged in his community and occasionally had dinners in town etc - no one ever claimed that he was living in Howard Hughes like seclusion

b)having your daughter call you 'predatory and controlling' is not the same as being a rapist or physically abusing so why are we comparing him to Polanski or Picasso? The headline screams 'ugly'! Here was a summary of what Margaret Salinger wrote about her father, according to that very sympathetic Slate piece on her:

"He was by turns an uncondescending playmate, a wiseacre older-brother type, and a lively travel companion. But Peggy's all-too-human needs proved too much for him, as they did for her mother, and when the daughter reached eighth-grade the parents (now divorced) parked her at boarding school."

c) in the midst of this attack on Salinger Halpin says of Polanski:"Roman Polanski assaulted a young woman and made taut, thoughtful films" Really? This whole story is about white washing legacy and you say: "assualted a young woman" when it should read "drugged and raped a minor"? let's have some balance here.

d)'ugly history of women'? his daughter didnt like being sent to boarding school and his affair with Joyce Maynard had a sour ending? if this constitutes 'ugly history of women/men' who here hasnt had one?

from Salon:

Salinger: "Recluse" with an ugly history of women
How we've all found a convenient way of avoiding the truth about his troubled past

In all of the many heartfelt (and deserved) eulogies about author J.D. Salinger, who died last week at 91, one word appears over and over. It is, of course, "recluse." The headline on the Los Angeles Times blog post about his death read, "J.D. Salinger, reclusive author of 'The Catcher in the Rye,' dies at 91." New York magazine called him "the world's most celebrated literary recluse," and the New York Times said that the author had "lived in seclusion for more than 50 years."

I find these portraits of Salinger as a noble loner curious. They certainly aren't accurate. There is ample evidence that he did not lead a solitary life apart from the rest of humanity. Salinger was married three times, and had numerous other long- and short-term romantic engagements. He seduced Joyce Maynard after seeing her on a magazine cover. He dated actress Elaine Joyce during the 1980s while she was appearing on such shows as "Fantasy Island," "Magnum, PI," "Simon and Simon" and "Murder, She Wrote." He had three grandchildren. He went into New York for dinner with friends. He was apparently active in his community, greeting clerks at the store, attending church suppers and town meetings, and shopping at Price Chopper. He spent a lot of time with his lawyers. And this is just the stuff we know about. One wonders if Emily Dickinson, that other famous literary recluse, now sees how much she could have gotten away with and still maintained her recluse cred.

Continue Reading
It's not hard to see why the idea of J.D. Salinger as an asocial genius appeals. Living in a world of tabloid television and gossip Web sites, it is comforting to think of a higher intellect who has rejected it all. Verlyn Klinkenborg's New York Times editorial celebrated this romantic ideal: "There was a purity in Mr. Salinger's separation from the world, whatever its motives, whatever his character. His half-century of solitude and silence was a creative act in itself, requiring extraordinary force of will." Insisting on Salinger's reclusiveness has given us an antihero nearly as influential as Salinger's greatest creation, Holden Caulfield.

But I think there is another, more insidious reason that the literary establishment is so invested in the fictional, reclusive Salinger. It is a convenient cudgel with which to silence any discussion of Salinger's personal life, particularly any revelation of unsavory truths about one of America's most revered authors. Both Joyce Maynard and Salinger's daughter Margaret were vilified for violating the great man's privacy when they wrote about their own experiences with him and exposed his predatory, controlling relationships with women. Instead of exploring the insights these revelations might bring to readings of Salinger's work (not to mention the women's right to tell their own stories), critics dismissed their books as exploitative, attention-seeking stunts. When Maynard decided to sell some of the letters Salinger had written her -- letters that confirmed her story of their affair -- the response was even more bitter. A typical reaction was that of author Cynthia Ozick, who wrote that Maynard "has never been a real artist and has no real substance and has attached herself to the real artists in order to suck out his celebrity." This sort of backlash is not exclusive to Salinger -- when Pablo Picasso's former wives and lovers began to expose him as a physically and emotionally abusive man, they were subject to similar criticisms.

As feminists have long known, the personal is political, and women who tell unpleasant truths rarely find a receptive audience. Anyone who got into an argument about Roman Polanski this past year knows how desperately fans can cling to their icons, despite clear evidence of wrongdoing. Acknowledging the experiences of Margaret Salinger or Joyce Maynard would mean deviating from the Salinger myth. To shut such conversations down, we're told to be rational and to "separate the art from the artist." But those insisting on this separation aren't rejecting biographical details as part of how we understand works of art, they are merely insisting we use their narrative, in order to reach their conclusions.

Continuing to believe in the mythically reclusive Salinger and disallowing the presence of the women in his life doesn't do anyone any good. We need to be able to appreciate art in all of its complicated contexts. Artists -- both men and women -- have personal lives, and they are often messy. Picasso painted compelling portraits of women he had abused. Roman Polanski assaulted a young woman and made taut, thoughtful films. J.D. Salinger went to church suppers and hooked up with actresses. I hope that in the wake of J.D. Salinger's death, his real story can now be told. Let's leave the fiction on the shelf.

Mikki Halpin is a freelance writer who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is currently at work on a book about fandom

Goodbye: We are Closing
Hello-

After seventeen and half years, the time has come. Curtains down and goodbye–in two weeks Vertigo Books will close.
Starting today, EVERYTHING IN THE STORE IS 20% OFF. If you’ve been eyeing that special something, come in and grab it now, before someone else does. And our new rules for the next couple weeks: no checks, no returns and no exchanges. Please note: we will be closed Easter Sunday, April 12, our usual hours will resume Monday

Why are we closing? There are many reasons, but basically, not enough people buy books here.

We have many loyal customers, just not enough of them, and our cloning experiments have not yielded satisfactory results. And way too many people (not you, but someone you know) are buying their books at Amazon. We’ll spare you the inside baseball stuff about the near monopolistic force Amazon has become in the industry. You can also skip to the party info at the end if you like.

Connecting the Dots
As we have said before, your shopping dollars help create the community you want to live in. For every $10 you spend at locally-owned businesses, $4.50 stays in our community. The math is simple and compelling:
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Amazon $0.00
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Our local economies are key to a successful recovery from the current financial crisis. Amazon and many online retailers contribute nothing financially to our state and local economies, yet suck up an enormous amount of Maryland’s shopping dollars and compete heavily with small natural foods stores, hardware stores, bookstores and specialty stores of all kinds.

While Amazon may have made their name selling books, they want you to buy a DVD player, organic foods, power tools and pick up the latest John Grisham title when you visit their site. They actively fight any attempt to force them to collect sales tax–even in those states where they have a physical presence. Maryland Senate Bill 1071 will allow us to join other states, such as New York and Kansas, that are now collecting sales tax for online sales and using the revenue for education and public safety.

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Please take a fresh look around your community, temporarily ditch the iPod, stop Facebooking and tweeting for a moment and explore your neighborhood’s businesses. Use one of the coupons below (email only) to visit new locally-owned businesses that need your support. If you want a small business to offer something else or do something differently, let them know and help them improve. If we want more than chains in the area, we need to start by supporting the local businesses we already have.

Any Excuse for a Party: Join us Saturday, April 18 5 pm-??
One of us grew up Irish Catholic and, under these circumstances, a wake is required. Bring a dish or something to drink and join us for a free form wake and potluck on Saturday, April 18 from 5 pm-?? If you shopped, read or worked here, we want to see you.

We hope Vertigo Books has served as a thoughtful literary and political gathering place, community and author resource, provided challenging, interesting conversation along with some laughter, and generally served, as one customer put it, as "an intellectual oasis on Route 1" (and previously at Dupont Circle).

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The Staff of Vertigo Books

Patty wrote: "The author seems to have gone to a lot of trouble to make it a "true" story. (The author's note, the periodical interviews with the main character...)Why is this so important? Does it make a difference to the story? Will the answers to these questions come clear as I get further into it?"

could be

glad to see that gas bag BHL got skewered

this is like that episode of Seinfeld where George is in a book club...

have you guys read the book?