“No. No. It was in a college English course I attended, oh, ten years ago. I had forgotten it completely until right now. Everyone had to write a sonnet. It was horrible, really, sentimental and melodramatic, but it was a plea to you to hurry and publish more stories. The sonnet was a cheap imitation of Keat’s ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.’ Your work has been described as touching the soul of the reader. That’s the way I felt. Feel. Honestly. You’ve touched my soul. I’m sorry if I sound like a middle-aged librarian at a book-auto-graphing session. Your writing has drawn me nearly fifteen hundred miles, allowed me to make a fool of myself, actually made me a criminal. That’s what I call having influence.”
“But I didn’t ask you to do it,” says Salinger. “I didn’t ask for you to feel the way you do. You’re influenced by an illusion. Writers are magicians. They write down words, and, if they’re good, you believe that what they write is real, just as you believe a good magician has pulled the coins out of your ear, or made his assistant disappear. But the words on the page have no connection to the person who wrote them. Writers live other peoples’ lives for them. I don’t write autobiography. I’m a quiet man who wrote stories that people believe. Because they believe, they want to touch me, but I can’t stand to be touched. They would have been chipping little pieces off me before I knew it, as if I were a statue, and pretty soon there wouldn’t have been anything left of me. That’s why I chose to drop out.”
We are loaded down with orange drinks, ice-cream bars, peanuts, and hot dogs. The hot dogs at Fenway Park are the smallest in the majors, scarcely bigger than cocktail franks. “Designed for midgets,” is the way Jerry describes them. I have a sense of déjà as I look at Jerry and the scene around me, for it is exactly as I envisioned it so many months ago in the October sunshine.
“Haven’t you been lonely? Aren’t you lonely?” I ask. “ That was one of the reasons I did what I did … I’ve been alone.” Surely I can’t be wrong on all counts.
Jerry looks crossly at me, having been engrossed in the antics of a base runner striding arrogantly toward second then lunging back in a colored blur and pouncing on the base as if it were a chicken trying to escape becoming Sunday dinner.
“It was just a question …”
“I don’t know any answers,” he almost shouts, and slams his hands down on his knees.
“Look, I’m not trying to bleed you,” I say, spreading my hands to show my innocence. “I want to renew you. I want to do something nice for you. I don’t think I’m doing this for myself. I drove all the way from Iowa. I made stops along the way. I had to have the right odors about me before I could approach you.
“I consider myself happy. I’m one of the few happy men in the United States. I own a farm. I grow corn. I have a wife who not only loves me but understands me; and a daughter who has red hair and green eyes like her mother.
“I love to stand in my yard at dawn, smell the dew, and watch the sun come up. I’ve built a magical baseball diamond at the edge of the cornfield, and I spend my evenings there watching …”
“Watching?” says Salinger, as if he has been called back from another world.
“You know—baseball games. I’d like to take you there. We could sit in the bleacher I built behind left field. The hot dogs are like they were in the old days, long and plump and fried on a grill with onions, and you smear the mustard on with a Popsicle stick, and there are jars of green relish. But Boston is the best I can do right now. Unless …”
“It’s not possible,” he says, a stern set to his jaw. “You’ve made it up. It’s too preposterous to believe. You’re probably not even from Iowa.”
Suddenly I am the one who is shouting. People are turning to stare at us. “Watch the game,” somebody says, but the
“But I didn’t ask you to do it,” says Salinger. “I didn’t ask for you to feel the way you do. You’re influenced by an illusion. Writers are magicians. They write down words, and, if they’re good, you believe that what they write is real, just as you believe a good magician has pulled the coins out of your ear, or made his assistant disappear. But the words on the page have no connection to the person who wrote them. Writers live other peoples’ lives for them. I don’t write autobiography. I’m a quiet man who wrote stories that people believe. Because they believe, they want to touch me, but I can’t stand to be touched. They would have been chipping little pieces off me before I knew it, as if I were a statue, and pretty soon there wouldn’t have been anything left of me. That’s why I chose to drop out.”
We are loaded down with orange drinks, ice-cream bars, peanuts, and hot dogs. The hot dogs at Fenway Park are the smallest in the majors, scarcely bigger than cocktail franks. “Designed for midgets,” is the way Jerry describes them. I have a sense of déjà as I look at Jerry and the scene around me, for it is exactly as I envisioned it so many months ago in the October sunshine.
“Haven’t you been lonely? Aren’t you lonely?” I ask. “ That was one of the reasons I did what I did … I’ve been alone.” Surely I can’t be wrong on all counts.
Jerry looks crossly at me, having been engrossed in the antics of a base runner striding arrogantly toward second then lunging back in a colored blur and pouncing on the base as if it were a chicken trying to escape becoming Sunday dinner.
“It was just a question …”
“I don’t know any answers,” he almost shouts, and slams his hands down on his knees.
“Look, I’m not trying to bleed you,” I say, spreading my hands to show my innocence. “I want to renew you. I want to do something nice for you. I don’t think I’m doing this for myself. I drove all the way from Iowa. I made stops along the way. I had to have the right odors about me before I could approach you.
“I consider myself happy. I’m one of the few happy men in the United States. I own a farm. I grow corn. I have a wife who not only loves me but understands me; and a daughter who has red hair and green eyes like her mother.
“I love to stand in my yard at dawn, smell the dew, and watch the sun come up. I’ve built a magical baseball diamond at the edge of the cornfield, and I spend my evenings there watching …”
“Watching?” says Salinger, as if he has been called back from another world.
“You know—baseball games. I’d like to take you there. We could sit in the bleacher I built behind left field. The hot dogs are like they were in the old days, long and plump and fried on a grill with onions, and you smear the mustard on with a Popsicle stick, and there are jars of green relish. But Boston is the best I can do right now. Unless …”
“It’s not possible,” he says, a stern set to his jaw. “You’ve made it up. It’s too preposterous to believe. You’re probably not even from Iowa.”
Suddenly I am the one who is shouting. People are turning to stare at us. “Watch the game,” somebody says, but the
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