In the wake of J.D. Salinger’s death, two unflattering books were mentioned, one by his daughter Margaret and the other by the Canadian writer Joyce Maynard, who had lived with him for a while. These books were meant to debunk his mythical reputation as a reclusive saint. Not at all, they wrote: he often went to church suppers and was emotionally and physically abusive. The question arises whether the books were relevant in assessing his place in American literature and in the social history of the post-war period.
The answer purists would give was – certainly not.
Moderate impurists on the other hand would reply that they were relevant to any person concerned with the relationship between Salinger’s life and his work. Radical impurists would argue emphatically that they were absolutely essential to satisfy the all-too-human curiosity of ordinary people who, whether we like it or not, often tend to be more interested in the artist than in the art. Of all human weaknesses this is surely the least discreditable.
If these two books fall under the category of gossip, so be it. Gossip does not mean untruth. It merely means plausible, entertaining and often tantalizing information that its purveyors feel should not be suppressed and that was often gathered by unscientific methods. Without gossip we would have no literary fiction and, as we all know, fiction is designed to convey inner truths.
Let us not condemn those who wish to know why van Gogh cut off his ear, nor the readers of Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s biography of Mozart who are told that, in a passage in the second movement of Mozart’s string quartet #13 in D minor (K. 179), there are five bars depicting his wife’s labour pains.
This leads inevitably to the inexhaustible subject of Richard Wagner. Purists deny the relevance of Wagner’s conquest of at least two married women whose husbands were his friends, with the purpose of marrying them himself, which he did. Nor would they pay attention to his carelessness with money, nor with his assumption that there was one code of ethics for normal people and another for artists.
On the other hand, impurists have a field-day with Wagner’s feat in supplying “the sound-track for the Third Reich.” (See the Wagneritis posting.)
With that achievement – both purists and impurists have no choice but to agree – J.D. Salinger could not compete.
Eric Koch’s new book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
This summer I am going to drive to Cornish, New Hampshire, and have lunch in a local diner. I won’t ask anyone about him, I just want to see it. It’s only 3-4 hours from Knowlton, Quebec.
A friend of mine once made a nasty, though accurate, remark that involved Salinger in mocking the preppy habits of a mutual acquaintance: “He read Catcher in the Rye and believed it.”
Don’t break any glass in Cornish.
This is news to me: “In a passage in the second movement of Mozart’s string quartet #13 in D minor (K. 179), there are five bars depicting his wife’s labour pains.” Which five bars?
…and, by the way, the only d minor early Mozart quartet I can find is K.173, not K.179. I’m going to assume that the error is Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s, not EK’s.
Second part of second movement, Andante. Letter K in Peter’s Edition.