Joyce Maynard shared in At Home
in the World: A Memoir the following conversation she had with Salinger.
(Salinger and Maynard had a 10-month age-gap affair that began when Maynard was
19 and a freshman at Yale.)
Joyce said, “I wish, instead of writing, that I could play
an instrument.”
Salinger responded, “Don’t ever suppose it’s some kind of
lesser art form […] because nobody’s lined up outside some […] club full of
people in turtlenecks waiting to hear you transport them into some other orbit
of pure ecstasy.”
Maynard said, referring to a Jazz performance, “They were
inventing everything. Right on the spot.”
But Salinger explained that what Joyce assumed was
improvisation were “virtuoso effects” from the (jazz) musicians “repertoire”.
Maynard opined that being a musician “looked like so much
more fun than” writing to which Salinger exploded:
“Fun! Not much fun in writing […] No notes on a page for us
to fall back on. No amazing orgasmic rhythms to make the audience melt. Not one
goddamn thing to do with the body, except to try whenever possible to ignore one’s
own cursed immobility. God, the unnaturalness of writing. And unlike performing
music, it never gets any easier, no matter how much you do it. Every damned
time we sit down to work, it’s that same blank page again. A person could have
a better time at a Doug McLure retrospective."
