Mistakes in THE CATCHER IN THE RYE?

I wrote briefly about J.D. Salinger in the first volume of The Allure of Nymphets, and I did a post about him on the The Allure of Nymphets blog, but I watched Salinger (2013), because I hoped that I would uncover some additional material on the reclusive author for volume two of The Allure of Nymphets.

And I did get some more details about the famous ephebophile. For example, I learned that when Salinger was 30, he told 14-year-old Jean Miller, "I'd like to kiss you goodbye, but you know I can't." And he told Miller's mother, "I'm going to marry your daughter." Salinger and Miller reunited in Manhattan after Miller turned 18. Their relationship was platonic until Miller took the initiative to make it sexual. 

The other things I learned about Salinger's ephebophilia I'll save for the book, but I didn't realize that three shootings were associated with the novel e.g., Robert John Bardo's shooting of Rebecca Schaeffer , John Hinckley, Jr.'s assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, and Mark David Chapman's shooting of John Lennon. 

To uncover some more clues about Salinger's ephebophilia and to find out why the novel was associated with not one, but three shootings, I decided to re-read The Catcher in the Rye (I'm assuming that I read it in high school, but I have absolutely no recollection of what I read in high school.)

I feel a bit like Nabokov, who was not impressed by Dostoevsky, when I write that I wasn't impressed by The Catcher in the Rye. I'm shocked that the novel has sold over 65 million copies and is listed as one of the best books of the previous century. I found the novel to be very bland and not suspenseful; however, I do have two clues as to why it's so popular and why it was associated with two murders. 

1. From 1961 to 1982, The Catcher in the Rye was widely censored in high schools and libraries. One of the best forms of publicity for a book is to ban it. If it weren't for the banning of Henry Miller's entertaining  Tropic of Capricorn, the novel would probably be obscure. 

2. Robert Greene implied in Mastery that the level of effort, emotion, and intensity that a writer puts into his or her writing will be projected to the reader. Therefore, one can project his mindset even when not in the presence of others through his creations (e.g. poetry, art, etc.). Salinger worked on The Catcher in the Rye during his emotionally grueling World War II tour of duty. The fear and emotion that he experienced on the front lines may have been transferred to his writing and consequently to his readers.

Additionally, I was surprised by the number of grammatical errors in The Catcher in the Rye. Admittedly, no man-made book is free of mistakes. And after my books are praised, the comments are often followed by, "But I did notice some mistakes." Nonetheless, I was surprised that a book of this caliber would have so many mistakes.

Here are some mistakes(?) that I recognized in the novel followed by my corrections:

p. 138
First she told me about some Harvard guy - it probably was a freshman, but she didn't say, naturally - that was rushing hell out of her. 

First she told me about some Harvard guy - [he] probably was a freshman, but she didn't say, naturally - that was rushing [the] hell out of her. 

p. 152
D.B. took Phoebe and I to see it last year.

D.B. took Phoebe and [me] to see it last year.

p. 229
I quick jumped up and ran over and turned off the light over the desk.

I [quickly] jumped up and ran over and turned off the light over the desk.

(When I re-read the sentence, I completely ignored and didn't see the work "quick", which may explain why it eluded the editors and survived all this time. I read "I jumped up and ran over and turned off the light over the desk.")

p. 233
It scared hell out of old Phoebe when I started doing it...

It scared [the] hell out of old Phoebe when I started doing it...

p. 259

... and I didn't have any too much time.

... and I didn't have too much time.

The following aren't mistakes, but I don't recall ever reading a sentence with the words "you" and "in" written twice in a row. Theses sentences would probably be marked as incorrect in a MFA program.

p. 32. "I mean it isn't too nice, naturally, if somebody tells you you don't brush your teeth."
p. 210 "It was all about this play she was in in school."

I'm I missing something here, or is The Catcher in the Rye overrated? 

(By the way, you lovers of Salinger and The Catcher in the Rye, don't try to bash me by pointing out the mistakes in this post and my books. That's not the point.)

Was Nabokov a Hebephile\Ephebophile?

Readers of this blog are most likely familiar with Nabokov's Lolita, but they may not be familiar with his four other books that share a similar theme of hebephilia\ephebophilia with Lolita:

Laughter in the Dark 
The Original of Laura
Transparent Things
The Enchanter 

And some of Nabokov's published poetry contains the theme of hebephilia\ephebophilia. In “Lilith”, which can be found in his Selected Poems (2012), he wrote:

                           

I died. The sycamores and shutters
along the dusty street were teased
by torrid Aeolus.

I walked,
and fauns walked, and in every faun
god Pan I seemed to recognize:
Good. I must be in Paradise.

Shielding her face and to the sparkling sun
showing a russet armpit, in a doorway
there stood a naked little girl.
She had a water-lily in her curls
and was as graceful as a woman. Tenderly
her nipples bloomed, and I recalled
the springtime of my life on earth,
when through the alders on the river brink
so very closely I could watch
the miller’s youngest daughter as she stepped
out of the water, and she was all golden,
with a wet fleece between her legs.

And now, still wearing the same dress coat
that I had on when killed last night,
with a rake’s predatory twinkle,
toward my Lilith I advanced.
She turned upon me a green eye
over her shoulder, and my clothes
were set on fire and in a trice
dispersed like ashes.

In the room behind
one glimpsed a shaggy Greek divan,
on a small table wine, pomegranates,
and some lewd frescoes covering the wall.
With two cold fingers childishly
she took me by my emberhead [пламя – i.e., erect penis]:
“now come along with me,” she said.

Without inducement, without effort,
Just with the slowest of pert glee,
like wings she gradually opened
her pretty knees in front of me.
And how enticing, and how merry,
her upturned face! And with a wild
lunge of my loins I penetrated
into an unforgotten child.
Snake within snake, vessel in vessel,
smooth-fitting part, I moved in her,
through the ascending itch forefeeling
unutterable pleasure [восторг – i.e., approaching orgasm] stir.
But suddenly she lightly flinched,
retreated, drew her legs together,
and grasped a veil and twisted it
around herself up to the hips,
and full of strength, at half the distance
to rapture [блаженству - i.e., orgasm], I was left with nothing.
I hurtled forward. A strange wind
caused me to stagger. “Let me in!”
I shouted, noticing with horror
that I stood again outside in the dust
and that obscenely bleating youngsters
were staring at my pommeled lust [булаву – mace i.e., erect penis].
“Let me come in!” And the goat-hoofed,
copper-curled crowd increased. “Oh, let me in,”
I pleaded, “otherwise I shall go mad!”
The door stayed silent, and for all to see
writhing in agony I spilled my seed
and knew abruptly that I was in Hell.

(The words in the brackets are from Maxim D. Shrayer's Russian Literature journal article "Nabokov's Sexography".)

Nabokov shared in Poems and Problems that “Lilith” was composed “to amuse a friend.” In Pniniad, Marc Szeftel, whom many claim was the model for Nabokov's Pnin, shared an anecdote that was related to him by Gleb Struve, an associate of Nabokov:

“Struve tells about a private evening devoted to Nabokov's erotical (or even pornographical) poetry, read by him. Of these poems only “Lilith” has been published in N.'s 'Poems and Problems'...This reading happened when N. was not yet married...What was on young Nabokov's mind before he married Vera, I do not know. Probably, quite a few frivolous things, to expect from a very handsome, young Russian.”

Maurice Couturier revealed in Nabokov's Eros and the Poetics of Desire that different versions of last six lines of  “Lilith” were used "...throughout Nabokov's novels which may suggest that he, as an author, was probably reenacting an event belonging to his own past or a fantasy he had nursed."

Brian Boyd shared in Vladimir Nabokov,The American Years that when Nabokov taught at Stanford his evenings were often spent attending formal parties and playing chess with Henry Lanz, the head of the Slavic department. Nabokov found Lanz "...delicate, cultured and talented." In addition, Nabokov found that Lanz was a nympholept (i.e., a person seized with a frenzy of erotic emotion) who would "...drive off on the weekends, neat and dapper in his blazer, to orgiastic parties with nymphets." Now the question is, did Nabokov ever attend any of those parties with Lanz? 

And who was one of Nabokov's favorite painters? Based on my leading question, you may have been able to guess none other than Balthus. Nabokov shared in In Strong Opinions, "The aspects of Picasso that I emphatically dislike are the sloppy products of his old age. I also loathe old Matisse. A contemporary artist I do admire very much, though not only because he paints Lolita-like creatures, is Balthus." Furthermore, Eric Naiman wrote in Nabokov, Perversely that a painting in Pnin, "Hoecker's 'Girl with a Cat'", may have been a reference to Balthus' "Jeune Fille au Chat".

Balthus' "Jeune Fille au Chat"

Nabokov was asked in a 1964 Playboy interview, "Are there any contemporary authors you do enjoy reading?" Nabokov replied, "I do have a few favorites—for example, Robbe-Grillet and Borges. How freely and gratefully one breathes in their marvelous labyrinths! I love their lucidity of thought, the purity and poetry, the mirage in the mirror."

Unsurprisingly, Robbe-Grillet writes about nymphets too. Here's an exemplary excerpt from his Recollections of the Golden Triangle [French: Souvenirs du Triangle d'Or]:

To celebrate her 17th birthday, Caroline's father took a whole box at the Opera House. Caroline was commanded to face the stage while straddling two armless red-velvet chairs before her father "...pressed himself shamelessly against her buttocks in order to caress her in greater comfort...The insidious fingers are no longer satisfied with stroking...They pass back and forth in wave after wave, tirelessly, over the bivalvular lips...One tiny, fragile rock resists and stiffens..."

And what about Aleksandr Pushkin, who was one Nabokov's favorites poets. The Paris Review revealed that Nabokov spent two months in Cambridge working on the English translation and commentary of Eugene Onegin for over 17 hours per day. In the novel in verse, the poet Lensky invited 26-year-old dandy Eugene Onegin to dinner with his fiancée, the nymphet Olga, and her family. During the dinner Tatyana, Olga's 13-year-old older sister, became very infatuated with Onegin but her innocent love for the older man was (initially) unrequited. 

Wait. Let's not forget about Nabokov's short stories. According to Naiman, Nabokov wrote “Skazka” in 1926 before it was published in Rul', a Berlin emigre newspaper that was founded by his father. In the story, on his ride to work, Erwin habitually gazes through the tram's window and picks girls for his imaginary harem. However, the young man gains the opportunity for his dreams to come true after he meets Frau Monde, a female Devil who promises Erwin that he can have all the girls he wants upon “cushions and rugs” in “a villa with a walled garden” but that it's “essential and final” that he selects an odd number of girls between noon to midnight. 

The next day Erwin starts collecting slave girls. Here's a partial list:

A maiden in a white dress with chestnut hair and palish lips who was playing with her “fat shaggy pup”

“[T]wo young ladies-sisters, or even twins...Both were small and slim...with saucy eyes and painted lips.” Erwin referred to the Twins as “Gay, painted, young things.”

A lady who “...was lovely, hatless, bobhaired, with a fringe on her forehead that made her look like a boy actor in the part of a damsel.

A “beautiful in a drab, freckled way” wench who worked at a cheap restaurant that Erwin frequented on Sundays. 

A girl with gray eyes with a slight slant and a thin aquiline nose that wrinkled when she laughed

A girl at a small amusement park who wore a scarlet blouse with a bright-green skirt

Four girls in jerseys and shorts, “...magnificent legs, naked nearly up to the groin...” inside the amusement park's arcade. 

“A child of fourteen or so in a low-cut black party dress .” She was walking with a tall elderly man who was a “...famous poet, a senile swan, living all alone in a distant suburb”

I won't reveal who last girl was, but I will share her response to Erwin which was, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself...Leave me alone.” Her response was due to “...that which changes a man's life (i.e., genital) with one divine stroke...”

When Nabokov translated the story before it was published in Playboy (1974) and Details of a Sunset (1976), he aggressively titled it “A Nursery Tale” and noted in Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories that when he was translating the story he was “...eerily startled to meet a somewhat decrepit but unmistakable Humbert escorting his nymphet in the story I wrote almost half a century ago.”

Thus, was Nabokov a hebephile\ephebophile? Clearly, he was and according to Matt Ridley's New York Time's Notable Book The Red Queen all men are. But did Nabokov ever have an age-discrepant relationship? We may never know.

(A number of Nabokov's other works are peppered lightly and liberally with references to nymphets. I would refer the reader to Naiman's Nabokov, Perversely and Couturier's Nabokov's Eros and the Poetics of Desire.)

A Writer is a Prince!

I was originally drawn to the March 2014 issue of Vanity Fair due to the subtitle of the article The Prince of Patchin Place:

"... the Harris Tweed-clad modernist [E.E. Cummings], a longtime friend and mentor to her novelist father, rocked her teenage world." 

I thought that I could have used the article as a source for The Allure of Nymphets blog and for the second  volume of the book; however, this quote for E.E. Cummings stood out as well, “A writer is a prince!” 

Cummings felt that way despite:

"... he sometimes didn’t make enough money to pay the rent on the ramshackle apartment in Greenwich Village."

"... his last book of poetry had been rejected by every estimable publisher, 

his wife was six months pregnant by her dentist and 

his Aunt Jane had purloined his income ..."

However, Cummings had the "... ability to live elegantly on almost no money." And maybe most importantly, through it all, he maintained a very high level of self-esteem, which according to Cabane in The Charisma Myth would explain his charismatic appeal to the 15-year-old Masters High School sophomore.

Would You Write Sleaze to Fund Your Mainstream Writing? [WARNING: GRAPHIC]

I did a post on The Allure of Nymphets blog about Robert Silverberg's [pseud. Don Elliott] Orgy Maid. On page five of the book it states:

In the hill country of Tennessee, where Lonnie Garth was born, they have a quaint little folk saying about virginity. “A virgin,” they say, “is a five-year-old girl who can outrun her daddy and her brothers.”

Lonnie was a fast runner. That’s how come her virginity lasted all the way to the age of twelve. And, at twelve, she was about the oldest virgin in town.

And on page 31 Lonnie was told, "You been getting loved since you were six, I bet. Your brothers and your old man got there first."

It may not be surprising from the above excerpts that Orgy Maid is in the vintage sleaze genre, but it may be surprising to learn that Robert Silverberg is a Brooklyn born Ivy League graduate (B.A. in English Literature from Columbia) and multiple winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards.

In defense of Silverberg, Orgy Maid, with its teen anal sex and lipstick lesbianism, is no more graphic than some of the other mainstream books that I've reviewed that are considered to be YA literature. For example, in the Lauren Myracle's TTYL, 15-year-old Margaret, "...ejaculates...she squirts when she comes." 

The question becomes, who determines which books are considered sleaze or literature? And would you write sleaze to fund your more mainstream writing endeavors.

THE GINGER MAN: Solicitous Content vs Writing Mechanics

Here's Amazon description of J.P.Donleavy's The Ginger Man - 

First published in Paris in 1955, and originally banned in the United States, J. P. Donleavy’s first novel is now recognized the world over as a masterpiece and a modern classic of the highest order. Set in Ireland just after World War II, The Ginger Man is J. P. Donleavy’s wildly funny, picaresque classic novel of the misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American ne’er-do-well studying at Trinity College in Dublin. He barely has time for his studies and avoids bill collectors, makes love to almost anything in a skirt, and tries to survive without having to descend into the bottomless pit of steady work. Dangerfield’s appetite for women, liquor, and general roguishness is insatiable—and he satisfies it with endless charm.

Despite the fact that the novel was named one of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century by the Modern Library in 1998, has sold over 40 million copies, and that Johnny Depp has been trying to adapt the novel into a film, I can understand why a number of reviewers on Amazon weren't able to finish the novel. 

J.P. Donleavy changes narrative mode mid-paragraph from first-person to third-person - from one sentence to the next. There are conversations without quotation marks in the middle of paragraphs. And if you aren't focused a joke or sexual innuendo will pass you like a bicycle messenger in mid-town Manhattan.

The Nation hailed The Ginger Man "A comic masterpiece." However, if this book were written in your typical creative writing workshop or mailed to an editor or agent, it probably would be marked repeatedly with a red pen for errors and rejected. 

Due to the unconventional writing style, sexual content (e.g., anal sex), and the protagonist's adventures in a foreign land, the book reminded me of Henry Miller's writing style and of Tropic of Cancer, which argues the point that books like Tropic of Cancer, The Ginger Man and even 50 Shades of Grey wouldn't be as popular as they are if it weren't for the controversial content. Thus, for the common reader, a compelling story can often be more important than "proper" writing mechanics. 

Are Book Readings an Effective Marketing Strategy?

I gave a talk last week at Brooklyn College on How to Pull an All-Nighter When You Don't Have To. The talk was about how a number of overachievers like Tesla, Freud, and Balzac didn't restrict their all-nighters like many college students to their university years, but they pulled all-nighters on a regulars basis throughout their careers to maximize the amount of time they devoted to working on their passions.

After a couple of years of doing marketing for my books, I'm not sure that giving readings and talks are good for book sales, which may be the reason why Frederick Seidel never gives readings of his poetry. I even suspect that some authors give readings for pretentious reasons. For example, so they can say things like, "I have reading tonight at _____." or "I just wrapped up my book tour. I went to ___ different cities!"

I may give one more reading at a nearby university - only because I'm passionate about sharing my knowledge of the topic; however, I'm skeptical about the talk's significance on book sales. It may be better to spend those few hours working on the next book or a blog post, which definitely has a positive effect on book sales.

Ephebophile Poets and Novelists

I wrote in The Allure of Nymphets and on The Allure of Nymphets' blog that according to Wyatt Mason of the New York Times, a favorite subject of poets for centuries has been man’s attraction to beautiful young women i.e, nymphets. For example, past poets Dante, Petrarch, John Donne and Poe and contemporary poets Frederick Seidel and Charles Bukowski all wrote about nymphets and/or were in age-discrepant relationships. 

And a number of famous novelists are no different. For example, Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Philip Roth and  J.D. Salinger wrote books with an ephebophile protagonist and/or the authors were in age-discrepant relationships. 

Let's combine the two by looking at a poem about an ephebophile author. 

In a clean, well-lighted place by Charles Bukowski 

the old fart [Ernest Hemingway]. he used his literary reputation
to reel them in one at a time,
each younger than the last.
he liked to meet them for luncheon and
wine
and he’d talk and listen to them
talk.
whatever wife or girlfriend he had at the moment
was made to
understand that this sort of thing made him
“young again.”
the young ladies vied to bed down with
this
literary
genius.
in between, he continued to write,
late at night in his favorite bar
liked to talk about writing and his amorous
adventures.
actually, he was just a drunk
who liked young ladies,
writing itself,
and talking about writing.
wasn't a bad life.

Malcolm Gladwell @ the Union Square Barnes & Noble

After reading Nassim Taleb's post on Facebook about how, "... many many social "scientists" are much worse..." than Gladwell and having read Christopher F. Chabris' Wall Street Journal review of Gladwell's David and Goliath, I was hesitant about going to hear Gladwell speak at the Union Square Barnes & Noble last Thursday night.  However, I'm happy that I went.

Gladwell opened by mentioning that three people came to his very first book signing, and was pleasantly surprised to see such a large crowd awaiting his arrival. I was roped off and segregated with a crowd of people who didn't have a book to be signed behind a larger crowd of people who had hardcovers. (One consequence of the proliferation of ebooks is that a number of them can be downloaded for free. For example, the torrent for the ebook and audio book for David and Goliath is on the Internet.)

After giving the example of the Viet Cong, Gladwell summarized David and Goliath by saying that what is in one's heart is the most important element in winning a battle or overcoming an obstacle i.e., a Goliath. 

Lastly, Gladwell said that a representative from the toothpaste division of Procter & Gamble shared with him that despite the fact that Arm & Hammer's toothpaste is inferior to Procter & Gamble's Crest, people purchase Arm & Hammer's toothpaste because they associate baking soda with a clean kitchen and cleanliness in general. Gladwell went on to say that that false association may be the topic of his next book. 

PHILIP GOES FORTH @ the Mint Theater

After seeing the controversial Balthus exhibits last weekend at the Gagosian and the MET, I saw George Kelly's inspiring Philip Goes Forth yesterday at the Mint theater. The play is about Philip, an aspiring playwright, who wants to move to New York City to write plays; however, Philip's father wants him to continue working in the family business.The question becomes, does Philip really want to write plays for the rest of his life or does he only desire to defy his father. 

George Kelly makes it clear that if an aspiring artist isn't sincere, then he or she won't be able to endure the arduous process of writing for hours, editing for more hours, fielding rejections, etc. And that if the "artist" finds more pleasure in eating than working on his creative project, then he probably won't "make it" in the Big Apple. 

Great Men Never Stop Working [Writing]

On a recommendation from a review that I read in an issue of Vanity Fair, I downloaded an e-copy of Mason Currey's Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. Curry shared that V.S. Pritchett wrote, "Sooner or later the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing."

That passage reminded me about the time I went to dinner some years back at the Burger Joint in the Le Parker Meridien hotel in mid-town Manhattan with a New York Times bestselling author who also happened to be an Ivy League graduate and a professor at a prestigious university on the west coast. As I was standing in line ordering our charbroiled burgers (The professor didn't have cheese.), I noticed that after he briefly surveyed the bustling establishment, he pulled out a novel and boldly began reading in the bustling restaurant.