Word: authored
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Another especially well-done portion of Contract on America is Scheim's enumeration of the deaths, under suspicious circumstances, of a dozen key witnesses and inquisitive journalists. The author's focus ranges from the prostitute who, days before the assassination, tried to warn authorities of the threat to the president's life, to the aging Mafia figure who was killed and dismembered after he told journalists that Ruby was "one of our boys." A spate of these stories, told with glorious, gory detail, makes for chilling reading indeed...
There are hundreds of writers waiting in varying stages of despair for their phone to ring. They dream of giving interviews, being summoned to lionizing appearances and literary lunches. A reviewing assignment would be welcome; a request to blurb a fellow author's new book would not go unconsidered. But life is unfair. Those who have get, and those who could get sometimes choose not to. Like J.D. Salinger, who has spent most of his 69 years ducking the sort of publicity that most authors would kill...
Most of the letters were written to Whit Burnett, Salinger's teacher and the editor of Story magazine; Elizabeth Murray, a friend; Judge Learned Hand, a New England neighbor; and Hamish Hamilton and Roger Machell, the author's British publishers. The young Salinger was full of strong opinions and pithy wisecracks. His view of U.S. publishing: "Everybody over here who's ever taught Senior English for a couple of semesters, or worked for a good upholsterer, has considered himself qualified to collect and edit a short story anthology...
Despite all the fuss, Hamilton's book emerges as a canny and engaging variation on that old journalistic ploy: how to write a lively story about not getting the story. In Search of J.D. Salinger is basically a tour de force, impressively written but a bit precious. The author invents an alter ego , character who prods the legally lamed Ian Hamilton to get on with his project despite the court's restrictions on paraphrasing. He also takes the liberty of imagining what Salinger might say to him: "It is you I hate. You are a snooper and a thief...
Hamilton's search for Salinger leads him into the author's fiction, where he finds autobiographical inspiration. The city and suburban settings of Nine Stories reflect Salinger's Manhattan youth and his adult stint among the commuters of Westport, Conn. The soldier in the magical For Esme -- with Love and Squalor suffers from a case of nerves not unlike the symptoms Salinger described in a letter to Hemingway. Models are identified for members of the Glass family, the precocious and haunting characters who ride the time loops of stories as early as A Perfect Day for Bananafish and as late...