Word: memoirs
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Indeed, Lyne's film is excruciatingly conscious of the fact that it is, after all, a film, and therefore contrived with elements at the filmmaker's disposal to shape audience perception. The film never lets us forget that we are seeing a very personal memoir through Humbert's own eyes and ears. Scattered voiceovers give us glimpses into Humbert's observations and feelings. Meanwhile, trivial occurrences in the film are occasionally represented in almost too much detail, from the making of an ice cream sundae to the zapping of bugs on a porch, as they might be in Humbert...
...first, in 1978, ended in a lawsuit that was settled out of court. In the second, three years later, the hospital where she practiced decided to stop using her services. In her memoir, Leading with My Heart, she described her feeling that the first incident provided an opening for enemies who had been after her for a while. "I had done all I, or anybody, could have done for [the patient]. Nevertheless, you could almost hear the drumbeats starting. All over town, my enemies had caught the scent of blood...
...Some women get replaced and grieve at Neiman Marcus; others--inhabitants of Manhattan's literary demimonde--write books intended to embarrass their exes for eternity. In her memoir Breakup, Catherine Texier laments getting dumped in tortured detail. (Does his new lover know about his toenail fungus? she wonders.) Anita Liberty's How to Heal the Hurt by Hating sticks to skewering her former beau, and, happily, all the comedy is intentional...
...hell with all that, the browser, the literary gossip and even the Maynard fan must think at some point: tell us something we really want to know. And now, Maynard has tried to oblige. In At Home in the World (Picador; 352 pages; $25)--yes, it's another memoir--she lifts the veil on the devastating affair she had with J.D. Salinger when she was 18 and the reclusive author of Catcher in the Rye was 53. Maynard's recounting is full of all those key details sympathetic girlfriends require. He made her eat frozen Birds Eye peas for breakfast...
Flatly written, with detail piling upon detail like so much slag on a heap, Maynard's memoir returns repeatedly to the idea of emotional and literary honesty. "Some day, Joyce, there will be a story you want to tell for no better reason than because it matters to you more than any other," Salinger tells her. "You'll simply write what's real and true." Maybe this is it. But where Salinger, or many a better writer, would have fictionalized his truths, opening up new universes for the reader, Maynard sheds no light on anything beyond the little spotlight...