I never met J. D. Salinger, but I may be one of the few people who can say that I saw him in the flesh when he attended my high school graduation in the spring of 1961, seated a few rows behind me — an event that came about because Wally Shawn, the son of the New Yorker editor William Shawn, was a classmate.
I can also report that I was visiting Wally in the Shawns’ Upper East Side apartment the day that Time magazine’s cover story on Salinger appeared, the following fall, around the same time that Franny and Zooey was published in book form. (The cover date was September 15, 1961.) Paradoxically, although Wally was the only one of my classmates at Putney who read my first (and never published) novel, Away From Here, written during my senior year, it would be incorrect to claim that I was a friend of his, at least in his mind, because he never gave me his unlisted phone number. He did, however, invite me to stop by his family homestead from time to time, on the chance that he might be in, and this was one of the times I did, most likely the last time. Apart from this event, what I chiefly recall of my three or four visits there was some pleasant and amiable conversations with Wally’s younger brother Allen, including a discussion of the then-current movie Spartacus, and, most memorably of all, participating on clarinet in a family jam session one day with William Shawn (stride piano), Wally (violin), and possibly Allen (though I can’t recall what instrument) after their father came home from work. This might have even been the same day that the Time cover story appeared, although I no longer remember how or why I happened to have my clarinet with me on that occasion.
It probably wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the Shawn household, or at least Wally and his mother, were in a state of panic and extreme consternation that day about the Time story. Wally, who was appalled by the fact that I was a fairly regular reader of the magazine, brought up the subject himself during my visit, insisting that the Time story’s claim that his father, whom Franny and Zooey was dedicated to, had sent copies of the book to several friends to show how pleased he was, was not only patently false, but made his father seem like Toots Shor or someone of that ilk. But I also remember that in the midst of our conversation, the phone rang and Wally, who answered, reported back afterwards that it was “Jerry,” and quoted some wry wisecrack of his about the Time story and its fallout that I can no longer remember. What I do recall, however, was that it indirectly suggested that Salinger himself may have been in less of a panic at the time about the story than the Shawns were.
Like many others, I was a devoted Salinger fan, having read all of his later New Yorker stories in the Putney Library, and can also recall that Wally insisted that the best Salinger stories, all of which he’d apparently read, were still to come. At that point, everything except Hapworth, 1924 had appeared in the magazine by then, so I don’t know whether Wally was thinking of that (still unpublished) story or of some as yet unpublished work. But I also recall that Wally’s favorite of the published stories was Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and I must admit that over the years I’ve come to agree with him. For me it’s almost as good as The Great Gatsby, and a beautiful summing up of Salinger’s dramatic gifts in a way that Franny, Zooey, Seymour: An Introduction, and Hapworth, 1924 are not. Because Hapworth virtually ends with a hint that the next installment of the Glass family saga will be an extended party scene, recalling the superbly calibrated post-non-wedding gathering of guests in Raise High the Roof Beam, I’ve been wondering ever since if such an episode exists and whether or not Salinger’s dramatic talent, so thoroughly dissipated or else ignored in Seymour and Hapworth, remained intact. I wonder if we’ll ever know. [1/29/10]
This is fourth in an ongoing series of five lists of lists. –J.R.
Chicago Reader, 2000:
The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami)
Rosetta (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
Beau Travail (Claire Denis)
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch)
The River (Tsai Ming-liang)
The House of Mirth (Terence Davies)
The Smell of Camphor, the Scent of Jasmine (Bahman Farmanara) + The Child and the Soldier (Seyyed Reza Mir-Karimi)
Khroustaliov, My Car! (Alexei Guerman)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
Kikujiro (Takeshi Kitano)
Chicago Reader, 2001:
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
Waking Life (Richard Linklater)
The Circle (Jafar Panahi)
ABC Africa (Abbas Kiarostami)
The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (John Gianvito)
Gohatto (Taboo)(Nagisa Oshima) + Chunhyang (Im Kwon-Taek)
Yi Yi (A One And A Two…)(Edward Yang) + In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar-wai)
What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang)
Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch) + Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff)
Boesman & Lena (John Berry)
Chicago Reader, 2002:
*Corpus Callosum (Michael Snow)
Platform (Jia Zhiang-ke)
Y tu mama tambien (Alfonso Cuaron)
I’m Going Home (Manoel de Oliveira)
Ellipses, Reels 1-4 (Stan Brakhage)
Russian Ark (Alexander Sokurov)
The Cat’s Meow (Peter Bogdanovich) Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes) Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (Jean-Luc Godard) 8 Mile (Curtis Hanson)
Chicago Reader, 2003:
25th Hour (Spike Lee) + Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi) Down With Love (Peyton Reed) In the Mirror of Maya Deren (Marta Kudlacek) Pistol Opera (Seijun Suzuki) The School of Rock (Richard Linklater) The Same River Twice (Robb Moss) + My Architect: A Son’s Journey (Nathaniel Kahn) Cold Mountain (Anthony Minghella) Masked and Anonymous (Larry Charles) + The Shape of Things (Neil LaBute) Oporto of My Childhood (Manoel de Oliveira) + Joy of Madness (Hana Makhmalbaf) All the Real Girls (David Gordon Green) + Sweet Sixteen (Ken Loach)
Chicago Reader, 2004:
The Big Red One: The Reconstruction (Samuel Fuller)
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene)
Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen)
The Exiles (Kent Mackenzie)
The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin)
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
Young Adam (David Mackenzie)
Coffee and Cigarettes (Jim Jarmusch)
Springtime in a Small Town (Tian Zhuangzhuang)
This is third in an ongoing series of five lists of lists. –J.R.
Chicago Reader, 1995:
Latcho Drom (Tony Gatlif)
Crumb (Terry Zwigoff)
A Great Day in Harlem (Jean Bach) + When It Rains (Charles Burnett)
Lamerica (Gianni Amelio)
Good Men, Good Women (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Safe (Todd Haynes)
Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (Jean-Luc Godard)
Exotica (Atom Egoyan)
Hyenas (Djibril Diop Mambety)
Up Down Fragile (Jacques Rivette)
Chicago Reader, 1996:
Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch)
The Asthenic Syndrome (Mira Kuratova)
The Decalogue (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
Nightjohn (Charles Burnett)
The Neon Bible (Terence Davies)
Regularly or Irregularly (Abbas Kiarostami) + From the Jounals of Jean Seberg (Mark Rappaport)
Thieves (André Téchiné) + My Favorite Season (André Téchiné)
The White Balloon (Jafar Panahi) + Goodbye South, Goodbye (Hou Hsaio-hsien)
Blush (Li Shaohong) + Red Hollywood (Thom Anderson & Noël Burch)
Flirt (Hal Hartley) + Deseret (James Benning)
Sling Blade (Billy Bob Thornton) + Joan the Maid (Jacques Rivette)
Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh) + Basquiat (Julian Schnabel)
Get on the Bus (Spike Lee) + Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai)
Mars Attacks! (Tim Burton) + The Cable Guy (Ben Stiller)
When Pigs Fly (Sara Driver) + Desolation Angels (Tim McCann)
Stealing Beauty (Bernardo Bertolucci) + My Life and Times With Antonin Artaud (Gérard Mordillat)
Ectasy (Mariano Barroso) + Vive l’Amour (Tsai Ming-liang)
Cyclo (Tran Anh Hung) + Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier)
2 X 50 Years of French Cinema (Anne-Marie Mièville & Jean-Luc Godard) + The Crucible (Nicholas Hytner)
A Family Thing (Richard Pearce) + Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud (Claude Sautet)
Yang and Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema (Stanley Kwan) + Red Lotus Society (Stan Lai)
Foxfire (Annette Haywood-Carter) + Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson) + Trainspotting (Danny Boyle)
Chicago Reader, 1997:
A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang)
The House Is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad)
Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas)
The Ceremony (Claude Chabrol)
4 Little Girls (Spike Lee) + Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (Errol Morris)
La promesse (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute)
The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan)
As Good As It Gets (James L. Brooks)
Comrades, Almost a Love Story (Peter Chan)
Chicago Reader, 1998:
Inquietude (Manoel de Oliveira)
Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami)
The Apostle (Robert Duvall)
Small Soldiers (Joe Dante)
Jour de fête (Jacques Tati)
Public Housing (Frederick Wiseman) + Vietnam: Long Time Coming (Jerry Blumenthal/Peter Gilbert/Gordon Quinn)
Kundun (Martin Scorsese) + Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsaio-hsien)
The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf) + Pleasantville (Gary Ross)
The Newton Boys (Richard Linklater)
Bulworth (Warren Beatty) + A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (James Ivory)
Chicago Reader, 1999:
Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick)
The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick)
Rushmore (Wes Anderson)
Divorce Iranian Style (Kim Longinotto & Ziba Mir-Hosseini) + Narita: Heta Village (Shinsuke Ogawa)
I Stand Alone (Gaspar Noe)
The Lovers on the Bridge (Leos Carax)
Besieged (Bernardo Bertolucci) + The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang)
The Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Julio Medem) + Circle’s Short Circuit (Caspar Stracke)
Doctor Akagi (Shohei Imamura) + Mr. Zhao (Lu Yue)
American Beauty (Sam Mendes) + Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze) + The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan) +Three Kings (David O. Russell)
Chicago Reader, Best Films of the 1990s (chronological):
Actress (aka Center Stage; aka Ruan Ling Yu)(Stanley Kwan, 1991)
A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)
Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995)
Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
From the East (aka D’est) (Chantal Akerman, 1993)
Inquietude (aka Anxiety) (Manoel de Oliveira, 1998)
The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1993)
Satantango (Béla Tarr, 1994)
When It Rains (Charles Burnett, 1995)
The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami, 1999)
Artforum (December 1999), Best Films of the 1990s:
“Abbas Kiarostami’s Life, and Nothing More (1991), A Taste of Cherry (1997), and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999). Three prodigiously beautiful features that redefine cinematic economy — in several different ways at once.”
In “Being Orson Welles,” Melena Ryzik’s January 15 interview with Christian McKay in “The Carpetbaggers” (“The Awards Season Blog at the New York Times”), she has McKay say the following: “I love the fact that he was as labyrinthine as one of his greatest creations, Caine, but I think he had a much warmer heart.”
Elsewhere she wonders why McKay hasn’t received more award nominations for his performance in Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles. But if even his interviewer can’t tell the difference between Caine and Kane, maybe she shouldn’t be so surprised. (If she’s thinking of The Caine Mutiny, the most “labyrinthine” character is probably Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, played by Humphrey Bogart in the film; Caine is the name of his ship, and Welles doesn’t appear in that movie at all.) [1/16/10] 1/17 postscript: this finally got corrected two days later.
Filmmaker of the Decade: The resurgence of the Nouvelle Vague highlights the most disquieting feature of the decade: the critical search for a new European art-house auteur, which seems to have settled on the pious admonisher, Michael Haneke. European cinema has finally found its Stanley Kramer.
–Film Comment, January-February 2010, p. 31 [1/15/10]
