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     New additions!   May 2007 - New Pie-making Video!   
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JM: The silence was part of the story I wanted to tell. For twenty five years -- years in which I worked, raised children, and tried to make sense of my life and write an honest and helpful story about a woman’s journey through life -- I continued to subscribe to the notion that I owed J. D. Salinger my lifelong silence about the role he had played in my life. Not a week went by I wasn’t asked about him. Though I was frequently criticized for my silence, I said only that “a person who deserves my loyalty receives it”. Not only did I avoid speaking of Salinger; I resisted thinking about him. I did not reread his letters to me. The experience had been too painful, and so, like a lot of people, I chose to put it away, and attempt to go on with my life as if it had never happened. But for all those years, I lived with a belief that I was a less worthy person for having fallen short of the approval of the man I had admired more than any other I’d known. Long after Salinger sent me away, I continued to believe his standards and expectations were the best and truest ones. I felt shame and failure, for all the compromises I’d made in my life -- from vaccinating my children to writing articles for women’s magazines. I could feel his silent disapproval of me. It was an oppressive thing. I was also afraid. Although Salinger had long since cut me out of his life completely and made it plain, when he did so, that he had nothing but contempt for me, the thought of becoming the object of his wrath was more than I felt ready to take on. And so I continued to protect him with my silence. Then my daughter Audrey turned 18, and I imagined what I would feel if a man with the kind of emotional power Salinger possessed sought her out and made the kinds of demands of her that were made of me. And instead of seeing myself as obligated to protect J.D. Salinger -- at my expense -- I considered what his responsibilities might have been, to protect me. I did not set out to write a book about J.D. Salinger. I wanted only to write an honest book about my experiences and my growth from young womanhood to adulthood. There was no way to tell an authentic story without including the centrally important, life-altering experience of my time with Salinger. I believed that to do so would be helpful to a great many women my age, who have known the experience of giving up crucial parts of themselves to please the man they love. And I believed my story would be helpful, above all, to young women my daughter’s age, who are still in the process of forming themselves as women, and in need of encouragement to remain true to themselves. ARE YOU SURPRISED BY SOME OF THE EXTREMELY NEGATIVE THINGS SOME CRITICS ARE SAYING ABOUT YOUR BOOK? JM: No. I knew when I embarked on the writing of my new memoir that it would be met with some harsh and even brutal criticism. Having subscribed to the belief, myself, for a few decades, that there was something bad and shameful about presuming to talk about this icon -- Salinger -- I was well acquainted with the notion that there is something dirty and unseemly of speaking about J. D. Salinger. (Why? Because J. D. Salinger said so.) In many ways, the vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I’ve written, but to challenge the very notion of my writing this story at all, speaks to the heart of what the book is about: namely, facing up to fear of disapproval, releasing one’s self from the obligation to please, and finding, in the process, one’s own true voice. Some literary types subscribe to the notion that being a writer -- an artist, like Salinger -- entitles a person to remain free of the standards that might apply to mere mortals. In the case of Salinger, it is even true that he has been admired in part specifically because of his rejection of the worldly concerns so many of us crasser types grapple with. (Publishing our work. Getting people to read it. Submitting to television talk show interviews.) People long for heroes and gods. To many, Salinger represents that. No doubt his inaccessibility and the scarcity of information about him has gone a long way towards perpetuating the notion of his god-like status. Nothing like being visible, publishing one’s work, and speaking openly about one’s life, to disabuse the world of the illusion of one’s perfection and purity. Take it from one who has been highly accessible for years, and has NEVER been mistaken for an icon. I wonder what it is that the people who criticize me for telling this story truly object to: is it that I have dared to tell the story? Or that the story turns out not to be the one they wanted to hear. One other component present in some of the criticism of At Home in the World is particularly troubling. In their descriptions of the content of my book -- the post-Salinger portion dealing with my marriage, childraising, divorce and life after, as well as the chapters dealing with my time in the company of the great man -- many critics have spoken of my book being concerned exclusively with banal,meaningless, trivial details. What these critics dismiss as insignificant is , of course, the stuff of all our lives -- women’s lives in particular. Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men’s stories about wars, about business, about power, anyway -- when we wrote about the territory of the bedroom and the kitchen, about children, about relationships, about love. All my life, I have written about those things, by way of honoring the significance of women’s lives. IN YOUR BOOK, YOU WRITE ABOUT YOUR FATHER’S ALCOHOLISM, YOUR MOTHER’S TROUBLING OVER-INVOLVEMENT IN YOUR LIFE, PAINFUL EXPERIENCES WITH YOUR EX-HUSBAND. DON’T YOU CARE ABOUT HURTING THESE PEOPLE? JM: I want to say first, that in fact this book was written with a high level of awareness about the needs of other people in my life, and a respect for certain boundaries. I do not feel I possess license to tell about every aspect in my life, and I don’t -- though if I told you here about all the stories I DON’T tell, of course, I would be violating the very boundaries I set for myself. That said, I have to add, it has been my observation that this is a question put almost exclusively to women writers -- whose responsibility (unlike that of their male counterparts) is still perceived to be that of protecting others (husbands, families, children) above freely expressing themselves, pursuing their work with uncompromising devotion, or living authentic lives. I will venture to say that the same kind of truth-telling that has resulted in my being labelled, by some, “a shrill, hysterical fishwife” or “a vengeful harpie”, if manifested by a male storyteller, might be termed “brave, gritty, raw honesty”. For twenty five years, I did in fact, take my responsibilities as a pleaser of others sufficiently seriously that I compromised my ability to tell my story, at the most basic level. I could do this now in part because I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story, and that to share our stories is not only a worthwhile endeavor for the storyteller, but for those who hear our stories and feel less alone because of it. And I could write this story as I did because I know there was no bitterness or vengefulness or score-settling in my heart, as I told it. The portrait of my parents that emerges in At Home in the World is a complicated one, but lovingly drawn. I tried to look as unblinkingly at myself, as I wrote, as I did at anyone else, and while I can only put forth my own point of view, and my own experience of events (with full awareness that others would see them differently) I tried to write about every single person in my book with compassion. There are no villains in this story. (No gods either.) In the end, it is not the task of a reader to please her subjects. In fact, if she writes with too much concern about “what will people think?”, she will be less of a writer, just as the painter who feels obligated to depict his subjects as uniformly beautiful or handsome and without flaws will fall short of making art. DO YOU HAVE NO RESPECT FOR PRIVACY? J.D. SALINGER HAS MADE IT PLAIN THAT HE WISHES TO LIVE A PRIVATE LIFE. WHAT BUSINESS DO YOU HAVE SO CALLOUSLY DISREGARDING HIS WISHES TO BE LEFT ALONE? AREN'T YOU JUST MAKING MONEY OFF HIM? JM: While I have not chosen to live a particularly private life myself, I respect the decision of any man or woman who chooses to live such a life. If a man wishes to live a truly that way and not be written about, however, he would do well not to write letters to 18 year old girls, inviting them into his life. Particularly not to a girl who had already, at the age of 18, identified herself as someone who wrote and published her stories about her life. As for the charge of making money off of my story, here comes yet another example of the way in which our society instills shame in people, for acts about which there is no reason to feel shameful or embarrassed. I am a writer. My job is writing. I get paid to do it. I would feel a little ashamed if I didn’t support my family, but I work hard so that I will. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer? I have long observed that the act of writing is viewed, by some, as an elite and other-worldly act, all the more so if a person isn’t paid for what she writes. As for me, I try to write stories that people will want to read, stories that hold a reader’s attention, move him, and ones that leave a reader knowing something at the end that he or she didn’tknow at the beginning. Something helpful, I hope. At Home in the World is the story of a young woman, raised in some difficult circumstances, and how she survives. It tells a story of redemption, not victimhood. It’s a story that I think our daughters could be helped by. YOU TELL A LOT OF VERY EMBARRASSING THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF IN THIS BOOK. IT SEEMS YOU ARE SHAMELESS! JM: You got that right. WELL, THAT ABOUT WRAPS IT UP FOR NOW. I HAVE TO HEAD OVER TO A BOOKSTORE TO ATTEND A READING. BUT LET ME SAY FIRST, I CAN’T THINK WHEN I’VE HAD A MORE ENJOYABLE TIME CONDUCTING AN INTERVIEW. YOU ARE MY KIND OF PERSON. JM: I was just about to say the same thing.
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