The Narrow Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

translates to pandering. It is said that Salinger loves his characters too much, and we say, yes, you might be right. He can’t possibly see that you might not want to put up with a seven-year-old Seymour going on and on and on. He simply isn’t generous enough with his audience. And as for the difference between imagination and reality? Well, he should have a better handle on that.
    And someone dies and everything comes back to you. You think: That voice fed me once. That cadence is in my writing, my speech, my hearing. In what I call my ear.
    I go back to the sentences about unlearning the differences. I get two cranky replies to my posts from people who think Salinger is mediocrity incarnate, the end of standards. You tell me how you can “unlearn,” Professor , says one. And I take some pleasure in telling the young man that it must be a lucky thing to know so much.
    Unlearn. I don’t go back to see the passage in context, but I do feel its purity, its faith in the breaking down of boundaries, the good of that. The quote is the kind of quote Whitman would have liked. The narrator is talking about the act of making, the act of refreshing the world for the weary traveler who thinks he’s seen it all. And the most amazing thing is that these words are received on a crosstown bus, which dissolves the line between east side and west.
    How could we have forgotten him?
    Or the young woman, for that matter. That young Haitian woman is found six days after the rescue mission had called it quits. Of course they’d called it quits. The prospect of finding anyone at this late stage, in horrible condition, is too much to bear. Better to declare everyone dead and make it official. Better to kill hope and go on with the next thing.
    Then I remember the obvious truth: it is all too easy to let go of the things we loved once.
    1984 |  Denise is outside the Barn at the Famous Writers Conference arguing with Famous Writer. The day is windy, dry, bright—or mostly bright. Clouds tower over the mountain. These aren’t summer clouds; they look like winter. They anticipate the first frost, which will come sooner here than any other parts of the Northeast. Who knows what Denise and Famous Writer are saying? Other writers—teachers, staff, students—walk by, pretending to look away. Later, they’ll probably talk about it at dinner. Later, they’ll compare notes: Do you know anything about that woman? Yes, she was a contributor here; she wrote a novel that’s coming out in the spring. But their real interest will be Famous Writer, whose gruff face has lost any tinge of its smoky handsomeness this minute. He is older. His hands are flying up, just as Denise’s are flying up. They make chopping motions to underscore a point. He’s lost any air of patrician boarding school control, and it infuriates him—this is happening before his colleagues, his students. As quietly as possible, he says, I can’t see you now, I don’t want to see you. I think you might be crazy. And he storms off inside the Barn, to leave Denise standing outside.
    Does she look out toward the buildings, the kelly-green shutters, the butter-colored clapboard? Does she look around for someone who might know and support her, another contributor from last year? Does she hold herself with her arms, or does she let those arms hang free, waiting for Famous Writer to walk out of the Barn to say, I’m sorry. Maybe her heart is beating too fast for her to register it. Maybe she simply walks out to the highway, looks to her brother, who’s waiting in the car beneath a tree, studying sheet music on his lap. Go , she says. What happened? Joey says. Let’s go , she says, louder now. Den , he says, and shakes his head. We’ve driven all the way up here. What did that jerk say to you? But she motions forward with her hands, remains silent, as if the whole thing is Joey’s fault, and they’re off, past the general store, past the creek rushing along the roadside, through