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1981 schrieb J. D. Salinger einen Brief an seine Freundin und Geliebte Janet Eagleson. Darin gibt der Autor von “Der Fänger im Roggen” dem Sommer die Schuld für ein längeres Schweigen, er berichtet vom Besuch einer Camille Pissarro-Ausstellung, offeriert eine kurze, lustige Rezension von Stephen Spielbergs “Raiders of the Lost Ark” und endet mit einem Zitat des großen Walt Whitman:

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Transkript:

Sunday, June 20/81

Janet, old Son of Eagle,

Yrs of the Twelfth did greatly nourish and please, though who would guess it from my tiresome muteness. I blame summer. Have often gone to the desk to converse, talk with you, inquire warmly of the state of your Bowels, but nothing has come of it. The desk is too close to the window. The sight of summer in full swing has put me off ever since I can remember. Oddly, I work nicely or at least normally amidst all the greening and flowering and burgeoning. But correspondence falls off, goes to pot…On top of everything, the woodshed crew, hammerers and power-tool users, have been here, have come and gone, leaving me rattly and pale, but with a shelter of sorts for some twenty cords of wood. As ugly a structure as any I’ve seen, with lots of shitty little space-filling fancy scroll-y crosspieces, said to be “functional”. No doubt it will take an esthetic turn slightly for the better with a couple of good hard winters.

I took the early morning bus into Boston one morning to do what I almost never do, or do only when Travelling: went to see some particular pictures in a gallery. The Pissarro exhibit. Had a strong notion of checking to see if you might be free and willing to trot along to have a look, but then I remembered I owed a friend in Boston, a chronic all-er and manic depressive, a courtesy call. Then it crossed my mind to ask if you might feel up to joining friend and me for a spell, but swiftly nixed that idea, for when or ever was there anything good or easy in a threeway conversation. Anyway, a whole handful (of hundreds) of the Pissarro pictures are wonderful, and I hope you have a chance to go see. The exhibit lasts till August 9th, I think, and probably won’t repeat in a hurry.

The Great Blasket Islands, ah, yes. Old Wembley-Gore was speaking of them fondly over port at the Club, just the other evening.

Have seen no good movies, except The Last Metro, which wasn’t exactly indelibly fine, but Deneuve herself maybe was, or came close. I got hooked into seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark, which might be excused for its unwitty, unfunny awful socko-ness if it had been put together by Harvard Lampoon seniors. I’ll coast on the Deneuve performance the rest of the summer. She was always a good actress, but had never seen her with all this much restraint and finesse.

Enjoy your peas and spinach. Lamb’s quarters (pigweed) is profuse in my driveway this year, and I have some every day.

Hope stuff is O.K. with you, and with Tim and Sarah. Hope to see yez one of these limbo summer days. I’ll close here, though I have more of nothing important on my mind - the newspaper store in Windsor closes shortly, and so I will just mail this.

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Love,

J.

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Have been in New York. (I am the Man, I suffered, I was There.)

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(Gefunden bei Letters of Note | via The Word Demon)

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