Writing a decent sentence is not easy. Nonsense needs flushing out, wisps of ideas can not sit there, lingering, disconsolate, apart from a delivery mechanism, devoid of a vessel. The original rustling of thought needs decipherable, complementary words which in turn need randomized organization, grooming, hand-crafted presentability. A mini-chaos erupts, words newly born splash into primordial puddles of skunky dishwater, rising up into fully-formed physical organisms, cooling like a cup of tea and mostly evaporating.

I never thought much about J.D. Salinger until word of his recent death crossed the wires. That is not to say I thought nothing of Salinger or his writing, but that his was not a figure of much influence in my life. Like most schoolies I read Catcher in the Rye, while his Franny and Zooey sits on my self unread, one of many “statement” books which, like certain magazine subscriptions, I maintain for vain appearances and not for ever reading them.

Having read Catcher 20-some years ago I today find that my only critical memory of it was how the title itself, and the dialogue in which it appeared in the final stretch of the book, was curiously ineffective. I would even call it a letdown, and I have had similar reactions to many of Paul Auster’s stories-within-stories meant to embody some expansive meaning but which I think just fall flat.

Other then that memory, Catcher just rattled past me like water.

Salinger appears to have continued writing, perhaps for all of his long post-public life, with no apparent interest in publishing. One can indulge luxurious energies like this when Catcher royalty checks roll in for life, but I nevertheless think the totality of his avoidance is interesting. There was no comeback novel or late-life chat show appearances, no direct exposure to the spastic blades of pundits, and no days wasted with reporters. There is not even an official web site! Salinger’s desire and ability to produce successful public work were countered by a loathing for the public’s cultish machinations on everything but the work, and I have a lot of respect for that.

Reports say that he wrote every day. Is it true? What does a writer say when no one is listening? Is the depth of insight changed, for deeper or not, when thoughts are not deposited into the mysterious, unpredictable innards of a public audience? Did Salinger’s apparently disciplined regimen produce nothing but acres of those aforementioned skunky puddles of dishwater?

I would be interested in the story even had Salinger never been successful. I am haunted by certain creative individuals who generated thousands of pages of work, all of it rubbish. I remember a composer whose work was posthumously donated to a library. This composer’s self-stated regimen was to write at least one song a day, but his body of work comprised operas, musicals, symphonies, chamber music, solo music for every instrument in the orchestra – virtually every combination of instrumental and vocal music flowed from this person’s pen, from one decade to the next, the boxloads of paperwork filling first his attic, then his garage, then virtually his entire house. All this work ultimately filled the stacks of a nearby college music library which kindly accepted the donation from surprised caretakers who never knew the old man wrote music.

I knew the librarian who catalogued the stuff, who took piles of the scores to a piano and played through them, hoping to make a name for himself as the accidental curator of the works of an unknown genius. Joel was his name, and instead of genius he found nothing but hackwork. Every page of this music bequeathed to the library was crap. The boxes held thousands upon thousands of pages of self-absorbed bubkes, its notions of greatness obviously pompous and foully delusional because of it. Joel was disappointed at first, but his morbid curiosity led him deeper and deeper into those boxes. On further exposure he was offended by the emptiness of the sound and a little bit terrified by the misdirected futility of the energies. For all the industry expended on this music Joel groused “Couldn’t this guy have just worked on an assembly line, or done something useful?”

I never heard the music but I trust Joel’s  judgment.

I was reminded of this story some years later, when I played piano for a musical featuring singers and actors from a community theater group. The cast for the musical comprised people from the neighborhood, and while there were good singers on board (especially in the lead roles) the cast was largely without much musical talent.

Nevertheless, certain of these young people worked hard on their parts, practicing no small number of hours in private, singing these songs and doing their darndest to knock ’em dead in the show.

One gentleman in particular simply could not sing. He had no solo part in the show, but he worked on some of the songs, thinking he might get a part in next year’s production. At night, after school, he retreated to his bedroom and filled cassette tapes with hours and hours of the sounds of his singing. When I was once invited to his house I accidentally heard several minutes from one of these tapes. I was spellbound by the sound but I could not find a tactful way to explain why. Could I tell the man that his singing was so ghastly awful that I wanted to use it in a music museum, or on a radio show? (This obviously happened long ago as I still imagined I had a future in radio.) How could I discretely beg for one of these tapes? I never contemplated stealing anything, but in retrospect I tantalizingly imagine that he would not have missed just one tape among the half-dozen shoeboxes filled with what he said were “a hundred cassettes” of him singing songs from this musical.

He wore headphones when he recorded the songs, so on the tapes there was no music behind him. Like a serious singer, he intentionally recorded himself unaccompanied, so as to most demonstratively expose all weaknesses in his singing and thus improve upon them. The tapes, therefore, held only his croaking, guttural voice which never found a note and swirled pitchlessly about like aural sandpaper.

I could distinguish enthusiasms. He attempted to tell the story of each song with theatrical mannerisms he copied from other actors in the show. These distinguishable gestures seemed to writhe in isolation, almost becoming physical matter but never rising up on their own.

I have many stories of this vintage, and perhaps my inner morosities have given me too eagle an eye for the futile and misdirected energies we humans expend.