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Magazine
Elected silence
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There are those who, far from chasing publicity and fame, choose to devote their time only to their work. PRADEEP SEBASTIAN on choices made by creators of some famous works.
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EVERY time I look at my bootleg Calvin and Hobbes T-shirt, I'm tempted to wear it. But I restrain myself — barely. I stopped wearing it when I learnt that Bill Watterson had fought to keep his characters from turning up on products. Another of my guilty pleasures is to have read from cover to cover all those unauthorized J.D. Salinger biographies, knowing he would disapprove. But I couldn't help myself — I had to know. The more reclusive, unworldly, shy and silent an artist is, the more enchanted I become. These are the people who most want to be left alone in our celebrity-crazed culture and they are the ones we won't leave alone. Or can't. Perhaps we don't even know how to.
Watterson refused to product merchandise Calvin and Hobbes, maintaining that to do so would destroy the integrity of his characters.
"Salinger's silence is a kind of remedy for the disease of noise we all suffer from", says culture critic Ron Rosenbaum. "We are grateful to him for insinuating the sound, the spiritual gesture, of Silence into the cacophonous din of our cosmetic culture." But I find myself torn between wanting to respect that silence and wanting to get close to it. They seem to know something about fame, money and greed that I don't. Salinger is, of course, literature's most famous recluse but not the only one. There is Harper Lee, who, after To Kill a Mockingbird, never wrote another book; Thomas Pynchon, who no one has ever seen and whose address no one knows; William Wharton, the author of the cult book, Birdy, whose identity nobody knows because the name is not only a pseudonym but the best kept publishing secret as well (Some felt that both Pynchon and Wharton were actually Salinger, until that rumour was laid to rest some years ago). Don DeLillo who refuses to promote his books (The only exception he made was for a book tour of Underworld); Thomas Harris, who keeps a very low profile for a best-selling writer; And then there is the strange case of B. Traven, the author of The Treasure of Sierra Madre (more famous for its movie version) whose true identity is said to be one of the great mysteries of literature, obsessing hundreds of people over the years, spawning many theories and even a BBC documentary.
Outside of literature, there is Greta Garbo, who, when Hollywood's biggest stars were clamouring to be in the films of Woody Allen, coolly turned down his invitation to come out of seclusion and do a cameo in "Zelig". She apparently didn't even answer his letter (And in Suchitra Sen we have our own Garbo-like recluse. Not to forget Karnan, the mysterious and intriguing Tamil film director from the 1970s, maker of those very post modern Indian westerns, who is said to be living a reclusive life in Chennai.); Leonard Cohen, who, after having given up making albums and becoming a lay Buddhist monk, has surprised the world with a new album, "Ten New Songs", his first in many decades; The cult film-maker Terence Mallick (he can be contacted only at a phone booth in a small American town by prior arrangement) who also came out of seclusion to make "The Thin Red Line", his first film in 21 years; Debra Winger who, in her prime, bid goodbye to Hollywood and its phoniness, and is suddenly back with a new movie, "Big Bad Love"; The comic strip artists — most famously, Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) and Gary Trufeau (Doonsbury) — and less famously, Patrick McDonnell and his wonderful, little-known comic strip, Mutts. Like Watterson and Trufeau, MacDonnel has refused to let his characters from Mutts (mainly Earl the dog and his cat buddy, Mooch) turn up on calendars, cards and T-shirts. I am particularly moved by Watterson and Salinger. Watterson was giving up millions of dollars when he refused to product merchandise Calvin and Hobbes. And if Salinger were to publish Hapworth 16, 1924 (the only unpublished Glass story from The New Yorker), it would be, without exaggeration, not just the literary event of the millennium but the biggest selling book in recent publishing history. But it isn't their attitude to money that fascinates me (there has been, after all, a long history of millionaires renouncing) as much as their attitude to art — their art, their work. Watterson gave his last interview in 1987. And 10 years after he had begun the strip, he had decided to stop publishing. In the Tenth Anniversary Calvin and Hobbes collection he wrote, "I take great pride in the fact that I write every word, draw every line, colour every Sunday strip, and paint every book illustration myself. My strip is a low-tech, one-man operation, and I like it that way. I believe it is the only way to preserve the craft and to keep the strip personal. The world of a comic strip is much more fragile than most people realise or will admit. Believable characters are hard to develop and easy to destroy. When a cartoonist licenses his characters, his job is no longer to be an original thinker, his job is to keep his characters profitable. The characters become `celebrities', endorsing companies and products, avoiding controversy, and saying whatever someone will pay them to say. At that point, the strip has no soul. With its integrity gone, a strip loses its deeper significance. My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of certain friendships."
Literature's most famous recluse, J.D.Salinger.
All writers will acknowledge that in the end, in the final analysis, they really write for themselves. But they still feel compelled to publish. Salinger is perhaps the only great writer who truly writes only for himself. He has continued to write about the Glass family but has not published. He has allowed some of his friends and family to read them. To me, this seems more an aesthetic choice than a spiritual one: the pleasure of staying with your art, working on it, perfecting it. In his hardcover preface to Raise High, Salinger wrote, "There is only my word for it, granted, but I have several new Glass stories coming along — waxing, dilating — ach in its own way, but I suspect the less said about them, in mixed company, the better. Oddly, the joys and satisfactions of working on the Glass family peculiarly increase and deepen for me with the years. I can't say why, though. Not, at least, outside the casino proper of my fiction." ("The casino proper of my fiction" — you've got to love that.)
There seems to be more than one kind of recluse. Salinger and Watterson were very eager to be published when they began. It was only when they discovered how much their art would be compromised by success that they retreated. William Wharton and Thomas Pynchon have never wanted fame and recognition from the start and have remained anonymous. Thomas Harris is not so much a recluse as someone who values his privacy greatly: he makes an appearance only when needed. Harper Lee simply went back to quietly practicing law in her small town. DeLillo, once publicity shy, has now decided to sample a bit of the world by agreeing to do book promotions. Leonard Cohen and Debra Winger, who had made such a long retreat from the world of show-biz, have surprised us with new work. While Patrick McDonnell continues to practice his art with sweet detachment. Whatever the nature of their reclusiveness, all of them have learnt to maintain a tightrope balance between the world, the self and their art. In one of his novels, DeLillo says "The withheld work of art is the only eloquence left." There's a purity, an integrity, a sense of mystery and beauty to such retreat from the world to art to silence. (What the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton once called elected silence.) We respect it and yet want to break this Wall of Silence — wanting, hoping, that their secret devotion to their work and their unworldliness will rub off on us. It seems to me that — not just their art — but their very lives have become the sound of one hand clapping.
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