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Knew Salinger
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In the Long, Long Ago,
She Knew J.D. Salinger
of TheColumnists.com
She called him, “Jerry.”
That is how I first became aware that our friend and neighbor, Molly Ulam, had known the enigmatic J.D. (for Jerome David) Salinger, who died, Jan. 27.
She mentioned this at dinner. “Yes,” she said, “I knew him for a whirlwind week in 1953, I think it was, but I never talked about it because it would have been betraying his trust. Actually, I haven’t thought about him for years but his death hit me with a big impact.”
Molly Burgwin Ulam is a vibrant, popular resident of the Quadrangle retirement community in Haverford, Pa. where I live. She is a tall, slim, five-foot eight inch woman with strawberry blonde hair piled atop her head. She cuts a striking figure, looking much younger than her 80 years.
She described living in Manhattan when she was about 24, fresh out of Radcliffe where, she joked, she majored in boys. “My aunt [Mildred Wood] who worked under Katherine White at The New Yorker was his editor. My aunt must have given him my phone number one of the times he drove down from Cornish [NH]. I would have been living in the East 80s with three other girls.
“He took me to many fancy restaurants
and nightclubs. I had my first experience eating delicious garlicky
snails. He was rather drunk in the evening. He took me to the
places he wrote about in ‘Catcher [in the Rye’]
The planetarium, the Natural Museum of History, etc. He told
me about his upbringing in New Jersey, about his Irish mother,
(he may have said she was red-headed), about his schooling.
A running theme in his conversation was Zen Buddhism. “He
brought me a stack of about 12 books on Zen Buddhism and three
Haiku books.” She brought a yellowed-with-age Haiku book
to dinner one night.
She said, “Jerry disliked intellectuals and the Ivy League. He talked about our mutual acquaintances at The New Yorker, the editor William Maxwell and his wife, Emmy. I had never heard of Jerry Salinger, nor of ‘Catcher in the Rye.’ I had no idea he wrote books. To me he was one of a number of boy friends, but older--and unique in his intensity."
Salinger was 34 in 1953. He died at 91.
Ulam said, “He overwhelmed me to such an extent, I was so intimidated I was unable to speak. He did all the talking, mostly about himself and his opinions.He said he had lived in New York City but couldn’t bear the rat race. That’s why he had moved to Cornish, but he had a [nearby] Windsor [VT] post office box.”
She noted that she had known and had visited the Cox family, who lived in Windsor and were friends of Salinger. A brother, Archibald Cox, was the special Watergate prosecutor who was fired by President Nixon on what came to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre.
She said, “I wondered how he could see so deeply and perceptively. He could look into the very heart of a person and understand better than any psychiatrist. He once touched me under my eyes and said, ‘Who gave you those circles under your eyes?’ Later, I admitted to myself that there was a psychological connection--that this incredibly gifted writer had perceived something that had happened to me in the past.”(when she might have been abused sexually). “It took many years of psychiatry to flush it out.”
She said, “There was nothing sexual with him on my part. As the week drew to a close, he became more urgent and I couldn’t take him any longer. The last time I saw him he took me home and tried to get into the elevator with me, but I pushed him away. I never saw him again.”
It is her recollection that the story entitled “Franny” appeared in the New Yorker a short time later. Her mother and aunt both thought the character, Franny, in the story was based on her. “I rejected that,” Ulam said. “The Franny in the story did not sound like me, He would have had no idea how I sounded because I didn’t say anything when I was with him. Looking back now, though, I would admit that my conversation then was pretty inane.”
It would be hard to imagine that Ulam, an enthusiastic, sophisticated, intellectually curious woman who went on to marry two accomplished professors, was anything like the neurotic non-stop talking Franny in the novel.
Ulam said “I glanced at the Franny
story when it came out, but I was never able to read it. She
goes into a stall in the bathroom and she has some kind of mystical
experience I think. Why was I not able to read it? Maybe I was
afraid of what I might find.”
Ulam was married for 37 years to Adam Ulam, a Russian scholar
described as “Kremlinologist as hero.” They had two
sons. Ulam died in 2000. In 2005, she married Gunther Stent,
an acclaimed molecular biologist who taught at the University
of California at Berkeley before retiring to Haverford. He died
in 2008.
She said she never shared the details of
the week with Salinger with anyone “because he would have
hated it.” She would not speak with Ian Hamilton, who wrote
an unauthorized biography about Salinger. “Once Jerry died,”
she said, “I feel I can talk about him.”
©2010 by Stan Isaacs.
The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo
is by the author. This column first posted March 8, 2010.
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