(4 of 5)
Antolini once advised me: "Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to." I wanted to. I read Wilhelm Stekel, who authored my favorite vaudeville bill, Wandering Mania, Dipsomania, Pyromania and Other Allied Impulsive Acts. And I read George Orwell, who let me know that I was not the first adolescent to be obsessed with excrement (he compared his Pencey to a "tightrope over a cesspool"). I read Albert Camus' Notebooks and stumbled on a paragraph that illumined, I think, the Salinger myth: "I withdrew from the world not because I had enemies, but because I had friends. Not because they did me an ill turn, as is customary, but because they thought me better than I am. It was a lie I could not endure."
Among the lies I could not endure was me. My wife Sally shared my sentiments, and one day, when I committed my ultimate indiscretion (other husbands bring home lipstick on their collars; I brought home my secretary), I found the apartment empty. No books, no furniture, no Sally. No future.
That initiated my second suicidal period, during which I came into the office at 11, canceled my account at Brooks Brothers, and began dressing in Sweet-Orr corduroys. I once called my employer at midnight with two questions that had long intrigued me: "What is a runcible spoon?" and "Do you think Geppetto was a good father?" My employer told me that he was weary of my Rare, Quixotic Gestures. So, frankly, was I.
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I tried total withdrawal in Europe, but the Europeans put me in my place, which was America. As Zooey Glass said, "I was born here. I went to school here. I've been run over here ... I have no business in Europe." I lived in New England for a while, a la Salinger. But unless you're a writer or a turtleback painter or something, you want somebody to talk to. Or else you feel like calling up dead authors all the time.
My father induced me to emerge from my shell by coercing a client to sign me on as an assistant golf pro. I was once good enough, remember, to appear in a golf movie (but I didn't). It worked for two years. Then one day I listened to the guys I was instructing. One of them was saying "cost per thousand"; the other was saying "taxfree municipals." Both of them said "actually" a lot. I realized that I was working in a conference room with Zoysia grass. Few sights have been as beautiful as my five iron arcing over the Hudson and settling among the carp and the effluents.