J.D. Salinger home to host cartoonist residency
J.D. Salinger was such a recluse that the idea of living in his house seems fantastically impossible. But for cartoonists, it’s not: A new residency will launch at his old house in Cornish, N.H., in early 2017.
Salinger is no longer there, of course. The famed author of “The Catcher in the Rye,” “Franny and Zooey,” “Nine Stories” and “Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction” died at age 91 in 2010.
By then, he wasn’t living in the house where the residency will take place. It was his home from 1953 to 1967, when he divorced his wife, Claire, and moved to another house in town. Claire kept the house, selling it in 1983; it went on the market again, mostly unchanged, in 2014.
The New Yorker details that history in a story about the residency; Sarah Larson visited the house to learn more about it (and also to look at original artwork by Garth Williams, who illustrated the children’s book, “Charlotte’s Web.”)
Larson reports that New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss bought the house recently — charmed by its vintage kitchen tile and by its many nooks. One thing that didn’t get detailed in the 2014 real estate listing was the tunnel connecting the house and garage studio apartment. “The tunnel, well built and spacious, was carpeted; the garage was carpeted too,” she writes.
You could argue that in New Hampshire, with its frigid winters, a tunnel is a cozy way to travel between buildings. You could also make the case that Salinger, who treasured his privacy, found a way to come and go away from prying eyes.
Larson continues, “We climbed a staircase to a little studio with white walls, a bright window, a kitchen area. In the back, there was a little office and a bathroom with a claw-foot tub. Bliss said that Salinger had liked to come there to be alone and work, and had stayed there toward the end of his first marriage.”
That’s where the artist-in-residence will live, in the garage apartment. The garage itself has been turned into a kind of gallery.
Bliss, who lives not far away in Burlington, Vt., uses the main house himself as a place to go for seclusion to work.
The Cornish Cartoon Residency, which will take place during February 2017, is being offered by the Center for Cartoon Studies. It is accepting applications now through Nov. 1, and in addition to living in Salinger’s place, the cartoonist will get a $600 stipend and be asked to give a talk at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vt., 16 miles away.
The residency, aside from the perk of living where Salinger once did, does have some special requirements: The resident should have a four-wheel drive vehicle and be willing to shovel snow from the walkways.
ALSO:
J.D. Salinger’s home listed for sale in Cornish, N.H.
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