Evidently, when you walk along the beaches in Carpinteria, you see oil on and within the sand because a fair amount of drilling is done in the area. This may or may not be true; I heard it from my mother. Anyway, because of this she, for a cheap pair of flip-flops, forced me into a Wal-Mart.
“If you take your nice sandals out there they will get ruined,” she scolded, as if she knew I had already planned on not listening to her advice. “They drill for oil out there, you know, and that oil will ruin whatever it touches. We can't just throw away money like that. This country is in a recession. Do you know that?”
I thought about suggesting a cheap HAZMAT suit but decided against it.
Later that day, I was walking through the Wal-Mart in Apple Valley with Teresa and holding a pair of bright orange sandals in my hand. By this time we were simply browsing. Why not? We were already there. I decided to check out the DVD section to see if the second season of Dexter was available at a reasonable price. It turned out that the section of television shows was no bigger than both my arms stretched out wide, and Dexter was nowhere to be found. So, I made the next logical move. I went to their bin of $5 movies to search for buried treasure.
While I was staring at yet another copy of Edward Scissorhands, Teresa excitedly called me over to her side. What she was so excited about was a box set of Alfred Hitchcock’s early work. It includes eighteen films and two episodes from Alfred Hitchcock Presents. What a find! I greedily snatched it from her hands and turned it over, searching for one film in particular.
The Thirty-Nine Steps was what I was looking for. Now, I had seen these box sets in Amoeba Records some time ago. At the time, I was there to buy Tim Burton’s Batman, which I also ended up seeing at Wal-Mart. For $7.50 (I won’t disclose what Amoeba charged me for the supposedly “Out of Print” DVD). That is the problem with Amoeba: It is a great place, has a great atmosphere, but is usually a bit pricey, and the faculty is smug and, apparently, liars. Amoeba sold the Hitchcock box sets for $40 each if I remember correctly. Wal-Mart had one of them for $5. And, lo and behold, it was the set that had The Thirty-Nine Steps. What a glorious day.
My reason for explaining all this has less to do with Hitchcock and more to do with J.D. Salinger. According to Margaret Salinger’s memoir, Dream Catcher, one of the author’s favorite films (he has his on reel to reel, not on DVD or VHS even) is The Thirty-Nine Steps. Naturally, being the Salinger extremist that I am, I have wanted to see the Hitchcock classic for a long time now. Don’t get me wrong, I love most anything he directs, but I was going into the movie with a very singular mission: to see if I could find out why Salinger loves the film so much, and possibly uncover vital clues that might lead to revelations in the ongoing mystery that is Salinger’s life and work. So, I'm going to watch the movie now...
Well, I fell asleep. I put the movie in around 12:09 am and fell asleep sometime before 1:00. When I woke up, the woman who I thought had been murdered early on in the film was alive again. Either that or all the actresses from the 30’s looked exactly alike. Also, the main character was running through some hills, or something. Because of my obvious bewilderment, I decided to just turn the television off and go to bed. When I woke up this morning I decided I no longer fancied the idea of possibly zeroing in on Salinger’s mysteries.
Of course, I could talk about the opening scene in the movie in which a man named Mr. Memory works hard to win over a crowd of rowdy Englishmen and does so only to be easily forgotten after a riot breaks out. And I could, obviously, make a connection between that scene and Salinger’s own knowledge of a fickle audience, and link his estranged relationship with the public to his knowledge of their fickleness. But I won’t because the fact of the matter is that I enjoy the mystery. Part of Salinger’s appeal (aside from his amazing writing abilities) is that he is the most sought after literary enigma of the past fifty years or so. But he will not budge. He enjoys his privacy, and who can blame him? Who among us would want, really want, the spotlight blinding our eyes every waking moment? None of us, that’s who.
Therefore, I will respectfully refrain from my attempts at understanding the man responsible for the stories and characters I obsess over. Besides, I’m sure hundreds of people have already attempted the same idea since Ms. Salinger published her memoir in 2000, reaching their own conclusions about the author and his life. In any case, however, the possible answers will never be as exciting as the riddle.