Brian Wilson founder and creative genius of the Beach Boys wrote such classics as Good Vibrations, California Girls and God Only Knows. Distraught over the commercial failure of his artistic masterpiece Pet Sounds , Wilson entered twenty five years of drug addiction, alcoholism, obesity and mental illness. From the summer of 1973 to late 1975, Wilson locked himself in his bedroom and laid in bed. His daily ritual consisted of watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Johnny Carson on TV and staring at "intricately carved angels" on the headboard of his bed. Iggy Pop (not exactly a paradigm of normal living) was once quoted as saying that Wilson was "just too damn weird"! An interesting encounter of 60's recluses occurred in the late summer of 1969 - Wilson met Elvis at the RCA studios. Wilson's described the encounter in his autobiography Wouldn't it be Nice:
After a couple of hours in the studio, word arrived: Elvis was ready. Several bodyguards preceded him, checked the place out, and drawled a few Memphis-intoned "Hi boys. How yew'll doin?" Then Elvis sauntered in, laid back, quiet, flashing a sheepish grin. He was introduced around the room, then to me. I seemed to impress him.
"I've heard a lot about you," he said, extending his hand for me to shake. "how yew doin', Duke?"
I wondered why he called me Duke, then figured Elvis was a joker. I knew he was a black belt. Hmmm. I decided to try some humor of my own out on him. Instead of shaking hands, I whipped around and feigned a karate chop and a kick, aiming both at Elvis's gut. Reacting with sharp reflexes, he raised a forearm to block and stepped backward. I broke up, but he didn't crack a smile.
"Hey, man," he said. "Don't do that"
"Just kidding," I smiled. "Nice to meet you. How're you doing?"
"Okay, I guess. "But I'm a little concerned about you, "Duke."
Probably holding the record for being the longest serving recluse from the 60's is J. D. Salinger (the godfather of adolescent angst ) who was the author of The Catcher in the Rye which is usually near the top of the Banned Books List. The last time that Salinger published anything was a long story Hapworth 16, 1924 which was published in the June 19, 1965 New Yorker. Since the publication of this story, Salinger has gone into complete seclusion at his Cornish, New Hampshire home. Rumor has it that two full-length manuscripts have been prepared but are locked in Salinger's safe. In 1981, a novel by W.P. Kinsella - Shoeless Joe - was published in which a reclusive author called J. D. Salinger is kidnapped and taken to a Boston Red Sox baseball game (This book served as the basis for the movie Field of Dreams). In 1985, Salinger was involved in a front page lawsuit with Ian Hamilton in an effort to stop an autobiography of Salinger from being published. More recently, the NBC show The Single Guy featured a spoof of J. D. Salinger in which Ernest Borgnine's character on the show - Manny - impersonates J. D. Salinger in order to impress his friend Johnny's girlfriend.
However, both Salinger and Wilson pale in comparison with the true king of the 60's recluses - Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes' hypochondria and paranoia drove him into reclusion starting in 1957 and continued until his death in 1975. In the book Howard Hughes, The Secret Life, Charles Higham details some of the idiosyncratic behavior exhibited by Hughes during his 18 years of reclusion:
He would spend hours...making small, neat piles of Kleenex boxes, then taking the piles apart ... He had his food delivered in paper bags; the bags had remained untouched in a sealed cupboard for two years. The drivers had to wear white cotton hospital gloves when they carried the bags in. Hughes extracted the food - mostly Hershey bars and milk - with Kleenex wrapped around his hand... He was obsessed by the toilet. He urinated on the floor; then covered it with Kleenexes to sop up the fluid.
...He had strict rules over the delivery of magazines...Three copies of the same magazine were always presented to him. Hughes would reach out, his hands and arms swathed in paper like an Egyptian mummy's, and delicately, with infinite slowness, remove the middle magazine from its companions. He would repeat, over and over again, instructions for the other magazines to be burned.
Douglas M. Dusseau; Email: ddusseau@in.net Revised November 20,1995
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