J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)

I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big. I mean, except me, And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean, if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day, I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.

 

-The Catcher in the Rye (1951) 

Related

Gish Jen, New Republic: Why do people love Catcher in the Rye?

Stephen Metcalf, Slate: He was the great poet of post-traumatic stress.

Chris Wilson, Slate: Salinger's best story was also his least-read.

Sam Anderson, New York: A second chance to appreciate Salinger's work.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, NYT (editorial/appreciation): J.D. Salinger.

Charles McGrath, NYT: J.D. Salinger, literary recluse, dies at 91. (extended obituary)

Michiko Kakutani, NYT: Of teen angst and an author's alienation. (appraisal)

David L. Ulin, LAT: A gift of words and silence. (appreciation)

Sarah Ball, Newsweek: Salinger's wide-ranging influence, from crime to stage.

Unfortunately, at this writing, The New Yorker, where Jerome David Salinger did most of his work (even portions of Catcher first appeared as vignettes in The New Yorker), offers only subscriber-access links to the late author's stories in the magazine, and no comment on his passing or legacy. 

 

 

Comments

[skdadl]

Whatever else we also have to say about it, Catcher is one of those literary gems, like the single perfect Hemingway or Fitzgerald or Mansfield, so formally finished that you just have to admire, and I do. I haven't read all the other stories, but I wouldn't say that of the others I know, like Franny and Zooey, eg.

I also empathize a lot with anyone who is sickened by North American celebrity culture and strong enough to decide to live as a hermit -- that's tougher than I can be, but I admire that too. I wonder, though. You can read the stories as reflections on spiritual struggles, and you can also read them as something close to a position on depression, and that was how they eventually seemed to me. I take depression very seriously, but I ended up thinking that Salinger wasn't the helpful direction, at least for me. Styron, Darkness Visible -- that resonated for me because he seemed to me to have given up the respectable defences Salinger still claimed. But what do I know? I didn't know either man.

The biography is troubling, but it is a striking life and set of works in American culture.

[skdadl]

How do I get spaces between my paragraphs?

[skdadl]

You may get a gentle smile from the Onion salute: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bunch_of_phonies_mourn_j_d

[David Olive]

Hi Skdadl: First, I posted the Onion salute before seeing your link, thank you and a hat tip to you for that. And I think just hitting "enter" will get your cursor down to create a space between paragraphs.

I don't think anyone's done a better job with depression than Darkness Visible. Depression is a killer; I take it very seriously too. Perhaps I haven't read enough of Salinger's story - I took him at his word he wanted to be left alone, to the point of not reading things that periodically came up, with the exception of the woman (can't remember her name) who moved in and then betrayed him with a tell-all book. (Do I have that right?)

I agree, Catcher is a "perfect book." Miles Davis said, in composing, he would listen for the notes he could leave out. This is why Tale of Two Cities will always beat out the overwrought, overly detailed David Copperfield for me, and why Casablanca is another example of that relatively short, perfect movie. Every word of dialogue, every camera angle, has meaning.

I grew up with Holden Caulfield, as so many of my generation did. It was probably the one novel we'd all say we enjoyed the most, beating out even Charlotte's Web in Grade 4. The dialogue is so pitch-perfect. I re-read it, of course, and find it's still more or less the language of kids today.

The hermit thing, some newspaper accounts now say, is an exaggeration. Apparently J.D. was friendly with the neighbors. What we don't yet know is if there's a treasure trove of work post-retreat. Everyone hopes so, of course. It's hard to imagine him just stopping for several decades. Then again, Wordsworth had run out of things to say by his late 20s (which didn't stop him from continuing to write!). -DO