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JD Salinger died last week, nearly 50 years after publishing his last short story. The reclusive author claimed to have been writing novels in private over the last half century. Slate columnist and devoted Salingerophile Ron Rosenbaum talks about what might be locked in Salinger's safe, and when we might get to see it.
As I devour references to Salinger by respected literati this week (among them Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker), listening to Mr. Rosenbaum's devotion to the late great recluse was a balm. I've shared his fantasy of confiscating and saving the Salinger oeuvre. However, adding bloviating radio host Jonathan Schwartz's name to the list of Salinger-philes hardly advances the cause. Mr Schwartz, his weekend show reveals time and again, rarely mentions great names except as a desperate means of increasing his own caché. This makes mention of Mr. Schwartz painfully ironic in a discussion of a true artist who recoiled in the face of falseness, whether on the page or off.
People were wondering what writing Salinger left behind, if anything. I know the answer to that one. He wrote.
A writer writes, period. It is the fire that makes life interesting for those so blessed and tormented with the drive to put words on paper.
Salinger obviously wrote somewhat autobiographical pieces. I know that is how to make sense of the past, soothing and strengthening the present and, often, foretelling the future or, at the least, showing us that history does repeat itself. I could also believe he probably did not want his later works published. He probably had reasons for that. Writing is often a very private conversation with yourself and few, under those conditions, would care to have that part of themselves shared with the world. Not many of us can be as bold as May Sarton was with publishing her journals.
I'm forced to question your assistant producer's devotion to Salinger, since he apparently doesn't know that in Catcher in the Rye, Allie is Holden's dead little brother. This is actually not a small fact, since Holden writes an essay about Allie's baseball glove while he's still at Pencey. His little sister is named Phoebe.
Having grown up on friendly terms with Salinger and witnessing first hand the how his "celebrity" limited him from living a normal life I can completely understand why he chose a quieter life. He was never a loner or recluse, he simply didn't want to be a public figure. I can't blame him. Oh and its cruel and irresponsible to suggest breaking into a person's home is justified, for any reason. You should be ashamed of yourself.
In the 70's, I worked in a bookstore at the University of Minnesota. A guy came in selling volumes of short story collections by J. D. Salinger out of his car trunk. I still have mine. I'm sure they were illegal, but they hold pride of place on my bookshelf, as I'm sure I'll never find more copies.
Sorry. I scanned Catcher and it didn't catch my interest but it certainly seems to have helped cause its share of trouble. Beyond Mark David Chapman, John Hinckley had a copy stashed in his Park Plaza hotel room when the authorities searched it after his stalking of Ms. Foster at Yale.
I recall that, while reading Kesey's One Flews Over The Cuckoo's Nest, I seemed to experience a novel-related psychosis which was repeated in my then-girlfriend as she read it and I suspect Salinger's work has a similar negative down-side side-effect, so I avoid him.
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