Friday, January 29, 2010

J(ust) D(ied) Salinger

America may not be a nation of big readers, but everybody's read The Catcher In The Rye. J.D. Salinger, who died on Wednesday, stopped publishing over 40 years ago, but is still one of our best known authors based on this one book.

He led a weird life, and seemed to be a sort of crank, but I'm not interested in getting into all that David Copperfield kind of crap. Regardless of his personal life, his work will either live or it won't.

I think it will. The Catcher In The Rye is set in a specific time and place that may seem hard for modern audiences to relate to, but it sures captures what being a confused, alienated teenager is like, and in a fairly witty yet accessible way. Everyone (not just troubled assassins) can appreciate the book.

One of the ironies is the book means so much to young readers, yet has been regularly banned from libraries and high schools. One objection is the profanity, but that misses the point. Holden wants to be a catcher in the rye, protecting children from losing their innocence. When he sees dirty graffiti, he wants to protect kids from it, not realizing they're the ones who are writing it.

Then there are Salinger's short stories, especially his best stuff with the Glass family. It makes for a nice counterpoint to Holden Caulfield. However, his last few works that appeared in The New Yorker were much weaker. He stopped publishing due to criticism. I'd rather he redoubled his efforts and improved his writing.

But what he did was enough. Maybe it's time for me to pull out Catcher one more time.

PS Many years ago when I went to summer camp, after lights out one of the counselors would chill us with tales of "The Laughing Man." Only years later did I realize he got the concept from Salinger, though the stories were his own.

PPS With Salinger's death, Thomas Pynchon leaps to the front rank of recluse authors.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Based of Fr. Guido Sarducci's 5 minute university (what do you remember about something 5 or 25 years after you studied it), Cather in the Rye is
-Not about baseball
-"phonies"
-Prep school kids have zits and its really gross when they put their face on your pillow.

You 're right- its time to pull it out again

5:21 AM, January 29, 2010  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another irony is that many teens never got to discover the book for themselves. They were forced to read it by their English teacher. Thus they often did not see it as applying to themselves but to a previous generation. I distinctly remember this happening with a song about teenage rebellion that was introduced to me by one of my middle school teachers. That it was an assignment made by an adult to a young teen made me want to rebel against this song. The teacher amazingly did not appreciate the irony. He was trying to share feelings he STILL felt.

5:40 AM, January 29, 2010  
Anonymous Denver Guy said...

As my son goes into his teen years, I am enjoying ruining a lot of "teen rebelion" experiences for him by being the one who introduces him to the concepts. I have given him MP3s of The Who, Dylan, Hendrix, etc. - they are just oldies to him. I've watched Ferris Bueller, American Graffiti and The Breakfast Club with him - I think he found them mildly entertaining.

I haven't given him my copy of Catcher in the Rye, and I don't think it has been assigned in his English class yet. Frankly, I didn't read it as a teen and I didn't see what all the fuss was about when I finally read it in my 30s. But I think teens are not as angst-ridden today as previous generations. Maybe its the distance from WWII and the cold war - they don't seem nearly as worried about the state of the world as kids in the 50s-70s.

P.S. I think this is a good phenomenon.

8:25 AM, January 29, 2010  
Blogger LAGuy said...

"I think teens are not as angst-ridden today as previous generations. Maybe its the distance from WWII and the cold war - they don't seem nearly as worried about the state of the world as kids in the 50s-70s."

Maybe they're not as angst-ridden, but I can't believe they think they're not as angst-ridden. Every generation of teens in living memory believes they have it tougher than any previous generation, and face unique problems.

(It's arguable a lot of Salinger's work is a response to WWII, but I don't recall Holden mooning about the state of the world that much.)

11:20 AM, January 29, 2010  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The hormonal changes alone make teenagers generally angst-ridden whether its over nuclear war, gay marriage, mean girls or facial blemishes

2:07 PM, January 29, 2010  

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