J. D. Salinger is dead

[singlemalt]

Thought all you tree hugging, green loving hippies would want to know the news: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100128/ap_ ... t_salinger

I always thought Catcher was way overrated. My former writing workshop teacher agreed but thought Franny and Zooey was much better, but I never got around to reading it.

And Salinger's I'm a recluse, don't talk to me! thing was a little annoying. Stop your whining old man.

Carry on.

[mnaz]

thanks malt.

two things-- I hate trees. and "whining" is often underrated. carry on.

[stilltrucking]

A Perfect Day for Banafish

As I already mentioned the story is set in 1948. This time period is significant because of two things. First of all, the story takes place three years after World War II. J.D. Salinger was a staff sergeant in U.S. Army and served in Europe from 1942 to 1946. After the war he received five battle stars. During the war soldiers saw so many awful things like holocaust, starving people, or death of their friends and families. It is said that it affected soldiers’ mentalities in that way they could return from the war psychically injured.

The second thing significant about this time period is that J.D. Salinger started to be interested in Zen attitudes toward life and art. It began in the 1940’s when he visited Rama Krishna-Vivekananda Center in New York. According to these Zen attitudes, a suicide is not a defeat, but a triumph.

Sanity, apparently, could only come through seclusion

[judih]

i read Franny and Zooey after I read Thomas Merton's Way of the Pilgrim - it was a good idea (and many many years ago)

great book. Catcher in the Rye has become iconic for so many truths that the artistry of the book is almost irrelevant.

[mnaz]

I had to read 'Catcher in the Rye' in high school. I didn't see what the fuss was all about. But then, I didn't see a lot of things. I was fairly oblivious.

Never read "Catch-22," by Joe Heller, but saw a play based on it one time. Gawd those world wars screwed up so many people. Even Hemingway got a clue later in life...

[firsty]

!

sad news.

[Doreen Peri]

thanks for the announcement

i enjoyed every book i read by him

he had an easy to read, casual style ... made me feel like i knew him personally

he'll be missed

[mtmynd]

malt... i'm sorry you didn't contribute to his legacy in a more positive way, but that's freedom of the speech and his writings were and still are enjoyed by thousands of readers... that's who made him what he was.

[Artguy]

A true Artist he was...we need more mystic recluses...those who create and snub the status quo...rage on Caulden...I hope his hidden manuscripts start bubbling to the surface..........The solitary monk seeking the truth in a cave on his own terms......

[firsty]

artguy - thats what pel said last nite, too - that we should be seeing some mss soon!

i'm pretty excited about that. he was a writer by nature, and his isolation was something based on principle more than anything else - we should be fairly confident that he was both writing and intentionally not throwing it away.

singlemalt's been bitching about 'catcher' for years - and if he ever read franny and zooey like he was supposed to, or 'raise high the roofbeams, carpenters,' like i'm sure i've advised in the past, he'd figure it out. he'll come around.

[hester_prynne]

A perfect day for Bananafish!
Right on Still!
My favorite Salinger story. I'm going to buy myself a new copy of it, (gave my old one to Stella) and reread all nine stories.
Seclusion is the key to sanity.
H

[SadLuckDame]

It would be great to know he'd kept on putting pen to paper, finger to keyboard and delivering. I loved his style too. Nothing wrong with a recluse, they've their reasons.

[mtmynd]

I've learned a few interesting facts about The Catcher in the Rye that I was not aware of -

This was J.D. Salinger's only novel, all other writings being short stories which were his forte. The novel was intended for an adult audience at the time.

The book came out in 1951, the same year that On the Road was written (but not published until 1957).

The Catcher was the first book about teen-angst that preceded such later personae as James Dean and young Marlon Brando, whose acting careers were built on teen angst. Whether they were in any way influenced by The Catcher is open to wonder...

According to a Wikipedia article The Catcher continues to sell some 250,000 copies yearly with total of sales 65 million as the book has been translated into the world's major languages. That's a lot of paper put to good use.

[firsty]

the influence of "catcher" has transcended literature — and it happened so quickly and so dramatically that the book basically skipped any serious literary influence until years later, when its influence had circled back as a little book that also happened to be an inescapable cultural reality.

at least thats what i think.

and from a literary perspective (i had to re-read the book last spring, and i've just come off three straight courses of literary criticism, so there) — i happen to think that the book has suffered for coming at the tail end of modernism and then adapted into our educational system as such — all the goddamn crumby symbolism and questions about why why why have sort of made the book seem a little trite. why does holden feel this way? why is he obsessed with his sister? what does the dream mean? oh my god — everything means everything — and maybe thats why singlemalt cant read it — before he opens it, he has ideas about it, and ideas about how those stories are told, that wreck the book because NONE of those ideas were really part of the culture, in that way, when the book was written.

i dont know whats not to like about it — it's got suicide, sexual depravity, sarcasm — it sounds just like a chuck palahniuk book.

[Arcadia]

a friend who´s a High School literature-language teacher told me that a translation of the Catcher in the Rye was given to read here to the students in some schools. Well, and I confess I love trees and never read Salinger...