rip JD Salinger

Jamesaritchie

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Well, I do consider him a literary lion, and I liked his work considerably more than Mailer's or most of teh other writers of that ilk. Catcher remains one of my favorite novels, and I've read it more times than I care to admit.

I liked all his work, and if he doesn't seem to roar as loud as some other writers of his generation, I believe it's because he knew how to be quiet, something Mailer, Capote, and Vidal never learned, and because he didn't continue to publish quality writing. But then, neither did they.


But I've read many articles about Salinger over the years, and it seems he wanted his work to be published after his death. At least most of it.
 

KTC

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I love the CBC. Thank you, William.
 

blacbird

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Catcher remains one of my favorite novels,

As it is mine. Similarly to To Kill a Mockingbird. But in the big scheme, I don't consider Harper Lee a "lioness" of literature. She wrote one damn fine book, not a mean achievement, but beyond that, nothing. Salinger wrote one damn fine book, not a mean achievement, but beyond that, a little more, but not much.

I liked all his work, and if he doesn't seem to roar as loud as some other writers of his generation, I believe it's because he knew how to be quiet, something Mailer, Capote, and Vidal never learned, and because he didn't continue to publish quality writing. But then, neither did they.

Arguable, I suppose, but aside from In Cold Blood, none of the names you mention are among my favorite writers, so I can't comparatively judge. Cormac McCarthy is famously quiet, in regards to public appearances and interviews, but continues to produce for publication. Offhand, it seems to me the most comparable writer to Salinger would be Updike (whom I don't much fancy, either). I'd argue that, among his contemporaries, Kurt Vonnegut is a far more important fictioneer than Salinger. Faulkner was still writing very fine work (The Town, The Mansion, The Reivers) during Salinger's cometary passage through the literary skies. John Knowles, in A Separate Peace, produced the best novel I've ever read centered on eastern prep school society, and nothing else of note that I'm aware of. Flannery O'Connor busied herself, contemporaneously with Salinger's output, producing small perfections of fiction while battling a debilitating terminal disease. Joseph Heller produced an equally iconic and influential first novel (Catch-22), followed by a long silence, and then a sequence of pretty good work until his death a few years ago. Saul Bellow wrote novels that garnered a Nobel Prize. William Styron wrote a sequence of novels almost certain to be regarded as classics. Philip K. Dick struggled for thirty years and only near his sudden and untimely death did the literati begin to see his importance; he is still ascending in literary esteem, posthumously. The American writer probably most influenced by Salinger's disaffected Catcher may have been Jack Kerouac. Point being, there were a lot of other American fiction writers out there putting stuff before the public while Salinger malingered in his New Hampshire cave, purporting to be writing. Maybe he was:

But I've read many articles about Salinger over the years, and it seems he wanted his work to be published after his death. At least most of it.

If true, then he comes off as something of a phony himself, doesn't he? No matter, though. I suspect we'll find out in the next couple of years if that safe contains anything important, or no.

caw
 
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William Haskins

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but beyond that, a little more, but not much.

this, i think, unfairly minimizes a great deal of publicly released writing on (and more than "not much" genealogical blueprinting of) the glass family.

besides, the historical gravity of a writer is often less the amount of work and, more often (and often more fairly), the significance of work.
 

blacbird

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the historical gravity of a writer is often less the amount of work and, more often (and often more fairly), the significance of work.

I agree with this, too (example, Franz Kafka), but I also get the sense that my comments have not clearly expressed what I intended.

Obviously, I'm in a minority here in my opinion of J.D. Salinger's achievement and importance. Denigrating either of those things was never my intent. I do feel he is overrated, in the American literary world, at the expense of some other very fine writers. And some of that feeling is generated by a degree of frustration at the "legend of J.D. Salinger" that has grown like a sinister fungus over the last half-century.

In real terms, he "died", literarily, in the mid-1950s, and we all know how some "dead" authors gain status posthumously. Now, Salinger had one of these rare fabled debut novels, so I don't exactly maintain that's the reason for his adulation.

And, yes, William, it isn't a matter of quantity, exactly. I wasn't claiming that, and I see how my previous comments could have been interpreted that way.

BUT, J.D. Salinger did leave the scene having produced a relatively small body of work centered about a relatively small (but literati-trendy) milieu. Whatever he wrote (for his own enjoyment) subsequent to that remains a mystery, perhaps to be resolved, perhaps not. But if his writing for his own enjoyment involved ever deeper depths of the Northeastern Prep School society, I very much doubt there's a lot in that infamous safe that will be very exciting except perhaps to editors of the New Yorker. Maybe he expanded his focus a lot in the half-century succeeding his self-imposed exile. But it's kind of hard to see anyone managing that from a hermitic New Hampshire farmhouse; he seems to have chosen to be a non-violent Ted Kaczynski, disdainful of contact or interaction with messy human society.

J.D. Salinger was a young man with extraordinary artistic capabilities. After a flash of extraordinary glory, he chose to hide those "in a bushel", according to the Biblical parable. I can (and do) admire what he did produce; I've read it all. We are to admire his silence? Is this like admiring the three minutes of silence recorded, as an artistic statement, by "musician" John Cage?

If so, can Salinger's half-century of solitude be regarded as the ultimate expression of "minimalism"?

caw
 

William Haskins

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If so, can Salinger's half-century of solitude be regarded as the ultimate expression of "minimalism"?

caw

no, it was an expression of recoiling from celebrity culture, in addition to a broken heart, some degree PTSD, a spiritual hunger that, rightly or wrongly demanded solitude and, by most accounts, the privacy to pursue his fictional universe without the distractions of the market and of critics.

only time will tell if he continued to write, and at what level.

either way, his published catalog speaks for itself, and he certainly had no obligation to continue publishing or make himself available as a public figure.

if history footnotes him over that, i'm sure he would have felt it was worth it.
 

KTC

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Salinger wrote one damn fine book, not a mean achievement, but beyond that, a little more, but not much.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVED Catcher...loved it. But it was my least favourite Salinger work. He left so much more than Catcher. So much more.
 

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Catcher in the Rye...Eh it was alright. Nothing astounding but a good read. Rest in peace Salinger...or don't. I'm pretty sure where ever you are(I know sometime later you'll be in a hole or in cinders) you'll be unhappy, just like you want to be.
 

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I will forever be in awe of this man. Catcher touched my youngest boy and reached out to him in a way that other books failed to.

Salinger wasn't just a writer, he was a mentor, and a voice of reason that examined humanity without excuse or equivocation. He will be greatly missed.