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