'Catcher In The Rye' Author J.D. Salinger Dies

WCCO.com ^ | 1/28/10 | AP

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91.

Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son said in a statement from Salinger's literary representative. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.

[Borges]

Vidal’s fiction will be forgotten but his essays are going to be around for a long time.

[Petronski]

That whole middle section where he finds an old history book and Orwell goes on to transcribe huge sections of it is a structural mess.

I don't recall that section at all and scanning my copy I cannot locate it.

As for this:

Art about soullessness and tedium doesn’t have to be soulless and tedious.

Of course it doesn't have to be so. But in so being it can succeed.

Well, anyway, there's no accounting for taste I suppose.

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[Tired of Taxes]

It seems to have been the next generation that was assigned books like Catcher in the Rye

Yep. Class of '82 here. The Catcher in the Rye was assigned reading for us.

[Daffynition]

I bought "Bonfires" as one of those beach books and I just couldn't get through it, even though I tried a couple of times...as you say ... a stylistic, taste thing.

I recall watching Vidal on Firing Line in my formative political years ...dang those were super debates. I never read any of Vidal's novels b/c I disliked his values so...guess I thought I wouldn't identify with his themes and characters either. And in all fairness, I didn't particularly like Buckley's Blackford Oakes novels either.

Funny that you mention Steinbeck ...at one time I devoured everything he wrote. I was very socially liberal during my growing up ...joined the fight for migrant laborer's rights, the Peace Corps, yada. And it was precisely his character's *pathetic hopelessness*, as you say, that made me such a sucker for Rand, Goldwater, and all who followed, when I read them.

RIP Mr. Salinger. I'm sure there was some good you did. ;)

[Borges]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oligarchical_Collectivism

[Petronski]

Old history book?!?

That’s a major plot exposition.

[Borges]

I should have reffered to it in another way but the fact that so much plot exposition is taken from a fictional book which stops the flow of the novel and Orwell just has Winston describe is bad structure. I prefer Zamyatin’s novel ‘We’. It influenced Orwell.

[Tijeras_Slim]

I'd add Down and Out in Paris and London

[EyeGuy]

“Does this mean Thomas Pynchon is dead too?”

####

The also hugely over-rated Gravity’s Rainbow might be the only POS worse than CITR. Actually made me angry over the time I was wasting, when I was reading it.

[Borges]

GR is wonderful. Filled with passages you can read over and over again out loud for sheer delight.

[grellis]

I love Nine Stories, and Franny and Zooey made me laugh and cry. I’ll miss him.

[x]

A very messed up guy. A contributor to the decline of the modern novel.

Salinger's reputation has as much to do with his short stories as his novel. A case could be made that Salinger's withdrawal spelled the decline of the American short story. Short fiction would never be as known or read or discussed or argued about after he stopped publishing.

The central character is whiny and self-obsessed. Holden Caulfield is a rebellious, nihilistic teenager. I consider it no coincidence that the Boomer Generation that grew up with this books consisted largedly of whiny, self-obsessed, rebellious, nihilistic people who never matured and remained teenagers for the rest of their lives.

Say that's all true. It's nothing new. Read Fitzgerald's early fiction. He's as whiny and self-obsessed as you could want. So was Thomas Wolfe (the Look Homeward, Angel dude, not the Right Stuff guy). So are most first novels. What made Catcher in the Rye memorable was the use of language -- very fresh at the time. Things also happen in it, too, in contrast to a lot of later novels.

So I don't think Salinger brought self-involvement and self-centeredness into fiction. Novelists and story writers have long been a very self-obsessed bunch. Affluence, the lack of real obstacles in life, university writing programs, and victim ideologies would have made fiction and the novel what they are now even without Salinger.

He did do a lot to bring the adolescent to the forefront of fiction for a while -- and a particular sort of teenager that hadn't been seen before. So if you want, you can give him a share of blame for what happened in the 1960s. We're far enough away from that now that it doesn't have to dominate our thinking, though.

Salinger also did a lot to give life to that urban romanticism of youth that Fitzgerald, and in a different way Kerouac represented. If you want to look for his heirs, maybe the films of Whit Stillman or Wes Anderson would be a better place to start than today's writing programs.

I'm not saying that Salinger was a man for all seasons or that his book would be something to take to a desert island for the rest of one's life, but more was lost when he stopped publishing than when he was writing.

[Aggie Mama]

Twain had a remarkable talent to observe human nature, tell the reader about it, and make it funny, lamentable or downright shocking. Salinger is more like grunge music—just full of self-pity and navel gazing.

[the scotsman]

Joyce.

[the scotsman]

Sorry, but I think Animal Farm is a work of genius in less than 100 pages. And 1984 is superb, with phrases that will be immortal.

[the scotsman]

Joyce drove that particular car right into the cul-de-sac.

[the scotsman]

Steinbeck: I am a fan, and I am very distantly related to him (via the Hamiltons of Ulster/Scotland).

Hemingway: fine early work, but both writer and work became a parody later.

[Borges]

Joyce was perhaps the most gifted writer in English in the last 100 years. Is there a better short story in English than ‘The Dead’? I’d love to hear about it. There’s not a single poetic phrase in all of ‘Anumal Farm’ and ‘1984’.

[Borges]

Read Salinger’s Nine Stories. It’s terrific and not at all what you describe.