Born Jerome David Salinger 1 Jan 1919, aged 91, raised in Manhattan. Last published in 1965. A famous recluse. Said to have been writing every day since and has works ready to be published upon his death. Died Jan 2010.
Catcher in the Rye (1951)
For Esme With Love and Squalor/Nine Stories (1953)
Franny and Zooey (1961)
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters/ Seymour: An Introduction (1963)
1941 - Slight Rebellion off Madison - short story re Holden Caulfield
1949 - film version of Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut released as My Foolish Heart - bastardisation of story - Salinger swear to never sell story to movies again.
- fought in WWII
- into Zen Budhism, then Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, then Kriya yoga, then Dianetics, Christian Science, homeopathy, acupuncture, macrobiotics, taking mega doses of Vitamin C, urine therapy, speaking in tongues etc
- insisted on no dust jacket illustrations
- other stories published (mostly in The New Yorker) but not anthologised
- married twice, had two children, and a year long relationship with a student, who wrote about their life together, as did his daughter
- famous legal battles
- Catcher in the Rye has sold more than 65 million copies worldwide
- writing style - always about adolescents, good with dialogue, using phone calls, letters and interior monologue.
Does he deserve his cult status? If the works that are likely to be published on his death are in the same vein, do you think they will be relevant to modern society?
An article in The New Yorker upon his death. For me, this is the most insightful commentary on his work. I should say here that I've always been a big fan of the Glass family stories.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/02/08/100208ta_talk_gopnik
Here is a quote from the article that I agree with - just beautiful:
The message of his writing was always the same: that, amid the malice and falseness of social life, redemption rises from clear speech and childlike enchantment, from all the forms of unself-conscious innocence that still surround us (with the hovering unease that one might mistake emptiness for innocence, as Seymour seems to have done with his Muriel). It resides in the particular things that he delighted to record. In memory, his writing is a catalogue of those moments: Esmé’s letter and her broken watch; and the little girl with the dachshund that leaps up on Park Avenue, in “Zooey”; and the record of “Little Shirley Beans” that Holden buys for Phoebe (and then sees break on the pavement); and Phoebe’s coat spinning on the carrousel at twilight in the December light of Central Park; and the Easter chick left in the wastebasket at the end of “Just Before the War with the Eskimos”; and Buddy, at the magic twilight hour in New York, after learning from Seymour how to play Zen marbles (“Could you try not aiming so much?”), running to get Louis Sherry ice cream, only to be overtaken by his brother; and the small girl on the plane who turns her doll’s head around to look at Seymour. That these things were not in themselves quite enough to hold Seymour on this planet—or enough, it seems, at times, to hold his creator entirely here, either—does not diminish the beauty of their realization. In “Seymour: An Introduction,” Seymour, thinking of van Gogh, tells Buddy that the only question worth asking about a writer is “Were most of your stars out?” Writing, real writing, is done not from some seat of fussy moral judgment but with the eye and ear and heart; no American writer will ever have a more alert ear, a more attentive eye, or a more ardent heart than his.
The Guardian also paid tribute.
I agree with a comment about Catcher in the Rye, that on rereading as a adult (as I have just done), the book is no longer about adolescent angst, but about not dealing with loss. Holden's younger brother has died. Holden didn't go to the funeral because he hurt himself in a rage. The boy at his school died. The other boys at fault were expelled, but not charged. America suffered great loss during the war. His older brother gives a clue to how the personal damage to soldiers who survived was irreparable. There seems to be no acknowledgement or attempt to heal - just a 'carry on' attitude - go to college, earn money and enjoy your opportunities. What was the fighting for?
And something to amuse:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bunch_of_phonies_mourn_j_d
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