Erstellt am: 28. 1. 2010 - 22:13 Uhr
J. D. Salinger dies at 91
I've always been really worried that JD Salinger would die. It's inevitable of course, and he was an old man for the entire time that I was in contact with his work, but every time I picked up one of his books to re-read, I'd catch my breath. Please, don't die right now.
JD Salinger's death, which did happen, on January 28th, would mark a finality to his work that I wasn't quite ready to accept. With Salinger, I always had some bizarre hope that he'd one day walk out of his house in Cornish, New Hampshire, with a new book in his hand. I'd been hoping so much that he had a masterpiece he was just waiting to launch at us, but now we know he never will.
Salinger's decision to stop publishing was what made him, in the world's eye, a crazy person. At the height of his success, he stopped, something no one could understand in the '60s and certainly something no one could understand in the media-saturated climate of today. Saying no to fame was what Salinger did, and I always applauded his decision to not become a “phony”, the undefined yet so clear nemesis of Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caufield. As he told the New York Times in 1974: "There is a marvelous peace in not publishing.... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure."
Not only did Salinger stop writing (after “Catcher”, his subsequently published novels and stories had already been written before success hit), he stopped living a public life. He moved into his house in Cornish, NH and eventually married a woman who ran the town's fair. Before her, there was a much talked about relationship with a young college freshman, who Salinger had written to after reading an article of hers, and invited her to his home. They lived together for almost a year, after which Joyce Maynard, the college girl, went on to write a tell-all book about the author, twenty-five years after their affair. Another strike for the “phonys”.
Back Bay Books
There were a few interviews given from that secluded house, but nothing new was ever published. Meanwhile, “Catcher in the Rye” became mandatory reading for many American High School students, and “Franny and Zooey” became the companion-piece to “On the Road” for bright eyed college kids. Even though Salinger literally went away, he never, ever left the bookshelf.
Of course, there were many speculations about what Salinger was up to. Books and articles published showed him as pedantic, eccentric and maybe he wasn't such a nice man after all. Salinger remained frozen in time, frozen into the image that was once on the back cover of his first novel, and we didn't know how to accept him any other way. Salinger was Holden Caufield, he was his characters, and every time I found out he might be different, I'd feel a little pang. His image wasn't helped by his doling out of lawsuits to anyone who tried to publish something remotely related to his work. For instance, last summer, Salinger sued an author who was attempting to publish (a very unauthorized) sequel to “Catcher in the Rye”. He was stopped and it's clear that his work would have been too great an infringement of Salinger's creative rights, and too much a “riding on the coattails” of another work.
But it leads me to my next point: if Salinger were still publishing, would his work, would his style, would his attitude even find a home in today's world? The stories and characters that Salinger created were already loose-ended, they already reconfigured and re-mixed themselves every time you'd read them again. And yet, they were undeniably linked to their author, like dogs on leashes, and it seems quite impossible for both of them to step into the 21st century. In an age of Twitter, mass-marketing, celebrity endorsements, sneak-previews, teasers and film sequels, Salinger and his characters could not have lived.
When I was in High School, my English class loved “Catcher in the Rye” because it was an “easy read” and because it used “our” language. Nothing stuffy about it. And yet, Holden and his family, as all the other families Salinger created, lived as far removed from what we consider “normal” lives as possible. It was his great talent to show the playful humanity, the love and sadness that was within these characters, these Upper East Side people with their strange brothers, their fiancees of to war, their gossip and at their prep schools. There is a certain magic and tragic (pardon the rhyme) about every one of Salinger's stories, those two attributes in a constant struggle.
Salinger's books are “thinking” books, not plot-driven chases. Almost the entirety of “Seymour” takes place in a stalled taxicab on 5th avenue. So many of his characters, especially Franny and Zooey, spend their valuable page-time reflecting, fretting, thinking out loud. They think too much, they mean well but can't ever get the words right, they live in a refined world, yet their insides are clumsy. And I love them, because that's exactly how I feel too.
“That's the closets thing I've ever seen to a Salinger book” said my High School English teacher when Wes Anderson's film “ The Royal Tenenbaums” came out. And it's true – it encapsulates the quirks and conundrums that many of Salinger's characters possess and go through. It's eccentric and offbeat, yet is a study on the basics of love, identity and family, which all of Salinger's work was too. But I believe that the world in Salinger's mind was much more heavy, much more sad. Like with Hemingway, it was often what wasn't on the page that made the story, only to leave the bulk of it on the author's shoulders. It takes a reading of my favorite of his short stories, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” to realize that there was so much more going on.
With Salinger goes the end of an era. With him goes not only that particular style of 1950/60s American literature, a movement that was spawned in magazines and rang in a new literary pop culture, but also one of the last great enigmas of our time. Who was this man, who so many of us let into our hearts and minds, who so many of us hold up as a great inspiration? He'll remain that way forever now, and just like with his stories, it's what we didn't know about him, that made him who he was.