Salinger: Pro or Con?

Well, the hermit of Cornish is gone and already the analysis and debate has started.

Was Salinger an American original, a literary genius with his finger on the pulse of the time...or a fluke, the author of one good book and a few volumes of marginalia?

I think you can count me more in the latter camp. I loved CATCHER IN THE RYE but found much of the rest of Salinger's body of work lapsed into treacle and sentiment. I think Updike's criticism is bang on: he cared more about the Glass family than God did and it had a detrimental effect on the writing.

Feel free to weigh in with thoughts, reminiscences & rants.

I can't stand Catcher in the Rye! I'm sorry but I thought we should throw a party. Salinger and my dispute started from pg 1 of Catcher when he wrote, "And all that David Copperfield kind of crap."

"I'm sorry but I thought we should throw a party."

Are you proud of this remark?

I didn't like EVERYTHING Salinger wrote, but who can say that about any author? A Perfect Day for Banana Fish is one of my favorite short stories of all time. And before Salinger there was almost no such thing as teen fiction.

To ElizabethPotter:

I also was turned off by Salinger's having Holden say, ". . .all that David Copperfield kind of crap", because I had loved David Copperfield a few years earlier. But I kept reading "Catcher" --in spite of his disdain for Dickens, not because of it, and before long it was another book that I loved.

Ironically, in evoking "David" he was giving us a good example of how a book can be "in the public domain", little realizing that "Catcher" would in a few decades be in the public domain, and would have to take the bad along with the good from its classic status, while, at 90 years. old, he was denying that his work is "in the public domain."

I said in a New York Times Online thread last year that The Catcher in the Rye is great; I also commended another commdentator who said it is "great-- but not a sacred text.

I read Catcher in HS in the '90s. All I could summon was a shrug. Maybe it broke new ground in the 1950s (Check out the swell swears!), but I couldn't see what the fuss was all about. Still don't.

I agree with lots of you -- C in the Rye is wonderful. I've read it dozens of times & wonder if I'd be the same person if I hadn't. As for the other stuff, the less said the better, tho I have a vague memory of liking "For Esme, With Love & Squalor."

The other book that shaped my adolescence was The Bell Jar. Now imagine my happy, carefree life.

I'm curious to see some of the stuff he's been writing all these years. Supposedly there's quite a bit of unpublished work he's left behind.

I intend to re-read Catcher in the next few days. And maybe something else--I've never read any other Salinger. A friend of mine swears by Franny and Zooey. I can remember finding Catcher strangely fascinating when I read it in high school. I don't know if the guy was a "genius," but based on Catcher alone, I think it's safe to say he was a talented, original guy. I wish he'd published more, but maybe we'll get some posthumous novels if what his daughter has said is true.

Oh, and re: 2, and 6

All due respect, I have to say it seems pretty absurd to me that you'd be turned off to a book (at first, in perkins' case) because the protagonist dislikes a book that you like. I like Dickens, but I don't require that a character share that opinion in order to be interesting.

" . . . absurd . . .that you'd be turned off to a book . . . because the protagonist dislikes a book that you like" #10

Yes, absurd, I admit. And I was trying to say that the "being turned off" didn't last. I got to like "Catcher" as much as "David". (And Salinger wasn't even dissing the whole book, just the victorianness of its supposedly required beginning.)

11:
Yeah, I got that you ended up liking it. I'm glad. And you're right that Caulfield's sentiment isn't really a commentary on the book itself. It's more meant to be an indication of his uneasiness with everything from authority to sentimentality. Of course, a first-time reader wouldn't get all that, but looking back, it's an interesting comment. And, being a DFW diehard, I've noticed how so many of the concerns that defeat Caulfield turn up in Wallace's fiction. Caulfield never quite finds a way to combat that cynicism and disillusionment and at least attempt to embrace genuine feeling the way Wallace's narrator in "Good Old Neon" does:

"... the realer, more enduring and sentimental part of him commanding that other part to be silent, as if looking it coldly in the eye and saying almost aloud, 'Not another word.'"

Never read Catcher in the Rye and wasn't all that impressed with Franny and Zooey Might take a whack at "Catcher" if only because Burgess puts it on his 99 Novels list.

2: It's a short jump from your comment to the comments of people who ban/burn books as a result of their gross misunderstanding of how to read fiction.

The Catcher in the Rye isn't quite a perfect novel, but it's pretty close. It's lasting appeal has nothing to do (as 7 suggested) with its smattering of curse words, nor with its "breaking ground" in any way--it really doesn't, not attempting anything formally innovative and not making any sort of statement about the time it was written in. Except for maybe its voice, which might have captured the contemporary language of adolescent disaffection in a way other novels hadn't, it's actually a sweetly traditional novel. It's powerful because, as Sutpen says, Holden's struggle is one that all thinking people go through, and go through most intensely at about that age--how to preserve some innocence and idealism and hope when doing so makes you vulnerable and everyone eventually dies.

But I'd agree with Cliff that everything else J.D.S. wrote is a big step down.

14: I had a similar reaction to 2. I loved David Copperfield. I also loved Catcher in the Rye. Holden is not a particularly sympathetic character in any case - nor is he really meant to be - so why should he agree with me on taste in fiction?

I read Catcher as a teenager and it bothered me a lot. It made me think. I thought at the time that I hated it. Sometimes teenagers hate stuff that they later look back on as being really instrumental to their psychological growth.

I recommended Catcher to my 11 year old, who was a very precocious reader. He hated it. He had to read it for school as a 15 year old. He was glad he had already read it at age 11 and I think, though he still didn't absolutely love the book, that it had a really good impact on him in terms of making him face hard issues about growing up.

I have not read anything else by Salinger. Maybe I will someday.

I think you have to read Catcher as a teenager. I read it in my thirties. Didn't work.

I think Kerouac is like that too. If you don't read him before you're twenty, forget it.

17:

I'm 23 and I read On The Road a few months ago. Now, maybe it's because I'm too old, but I just thought the book hadn't aged well. I liked parts of it, but the quasi-free love, quasi-Buddhist exhuberance just felt dated to me.

You're not too old; you've developed a decent aesthetic. It is a dated book and very, very silly...

I'm hoping that Salinger had more short stories hidden away. He was a great short story writer.
I read Catcher in the Rye when it first came out & I was still in school. It is a book for young people. I remember my friends & I thinking Wow! This guy really has something. Now all kinds of books are written for young people. But he was among the first & a very good writer.

19: Cliff, it's so wonderful to hear someone say that about that annoying book!

To Cliff, Sutpen, Marian et al. :

I read "Catcher" at 20, On the Road at 30.
Liked and admired Salinger. Reading his later short novels at 26 or 27,I didn't change my mind about how good he is.

On the Road was somewhat disappointing, I think not because I was too old, but because it wasn't as good as his Dharma Bums which I had read earlier. Doctor Sax which I read later turned out to be better than On the Road, yoo, but it's hard to compare a "Lowell Novel" with one of his "west-going" novels.

Just thought I'd add my opinion of Salinger's works, since it seems to differ a bit from the general impression. I read all of his works in high school; none of it was required reading. I was actually least impressed by Catcher in the Rye although I understand why many appreciate it. Some of his short stories and other works I thought were absolutely marvelous and I have never forgotten specific scenes from them; the impressions that they made have lasted many, many years. I urge everyone who has not read much Salinger to explore his work more thoroughly and I hope you find it as enjoyable as I did.

Speaking of hacks (alright, Kerouac wasn't a hack, but I needed a segway): anybody heard about this BS?

http://twitter.com/eastonellis

23:
Yeah, I read "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" a few hours ago and really liked it. It reminded me of In Our Time a little bit.

Hi, first of all, respect to the author: R.I.P.
I read only his masterpiece, Cather in the Rye,not in english.
I think this is one of the most overstimated novel in the XX century!
I know, every translation is a sort of betrayal. You can't understand all meaning richness included in the text. About these topics, he renewed american language, and this is a fact accepted by all the critics.
But what can we say about the content of the novel? Can it transmit any universal message to people worldwide? I'd say no! The plot is about a guy in N.Y. in the 50s. What else? Generational conflict? Yes of course. But what goal? There's no goal? Is the goal absence the real meaning of novel? May be or may be not. Too tiny to be a milenstone of XX Century.
Probably it anticipated several open questions the burnst in the 60s and 70s, but in this sense we have to match him with all the Beat-Generation authors, with Marcuse, all the philosophers of the middle XX century and so on. From this match I consider Salinger defeated. He ran away from his century, the other ones had never escaped. This is a fact.
Finally: can we consider him a Giant of Literature? Difficult question. If I was american I would say:"YES", but in the international context he wasn't able (or he did not want...? This difference is fundamental) to represent all the complexity of the modern (or post-modern...) human condition. According to me, his messagges weren't at the same wide range of P. Roth, G.G. Marquez, G. Grass.

Re #2 - That's the kind of comment made off the cuff and without really thinking, it's not quite a hanging offence. Does anyone here really think ElizabethPotter went out and hired a catering firm because someone she didn't know had died? Why must people take everything so seriously here?

About Salinger - I thought Catcher was trite and annoying but it made too much of an impression on the rest of the world for me to be able to dismiss it entirely. There's no doubt it was a milestone in literature - just not one I would ever want to reread.

Wow, Easton Ellis's Tweet was over the top wasn't it? "Waiting for this day for fucking ever"? There are a few folks out there who might have similar feelings toward ol' Bret. And I guarantee Salinger's work will be around a lot longer than that twerp's. Catcher = posterity. Ellis = posterior.

"Does anyone here really think ElizabethPotter went out and hired a catering firm because someone she didn't know had died?"

No, but I think a number of people thought that she made a remark in poor taste.

"15 finished J.D. Salinger novels":

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/01/30/jd-salinger-had-15-new-novel...

(My pal Robin passed this on to me)

I wasn't a fan of Catcher when I read it as an adolescent, which put me off the rest of his work - I found it unbearably slight and unengaging. I'm in no way glad he's dead, though.

Sorry I've been away from the computer.

Catcher depressed me like no other book has before or since. At 16 I was struggling with my own depression and instead of lifting me up Salinger pushed me down deeper into it. (I had to read him for school and I have never been one to shirk reading assignments. So I couldn't decide to read him later.)

Also this book is almost exclusively about charater with very little plot. This bugged and still bugs me. Did Holden have breakfast with the nuns before or after the night he stayed up all night talking to the prostitute? I don't know. Not that it matters much now but in school we would often have to put do a chronology of the book on the test. I knew I would not be able to do that. Because few of his little adventures related to his next one. I really like have a sequence of events that leads to something. I am not saying I don't like novels with strong, deep and believable characters, but I like events that matter to happen to them.

I also love the Victorians and their sentimentality! I got through the awful junior high years because of Brontë and Dickens.

btw-- I will often make rather bold comments in groups to stir up discussion. I haven't really done it with this group for the obvious reasons. However I just couldn't resist because I dislike Catcher so much.

Sorry. I realize a lot of people love Catcher and I didn't really mean to hurt anyone.

25:
So much of what Salinger does in Catcher is based on colloquial speech that I don't know if it could survive translation. It's also a pretty American novel. So I guess I'm not surprised you were unimpressed.

29:
Yikes. I mean, the guy was probably only getting crazier over the last 40 years or so, but what are the chances that NONE of that stuff is any good? I hope his executor(s) at least consider publishing something.

31:
I like a good story as much as the next person, but novels can do things other than just report a series of events. Some of my favorite books are, at base, illustrations of a mood. Or character sketches. I like Cormac McCarthy a lot, and I think his best book might be Suttree. Now, Suttree sort of has a plot. Things happen, and they're not exactly unrelated, but the strongest relationship between those events is just the place where they happen. McCarthy, more than in any of his other books, was interested in diving deep into 1) Cornelius Suttree, and 2) dirt-poor Knoxville, TN. You can communicate some awfully powerful themes that way. Or take (maybe my favorite book) Infinite Jest. (Light SPOILERS ahead but, as I'm about to suggest, plot's not really central in IJ) IJ has much more of a plot than a book like Suttree, but Wallace intentionally rejects the primacy of plot when, right when the climax is about to occur, and it seems the different narrative threads might converge, he stops in his tracks and ends the novel with a flashback that has almost nothing to do with the absent climax. And I don't want to ruin the book for anybody, but basically the importance of this flashback is that it's a heart-breaking illustration of what Wallace is really concerned with: the insidiousness of addiction in our culture.

That's why I think Catcher is so successful. Salinger is sketching a dilemma felt by...as far as I can tell, almost everybody in this culture. And it's still going on. How to communicate day-to-day in a truthful, genuine way, and not be stifled and broken down by cynicism when even the voice in your own head is mocking your lack of what has come to pass for sophistication. The character of Holden Caulfield accomplishes that pretty nicely--he doesn't need a quest.

As reported above, I didn't like Catcher at all , but this (@ 32):

"That's why I think Catcher is so successful. Salinger is sketching a dilemma felt by...as far as I can tell, almost everybody in this culture. And it's still going on. How to communicate day-to-day in a truthful, genuine way, and not be stifled and broken down by cynicism when even the voice in your own head is mocking your lack of what has come to pass for sophistication. The character of Holden Caulfield accomplishes that pretty nicely--he doesn't need a quest."

... is the best argument I've seen yet for giving it another go.

Maybe I will.

#32--Yeah, Charlie, well said. You just added another little bump to Salinger's sales figures this month.

His heirs thank you...

>4 quilted_kat: and >9 inkdrinker:,

Right on! I loved Nine Stories and Bananafish was the best. I hope to be able to read more short works.

But Caulfield isn't completely honest; he adopts a cynical attitude to everything he doesn't understand, he refers to the adult world as phony because he is frightened of it. He is the boy who doesn't want to grow up, who sees adulthood as a form of death - note the dream of children throwing themselves off the cliff. It is Holden's lack of honesty, his fear. that leads to his unravelling.

33, 34:
If you all try it again, I hope you get something out of it.

36:
I agree. Was that a response to me? If so, I don't understand the "But." The stuff Salinger wants to communicate is not the same stuff Caulfield wants to communicate.

Another reason that Catcher was annoying: Holden mentiones periodically that he got sick. This interest kept me reading. I wanted to find out what and how he got sick. He never told us! What a rip off!

He's narrating from a mental institution. By "got sick" he means "had a mental breakdown."

I know that! But what caused the mental breakdown? I didn't feel that he was headed straight into a mental ward at the end of the novel. What put him there? At the end of the book I believe he was watching his sister on a merry-go-round. Not having a mental break with reality.

At age 15, The Catcher in the Rye was a breath of fresh air after being forced to read The Rhyme of Ancient Mariner and The Old Man and the Sea. I'm not sure it would do anything for me now (30-something). I might pick it up and see -- and the other two for that matter.

It's not fully drawn, but I don't think it's hard to imagine him going off the deep end some time after the novel ends. I mean, he's watching his sister on the merry-go-round, it starts pouring rain, and instead of taking cover like all the other people, he stays where he is and bursts into tears. And he says some odd things sometimes. One of my favorite quotes from the book is:
"It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road."
Huh? What the heck is he talking about? He's describing something he seems to think anybody would recognize (oh, *that* kind of crazy afternoon), but I can't say I've ever felt like I was going to disappear if I crossed the street. There's a kind of dread in Caulfield that you only catch glimpses of.

Christopher Hitchens - despite his crusty reputation - provides a brief and gentle tribute.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/01/30/christopher-hitchens-on-jd-s...

Agree with 42:

That bit about disappearing every time he steps off the curb still stays with me.

From the start Holden's feeling shaky, alienated. Phoebe says something about his leaving/being kicked out of schools before so I figure there have been tinier episodes like this in the past. The people he thinks about -- his dead brother, the girl whose tear drops onto the checker board, the boy trying to tell a story while having the word "digression" shouted at him -- they're all facets of himself in a way. This is a seriously depressed kid. His hospitalization seems natural to me.

Looks like Salinger is getting some cover redesigns:

http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/2010/01/3988393210272nd-salinger-blog-pos...

Apparently the restrictions were more demanding then the Samuel Beckett Estate.

Loved Franny and Zooey and certain of the Nine Stories. The first story from Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters/Seymour: An Introduction is pretty great, too.

RIP you crazy old fella.

As soon as Beckett's copyright lapses, we can look forward to his works dumped on the market with lousy covers and maybe, if we're really lucky, a re-imagining of GODOT or MOLLOY, with zombies or space hookers or some other fucking travesty...

Since everyone in Endgame is basically a zombie, I'm not sure what could be done. I would like to see those travesty-mongers try to do something with Frankenstein and Dracula

48: Thats' easy. Instead of regency as horror they'd reverse it: Dracula as a Darcy type; Frankenstein as Frank in Emma

42 & 44: I didn't really get into Catcher in the Rye until the bit where Holden talks about seeing the kid walking in the gutter, but after that it all sort of started to make sense to me and I've loved Salinger ever since. There was a nice articlein the Guardian a couple of years ago that I think made some good points about what he was on about in Catcher.

49: Yeah, I guess. Mainstream publishing is overpopulated with the intellectually lazy and a diverse sub-zoology of trend-following hydrocephalic dunderheads who equate worth with "units moved." Romero wasn't far off when he populated a mall with zombies.

Onion obituary of Salinger
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bunch_of_phonies_mourn_j_d

OK, I thought it was pretty funny.

I laughed when I read it, Anna.

Of course, I have an incredibly sick sense of humor and find THE ONION screamingly funny.

Gord (who else?) sent me this old-ish Jonathan Yardley re-examination of CATCHER IN THE RYE. It's pretty savage but I don't think it unfair:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43680-2004Oct18.html

#54: I found most of that article incredibly obtuse (which, frankly, I believe a lot of the standard Catcher criticism is). Like this:

What most struck me upon reading it for a second time was how sentimental -- how outright squishy -- it is. The novel is commonly represented as an expression of adolescent cynicism and rebellion -- a James Dean movie in print -- but from first page to last Salinger wants to have it both ways. Holden is a rebel and all that -- "the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life," "probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw" -- but he's a softy at heart. He's always pitying people -- "I felt sorry as hell for him, all of a sudden," "You had to feel a little sorry for the crazy sonuvabitch," "Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes" -- and he is positively a saint when it comes to his little sister, Phoebe.

...Welcome to human nature, Jonathan Yardley. You mean we don't act completely consistently all the time? Or that maybe apparently cynical people are using that as a shield for a soft side? That can't be true. Salinger must've gotten that one wrong. Yeah.

Ohh boy. This is going to be a long one.

I don't read the Washington Post, and I'm not familiar with this Yardley guy, but that article strikes me as kind of silly.

--"I couldn't see what all the excitement was about. I shared Caulfield's contempt for "phonies" as well as his sense of being different and his loneliness, but he seemed to me just about as phony as those he criticized as well as an unregenerate whiner and egotist. It was easy enough to identify with his adolescent angst, but his puerile attitudinizing was something else altogether."

So? Is this professional book critic really criticizing a novel for not allowing him to easily identify with the protagonist? And this was back in high school. Who cares?

--"Salinger's execrable prose"

Uhh...agree to disagree? An example or two would be nice though.

--"That last question actually is easily answered: "The Catcher in the Rye" can be fobbed off on kids as a book about themselves. It is required reading as therapy, a way to encourage young people to bathe in the warm, soothing waters of resentment (all grown-ups are phonies) and self-pity without having to think a lucid thought."

This guy isn't writing about Catcher. He's writing about a high school English class that he didn't like, and he has spent years intellectualizing that dislike. No doubt the fact that Catcher is so admired has only intensified this dislike, as he simultaneously feels like he's "getting" something that nobody else seems to get, and worries that he's missing something that's so readily available to most readers of Catcher.

--"The novel is commonly represented as an expression of adolescent cynicism and rebellion"

That's not how I read it. If anything, it's an expression of (failed) adolescent rebellion *against* cynicism. That's why it's so infuriating to see Yardley describe Caulfield as "sentimental" or the book as "squishy." I don't want to offend members of his generation, so let me just say that most everybody in this group has struck me as thoughtful, but it did not surprise me to see that Yardley was born in 1939. He's the bad guy in Catcher. He's the adult perpetuating the kind of smug, cynical attitude that rests so heavily on Caulfield's shoulders. And given that, I wasn't surprised that he felt like he was being manipulated when Caulfield says he feels sorry for people, or when he buys his sister a gift.

--"His characters forever say 'ya' for 'you,' as in 'ya know,' which no American except perhaps a slapstick comedian ever has said. Americans say 'yuh know' or 'y'know,' but never 'ya know.'"

Maybe I'm alone here, but when an author writes "ya know," I pronounce it the same way as if he had written "yuh know." And given that this is the only example of Salinger's purported "unwitting parody of teen-speak" that Yardley cares to cite, I guess I have no choice but to dismiss that complaint too.

Yeah, I thought most of Yardley's criticisms were pretty fatuous. Suffice it to say that this article hasn't done much to tempt me into following the Washington Post's book reviews.

PS
Catcher is worse than A Separate Peace?? Seriously???

It seems fashionable to bash Salinger's writing for some reason. If someone doesn't like his prose, that's one thing, but a lot of critics seem way to eager to dance on his grave. He deserves a little respect, at least.

57:

I seem to remember the same thing happening when Updike died last year.

How many of those critics are failed novelists themselves, jealous of someone writing an iconic classic?

If anyone's grave deserves to be danced upon, it's Jerry Falwell

Sutpen: Thanks for responding at length to that review in a way I'm too lazy to. Yardley's complaining about Holden's "puerile attitudinizing" shows that he doesn't know how to read (and probably lacks his share of human sympathy). Holden IS a puerile attitudinizer--but that's nearly irrelevant to whether the book is good or even to whether a reader ought to like it.

Last night, I saw Adam Gopnik on Charlie Rose enthusing about Salinger. For a very different take, then, from Yardley - Gopnik in the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/02/08/100208ta_talk_gopnik

For the record, Yardley's piece was written in 2004, so it wasn't a case of him urinating on Salinger's freshly dug grave.

In my own case, I'm not sure I could read CATCHER again, after the thousands of books I've read since I first tackled it (at 17? 18?), and an increasingly sophisticated view of literature. Challenging myself with prose writers who turn language and structure inside out and avoid sentiment like a fresh cow patty. I don't think even CATCHER, which is by far the best of his works, would stand up well (for me). Like Kerouac, he's a writer of a certain time, for a certain age. I feel like I've left those kinds of sensibilities behind and there's no point looking back. Like Golden Age science fiction, it carries a nostalgic glow about it but that's as far as it goes for me...

63:
I guess I've been feeling more and more over the past two or three years that a disdain for "sentimentality" (which is a term that has grown to embrace even just honest engagement with emotion) is a negative force in Western culture, including literature. For me, that's the central issue in Catcher, and it doesn't feel stale at all.

For the record, I'm not trying to argue that you're "wrong," just presenting another point of view.

Sentiment and sentimentality should not be the same thing. Good writers avoid sentimentality, of course; but writers who avoid sentiment for fear of tipping over into sentimentality are merely gutless.

Since I've been reading Jim Harrison interviews, I have this one at my fingertips: "I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass."

I don't see what's wrong with criticising Salinger following his death, praising him because he has died is the shallow response. The British obituaries have all mentioned the allegations of paedophilia (he had a predilection for young women) not to belittle him but because it was important event in his later life.

Personally I think the last two paragraphs of the Independent obituary sum everything up nicely -

Salinger maintained silence to the end. Gore Vidal said once that his enigmatic exile lent his work a seriousness it didn't deserve. Certainly The Catcher in the Rye is not a masterpiece to compare with the great works of 20th-century American fiction by writers such as Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Bellow or Heller. But it remains one of the most influential and popular books of the 20th century.

Salinger's unpublished manuscripts comprise a remarkable literary heritage that, if they are ever published, could establish him as a giant of modern literature. Then again, if Updike's judgement is correct – and many critics share it – they could be a major disappointment. In 1992 there was a fire on Salinger's estate. The manuscripts may not have survived. It would be in keeping with Salinger's strange, enigmatic life if we never know what he achieved in the long years of silence.

Sentiment is imposed; real, honest emotion is EARNED.

#64 Sutpen: Your post, times one thousand. Thanks.

Anecdote - I was in the biggest bookshop in Edinburgh yesterday, just looking, when I overhead a customer asking for a copy of The Catcher of the Rye. The assistant replied that they had sold out out of all Salinger's books within hours of his death being noticed, and were struggling to get more because of demand; but not to worry because Penguin were going to new issues.

It appears that nothing sells books like an author's death - now if we can only get a publisher to reprint Milorad Pavic.

69: it's the Jim Croce effect.

Sutpen: Such a wonderful, patient response to Yardley. Mine would have read something like "Argh! This guy is so stupid & I hate his suit, too." I have yet to read anything by Yardley that shows he actually knows how to read or review a book. He strikes me as an incredibly lazy thinker.

It's an interesting point, I think, reiterated more than once in this thread: how a book comes across when we're a certain age, and how it comes across years later. When rating books in my LT library, I constantly come up short when the reader I am meets the reader I once was ... and then it feels disloyal to my younger self to be harder on a book than I would have been back then. I liked Catcher a long time ago. I saw in Holden the cynic so many of us were then, on the cusp of the sixties, when we'd become something else, more dynamic and formidable. Though I couldn't relate to Holden's rich Central Park world, I didn't hold that against him. And now? I'd rather not even try to read that book again, along with a lot of others I couldn't put down back in the day.

Yes, I absolutely agree. Sometimes the high regard in which we hold a book that we read in our tender years just doesn't hold up when we examine the book with more mature and sophisticated sensibilities.

There comes a point in time when we must, as the saying goes, "put away our childish things..."

73:

For an assessment of Salinger by a writer with "mature and sophisticated sensibilities", check out the Gopnik piece in #62.

I think we need to be aware of the difference between "childish" tastes and "childish" writing. As our tastes and interests change, the books we leave behind don't become childish or less sophisticated.

I no longer enjoy Steinbeck and Hemingway the way I once did. I've changed, and what I read has changed. If, on the basis of my changing tastes, however, I called Hemingway or Steinbeck childish, I would rightly receive many comments pointing out the above distinction.

74/62: Wow. That review's almost too positive even for me (and I obviously think he's an important writer though I have only read Catcher and not his other stuff).

Seems Salinger is a really polarizing writer for critics. They either practically worship him or they can't seem to stop sneering.

#72 I feel that way about Thomas Pynchon now. I was talking to a friend of mine about books, someone who is between 15-20 years younger, and he was raving about Neal Stephenson. I just told him, "in my day we had Pynchon."

I reread Catcher about 3 years ago and still loved it, although probably for different reasons. I think I read Franny & Zoey once, but I don't remember a thing about it. Should I reread it? I probably won't bother.

I can still read Hemingway, particularly the short stories, the "Nick Adams" tales. I was never a fan of Steinbeck's so I can't go there. But I've read enough Kerouac and Salinger to form an opinion that they are writers for a younger mindset, experienced readers blanching at the ersatz qualities, the preciousness that our younger selves blissfully ignored...

77:

I feel the same way about science fiction and fantasy ;)

You might respond by saying how horribly mistaken I am, and that personal taste is not a reflection of quality. I, in return, would be able to agree with only the latter of the two.

I guess that's why they call it "personal" taste.

Cheers

72:

You so beautifully describe the sometimes poignant experience of rereading.
I wish I could respect my former self enough to feel that way more often. Usually when I reread something & have a new reaction I just think about how clueless my earlier self was.

I can't read most Golden Age SF for just that reason--what once passed for good, entertaining writing seems turgid or inept or silly to me now. You can read that stuff when you're fifteen but once you've tackled Burroughs, Ballard, Beckett (sticking with the B's), you really can't look back.

But, certainly, you're right: personal taste is personal taste. Agree to disagree and all that.

I stopped reading fantasy & SF for about 20 years. then someone recommended GRRM, and for some reason I tried it and I liked it. This lead to Jonathan Strange, Robin Hobb, Jacqueline Carey, Lian Hearn. Stuff I really like. Did fantasy suddenly attract better writers, or did my tastes change? I dunno, I'm just reading what I like.

Still read "literary" stuff, but for different reasons. I don't force myself through it just to be hip - if I'm not having any fun or being challenged in any meaningful way, I toss it.

>79 susanbooks:. Thank you, Susan. You know the expression, "Love the one you're with?" The boy I was, is with me all the time, and the teenager, and the young man ... Though sometimes (I admit) they're hard to put up with.

Franny and Zooey...pretty ok. a big meh on the rest. Caught in the Rye far to many times and didn't like the excessive whine the first time round. For witty/funny teen angst...been clever forever* by bruce stone or midnight hour encores
*A very funny roman a clef about life in Chapel Hill in the 70 - and the very real, if you're living that life, of being a highschool kid in a small (back then) college town. the author bagged teaching to start up the first "art house" cinemas in CHill..Unfortunately the premises haven't been kept up and one feels like your going to a porno flick cinema when you go to the Chelsea these days.
Midnight hour encores is actually the better book. An all too self assured instrumental prodigy (cello) manages to expand her world view beyond her very smart, but very limited, preconceptions on a road trip to meet her mom who'd abandoned her to her dad's care almost immediately after her daughter was born.

I did not like Catcher in the Rye (though Sutpen is almost making me want to give it another chance), but I enjoyed Nine Stories.

I think Salinger's retreat from public life at the height of his fame is inspiring.

"I think Salinger's retreat from public life at the height of his fame is inspiring."

If only more writers would follow his example.

Dan Brown did that, unfortunately he wrote another book. I think James Patterson should follow the example of Roman statesmen, exile himself to his country estate, take a warm bath, and slit his wrists. It's not like he uses those to write books anymore.

Not intending to remove the impact of your literary opinions about Brown and Patterson, I should note for the record that the two most famous Roman suicides who used the method you describe were not entirely voluntary suicides: they were given that option as against being executed for conspiracy against Nero, and they accepted the "offer".

They were the philosopher Seneca the Younger, and his nephew, the poet Lucan.

87: Thanks! That was interesting.

Let further speculation begin...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/15/salinger-letters-new-york

I'm afraid in the next few years the curtain will be pulled aside, the Wizard finally exposed...