JD Salinger

[lagilman]

On this day in 1986, we lost the crew --and the dream -- of Challenger.

Today we have lost J.D. Salinger, who has died at age 91 -- although some might say we lost him long before, to his own quirks and traumas. Loved or loathed, his work -- most famously Catcher in the Rye --changed the game in ways most writers only dream about.



(I loathed CitR, btw. Thought the writing was brilliant but so relentlessly negative and unlikeable that you took nothing away save a sense of grimy displeasure. I feel much the same way about Bret Easton Ellis, yes. Like HEAs, there's only so much dispirited self- and species-specific hatred I can handle before I go "enough already, I got it., thanks")

Comments

[fakefrenchie.livejournal.com]

We lost Howard Zinn to day or yesterday. So sad.

[girasole.livejournal.com]

Because I teach Catcher in the Rye in my graduate YA literature class, I have thought about Holden a lot. I first read Salinger in college, in the early 1960s, and I was blown away - found everything else by Salinger there was, and wrote a paper on him.

I read Holden again in my mid-thirties, and found him a smarmy, self-pitying wanker, and wanted to swat him upside the head and say, with Cher, "Snap out of it!"

In my 50s, when I was planning the YA lit course, I picked up Catcher again, to see where it led me. I was filled with pity and tenderness for Holden. He needed care, and a mom. I so wanted to take care of him.

There's not world enough and time to read everything, let alone reread everything. But I am fascinated with how my reactions changed over the decades. My students' reactions vary even more widely.

[jperceval.livejournal.com]

At last! Someone else who feels the way I did about CitR! I maintain that teens who have to read it for school like it so much b/c it has cuss words in it. *g*

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

I loved CitR as a teen, and I still like it today. Perhaps I enjoyed the cynical Holden, or that he misses the point, or that I was enveloped in the same cynicism and isolation at that stage in my life, but I connected with him. (I guess you could say the cynic has never left me, given the way I approach my job and corporate life.)

Perhaps how you appreciate CitR is more a measure of how you view life; the more cynical and pessimistic you are, the more you love it.

Of high school/college class reading from that era, I still think that To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite, but CitR is probably close behind.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

The Onion has a great obit: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bunch_of_phonies_mourn_j_d