J.D. Salinger's obituary was in the Washington Post yesterday. He was 91, the same age my father was when he died.
What a strange dude. (I mean Salinger this time, although my father was also an exceedingly strange dude.)
It seems to me that Salinger was Truman Capote's opposite number. They shared the distinction of publishing one smash-hit book, in Capote's case In Cold Blood, in Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye, then drying up creatively, or at least publishing next to nothing. But whereas Capote lusted after fame, glamor, exotic locales, celebrity gossip, television interviews and a big rolodex of famous names, all of whom he described as his "dear friends," Salinger published one successful book in 1951, then went out and hid in the woods for the rest of life, talking to practically no one. At the time of his death, he hadn't even published a short story since 1965, although the obit did mention that he stayed busy out there in the woods, writing stuff that he intended for publication only after his death. I guess we'll find out about that.
I read The Catcher in the Rye in high school and disliked it, most likely because it was de rigeur for adolescents to admire that book, and I had a contrarian streak in me. Re-reading it many years later, I found Holden's diction rather quaint, and certainly his jaded cynicism, a shocking novelty in 1951, was something of a yawn in the post-Watergate era. But because all adolescents like to think of themselves as alienated and "different" from everyone else, Holden Caufield immediately became an American folk hero. The obit did answer a question for me, which was why my contemporary, Joyce Maynard, who was going to Yale at the same time I was starting college, managed to publish a teenage memoir, Looking Back, when she and I were both all of 19 or so, gaining instant literary fame. Seems she was sleeping with Salinger at the time. Yeah, that would do it all right. Listen to me. I sound like Holden Caufield. Only one man knows why J.D. Salinger withdrew into the New Hampshire woods at age 33 and seldom came out again, refusing interviews, shunning publicity, publishing nothing. Well, that man is dead now, but I'm sure he had his reasons. R.I.P.
