J.D. Salinger is Dead
 

His stuff really resonated with me when I was a teenager. I assume I would cringe if I were reading today.

It seems like he was fighting a bunch of demons after he achieved his fame.

RIP

Catcher in The Rye
 

He was the most famous resident of my home state, New Hampshire, who was never, ever seen. He was our own Howard Hughes. Sightings of him were reported as if we were talking about UFO's - anyone who happened to meet him accidentally on a country road or forest path became an instant celebrity, with the entire state wanting to interview them. The man had unimaginable wealth, all from that one book - for years it was on the required reading list in every college in the county, and a lot of high schools too, and he probably sold as many copies this year as he did the first year it was printed, and yet, he lived like a bizarre hermit and hated this world. The only time he was heard from was when he was suing someone. One wonders how much more he could have contributed to literature if he wasn't so nucking futs.

Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon…I don't even like old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake. Holden, Catcher in the Rye

Holden probably ended up getting a job on wall street and buying a whole stable full of horses.

I must've grown up in a vacuum. I've not read Catcher in the Rye. Maybe I'll pick it up at long last.

The process by which becomes an anti-social crank is interesting. Some people go farther along that route than others.

As a non-adolescent, it may not do much for you.

I remember that I felt that his stories (Franny and Zooey, A Perfect Day for Bananafish etc.) were better than Catcher.

If you enjoy Catcher, you may also want to read the early stuff from John Updike, if you haven't read them already. He was influenced by Salinger, and the characters were a bit older.

From Catcher:

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

He had a great ear for the narrator's voice.

You're absolutely right. I read it as an adult and was decidedly unimpressed. I found Holden Caufield to be a snivelling little whiner and a completely untrustworthy narrator. I think you need to be an angst-filled youth to connect to this book.

I resembled that remark.....

Funny thing, when I read it as a kid, I thought it was the greatest book ever written. A couple of years ago, I tried to re-read it, and found it boring and stupid. I must have been an angst filled youth.

Well, you're all right.

A cousin of mine lives in Concord N.H. and has had the hap to run across the great hermit.

Nothing spectacular about him at all, an odd looking misanthrope who holds people in contempt and thinks himself a God so he has no compunction of insulting those who even address good morning to him.

I recommend reading Joyce Maynard's memoir if you want to understand him.

I remember reading Catcher in the Rye in school it was required reading and I loved it. Might be time to re-read it.

Don't do it. I recently re-read "Hop on Pop" and didn't find it as compelling as I initially did.

Agreed! Green Eggs & Ham lost the luster for me when it went to the boob-tube and was read outloud by Jesse Jackson. :D

(I liked the "in your head" version better.)

To my unfailing inner eye, dude struck me as just a bit arrogant and self absorbed in his prime, from his pictures, that is.