J.D. Salinger, 1919 – 2010

Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I’d never get to the other side of the street. I thought I’d just go down, down, down, and nobody’d ever see me again.

A little over a year ago, I wrote a tribute to Salinger and his classic; perhaps it’s worth another look now. For today, he, too is gone. If you haven’t read The Catcher in the Rye, or only dimly recall it from your own youth, now may be the time to pick it up again. It’s a classic for a very good reason: it speaks as clearly to age as to youth, and to both in this moment as it did nearly 60 years ago. It is one of those works of art that appear almost supernatural in retrospect: a visitation of gleaming light and clarion sound to a culture desperately in need of both.

As for the mass media reaction, it too contains a lesson: MSNBC describes the author’s “isolated home” and others are referring to him as “reclusive.” These are arrogant projections: a man’s desire for privacy is not, I repeat, is not equivalent to pathology or isolation. To me, Salinger’s refusal to cater to the media was a mark of his sanity. His work speaks clearly for itself, uniquely to every individual who picks it up and truly experiences it. All these drooling scribblers of the MSM who imagine that a desire to avoid their intrusions is a mark of abnormality will be long dead and utterly forgotten while readers continue to immerse themselves in the haunting story of Holden Caulfield.