J. D. Salinger June 10, 2010

I was in high school when I read J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. I was astonished. Holden Caulfield was saying everything I felt. I wondered how in the world Salinger knew these things.

In college a friend of mine and I went down to New York to find old Salinger stories. We went from bookstore to bookstore in search of New Yorker magazines that had Salinger’s stories about Frannie and Zoey. I loved everything Salinger did including his Nine Short Stories. They were different from anything I’d read.

And then Salinger disappeared. He was living quietly in New Hampshire and there he died a few months ago. I admire him keeping silent.

Imagine Salinger resisting the pressure to get bigger and bigger, to make and more money and to become more and more famous. He turned his back on a cultural idol.

Bravo J. D. Salinger.