J.D. Salinger dies at 91

From the Associated Press:

J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91. Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son said in a statement...

'Catcher in the Rye' author J.D. Salinger dies [AP] Photo: Tatteralan.

• [DeadWriter]

  He wrote more than just The Catcher In the Rye. He wrote great short stories. All to often his work was forced upon us, at an age where we could not get past the dated references. He was pigeonholed as a writer of fiction for adolescents, when in fact he simply wrote good fiction.

  A volunteer that I worked with has a great story about Salinger and how Bantam Books ended up with the rights to mass print the paperback of “Catcher“. Salinger hated the first publishers artwork. It had a boy with a cap on it and he thought it was awful. Bantam showed him a simple cover that had only text on it. He signed with them, because they complied with a simple request.

  He was also a wonderful curmudgeon. He believed in not caving in to censors or book selection committees. He believed in sanctity of authorship. He believed that a writer that wanted to write about Holden Caulfield (Salinger’s character) as an adult could easily write a story that was compelling on it’s own and not tied to the work he created. Money wasn’t the primary drive in his life, and his semi-obscure status as an American writer of note shows this.

• [Philbert]

  I don’t know. I read ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and I didn’t like it.
  Basically Colden Haulfield is being a d*ck to everyone, and spending his parents’ money. Then the end is totally confusing.

  This might have been shocking and provoking when my father was young, but the world and literature moved on and left this book behind.

• [tuckels]

  I was reading Franny and Zooey at the time I heard the news. Made me rather sad.

• [Machineintheghost]

  When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down that goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don’t know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, “Sleep tight, ya morons!” I’ll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out.

• [princeminski]

  For good (and very different) takes on “the Catcher cult” by fictional teenage narrators, see WHAT CAN YOU DO? by James Leigh (1965) and KING DORK by Frank Portman (2006).

• [zyodei]

  It’s a shame that one of the last acts of his life was using legal threats to go after that guy who wrote a novel based on the book. Why would anyone act to sully their own memory like that?

  • [princeminski]

    The idea of someboy else writing a novel about Holden Caulfield belongs with the “Flowers in the Attic”/”Gone With the End” part of the literary spectrum. You don’t have to be a urine-drinking recluse to want to hang onto the integrity of your own creations. (I know that runs counter to the thinking of this blog, at least sometimes, but “copyright” is not inherently a bad thing.)

    • [princeminski]

      Sorry, “Gone With the Wind.” Obviously.

• [the Other michael]

  Rats! Now I’ll never get that interview.

• [Xander Crews]

  Farewell Chief…

• [AsteriskCGY]

  Personally I didn’t know he was still alive. I figured any of the books our school had that looked that old were from dead guys.

• [IronEdithKidd]

  Fugitive no more. Rest well.

• [timmaah]

  But I can’t help agreeing with those that would not quit.

• [Cowicide]

  I have nothing but admiration for a person that can inspire both George Bush, Sr. and the band Green Day with one same book.

• [wilberfan]

  You couldn’t take the time to ‘shop a catcher’s mask into that graphic?

  • [Cowicide]

    You couldn’t take the time to ‘shop a catcher’s mask into that graphic?

    Here ya go… I liked this old catcher’s mitt composed with the field of rye better than a catcher’s mask. The mitt is CC license attribution of course. ^_^

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/49403380@N00/sets/72157623304171866/

• [Anonymous]

  Well, we’ll finally get to read more of his stuff, at least. Once they start publishing what he had in those filing cabinets.

• [Anonymous]

  “Boy, when you’re dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re… dead? Nobody.” – J. D. Salinger (RIP)

• [Anonymous]

  Thank you J.D. for everything thing you gave us with just one book. You have no idea the impact you have had on my life and the lives of so many. Reading Catcher made me feel less alone.

• [merreborn]

  Clearly, the announcement of the iPad disappointed him… to death.

  /totally tasteless

  • [Jonathan Badger]

    I guess neither him nor Zinn were really into big iPod Touches, eh?

• [rob1000]

  Now we find out what gets published posthumously. Supposedly he’s got 15 completed manuscripts in a safe. Or maybe he has orders to burn them.

  • [CANTFIGHTTHEDITE]

    That didn’t work out so well for Kafka, and hopefully the world will be that lucky a second time.

  • [imag]

    That’s what I’ve been wondering – will there be burn orders?

    To read what he wrote later in life is a dream of mine – I admit that I have even been quietly waiting for him to die so the world could get a glimpse. It feels magical somehow, to suddenly have access to novels that one of last century’s greatest writers wrote after disappearing himself from the world.

    And for those who think he’s just about Catcher, read “9 Stories”. I think he must have been the first western novelist to deal appropriately with Zen. It’s all about Teddy…

    • [gobo]

      Yes. Teddy, Franny & Zooey, Bananafish… Salinger was a great author with more than just Holden Caulfield to share with the world.

• [Phart]

  Here is the Onion’s take on Salinger’s passing:

  http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bunch_of_phonies_mourn_j_d

• [dole]

  An AP article with information about his unwritten works and speculation. Intriguing. I’ve also never read Catcher (always been on my list…) but I’m tempted to pick it up very soon and give Zen & Motorcycle Maintenance a break.

  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100129/ap_on_en_ot/us_obit_salinger_33

• [dolcemotif]

  “you should never tell anybody anything.” – Ne – on – O.B. Gin II

  conspiracy:

  towers point to ghost histories, foreigners.
  how terrible you had “it” is not even worth, being him/her.
  in every media stain, a monkey is bungled, and an author is licensed.
  another it is up butt like drank, boi.
  now became later when senses are non-cartesian.
  i kindly redress for animated possessions.

  “and then…”

  study, discipline, and employment are open for tropic systems. right.
  this doesn’t help with-out knowing opposite day adjustments.
  i remember a sexy pseudo pr without identification or desire. sure..
  no one seems to be your friend and they know who you are. catch?
  killer love is not human with some’s honesty.

  use or. oc.. (translated as: racist units are moved on any timed scale). gastrointestinal = government issue = paranoia credit = incomplete
  im not u ppl.

  old @ 27, idc if ur real or fade.

  call and response:
  god breathes. (god farts)
  god copies and pastes. (god is not cod)
  god is not gods. (god was an atheist)

  non-personal:

  death is out, fakir.
  christian diaspora, your michael was in-hel.
  muslim versions are the same.
  sell out, i have nsp.
  “what” is on an island.
  the sphinx is too agency to answer.
  at least, you could choose your memory loss. go
  temple is to doll house as dick is to dictionary.
  odds even late.
  hers is similar and quicker, correct?

  i have bet. he is as sentimental as she. q brick is on-line.
  cue clucks wild, west.
  i did not bet you cannot sleep like i cannot, and i still lose myself.
  i love you left.

• [Vic333]

  I did not enjoy Catcher in the Rye. I re-read it a couple of years ago to give it another shot, but it just doesn’t work for me. I’ve always thought of reading Franny and Zoey to see if I enjoyed his other stuff, but then I just came to the conclusion that I don’t have to like every famous author. I am interested to see if his unpublished stuff ever seen the light of day, though. Supposedly he still wrote every day.

• [pKp]

  I’m so sad. This was my favourite book in high school, and one of the first books I read in English once I got past the Harry Potter series.

  I’ll watch out for the unpublished works.

• [defacebook]

  Amazingly, I’ve never read ‘Catcher’. It was never assigned in any English Lit class I ever had (high school or college) and never recommended to me by anyone. Naturally, I was aware of it, but didn’t know what it was about until I was an adult. And then when I found out I thought “well, that’s the story of my life, so why bother reading it.” LOL. Maybe I’ll pick up a copy someday and see what all the hoopla is about! Farewell, JDS — I never knew ya!

• [Pantograph]

  I have this weird premonition that his unpublished manuscripts consist of thousands of pages filled with “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

  • [princeminski]

    Good one!

• [Anonymous]

  WITHDRAWAL AND RETURN

  Many writers, artists, poets, people in the world of culture and the arts, go into seclusion after their early successes. In a radio program today, Arts Today, two such writers were mentioned: J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon. Others go into seclusion later in their careers. It is part of a general pattern which the historian Arnold Toynbee calls “withdrawal-and-return.” Others call the axis along which specific changes or rhythms take place ‘approach-and-separation.’ Sometimes the artist will withdraw and never return. Sometimes he will return or approach in a more moderate way than he had originally. I have, recently, withdrawn or separated from quite an intense milieux of employment and community work and I have returned in a moderate way. Various factors predisposed me to go inward by the last years of my middle age, the years 55 to 60. This process of a withdrawal into solitude is hardly observable except to friends and relatives with whom one has some close connection by birth, by marriage or by lengthy association. In the case of J. D. Salinger it was observable because he had become a famous writer and the world wanted contact with a person who had become by degrees a recluse. Insight comes from an inner gestation, a Socratic wisdom associated with knowing yourself, a personal growth. Such was the view of Salinger. For Salinger this social reversal brought drama, change, intensification and new landmarks on a personal quest. It was a personal quest which ended today. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 29 March 2001 and updated on the day of Salinfer’s death: 30/1/’10.

  Shocking public events
  have inspired this poetic,
  catastrophic happenings
  to someone born in 1944,
  to someone who tried to
  find the Kingdom come
  with power and has now
  seen nearly half a century
  of its slow establishment
  around this global world.

  Here are enough themes
  to occupy time, energy &
  the genius of a dozen men:
  historians, sociologists and
  philosophers—an inspiration
  from another realm, a most
  wonderful and thrilling motion,
  fifty years of it, drying out my
  intellectual eyes with a series of
  barren fields and psychically
  winding my mind with a new
  fertility that surpassed all that
  I had experienced in life, filled
  my days with a revivifying breath
  or I would have died in a wasteland
  without a wimper amidst stony rubbish.(1)

  (1) T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland, line 19.

  Ron Price
  30 March 2001
  updated: 30/1/’10

• [dancentury]

  I read Rye twice (high school and college), and it was ‘ight. Not worth shooting John Lennon over (Google it!)

• [Cupcake Faerie]

  @ #8, Run to your nearest indy book store and purchase a copy of Catcher – if it is the story of your life, you’ll like it that much more. Should be required reading for every high school student.

• [Rob Beschizza]

  I will confess that I considered making the body of the post read, “Sheesh, it wasn’t *that* disappointing.”

• [wgmleslie]

  What a phoney!

• [glaborous immolate]

  Can somebody fill me in on who this guy was? Y’know, where he was born, that David Copperfield crap.

  • [Patrick Dodds]

    If it helps, glaborous, the UK Guardian today reported that he drank his own urine.

• [Anonymous]

  I think there is a bunch of people out there, not knowing Salinger from school or literal interrest, but from third party impression.
  the words ‘I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes’ spreaded worldwide by the laughing man (fictional realtime hacker in ghost in the shell by Masamune Shirow) and forced many fans to find and read the source.

• [nanuq]

  “If it helps, glaborous, the UK Guardian today reported that he drank his own urine. ”

  Thanks for sharing that. The mental picture you evoked will help me stay on my diet.