J.D. Salinger, literary one-hit wonder, is dead

In this day and age when being famous for being famous is a consummation so devoutly to be wished, it is probably hard to imagine anyone becoming famous for not wanting to be famous.  But this latter phenomenon, in a nutshell, can serve as an epitaph for J.D. Salinger.

His ironic, if not iconic, fame stems of course from the publication of his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye. Like most people my age, I read it in high school.

But, honestly, what I remember most about this book was thinking back then how odd it was that my teacher would assign a book that reads like a sojourn through the sex-addled mind of an alienated, angst-ridden, rebellious 1950s teenager.  I’m not sure what lesson she was hoping to teach, but it was probably completely lost on this 1970s teenager.  Because, for so many reasons, I simply could not relate….

If reading it was no longer a rite of passage when you were in high school, and you’ve never bothered to read it, just imagine your teacher assigning the viewing of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for literary or cultural insight. 

It is a curious thing, though, that so many people claim to have related to this novel; after all, you’d think that the “cool kids” would have seen in Holden all of the poor saps they picked on in school.  So why their coming of age problems became required reading had to have been a mystery. Imagine what a loser you had to be to pay for sex and not only fail to get laid, but end up with a fat lip….

All the same, this novel has reportedly sold 65 million copies, and continues to sell hundreds of thousands each year.  No doubt the mystery surrounding Salinger’s doggedly reclusive life fueled sales. (Never mind that his reclusiveness might’ve had something to do with wanting to conceal his predilection for teenage literary groupies….)

You could be forgiven for thinking, though, that he never wrote another novel. But he wrote three others – all of which were relatively successful. Moreover, he probably thought all of them were just as good, if not better.

Therefore, it must have been a source of profound humiliation, perhaps even resentment, that none of them came close to matching the critical acclaim and commercial success of Catcher. Why subject one’s talent (and oneself) to a world in which people are too stupid and superficial to appreciate real literary merit, eh?

In fact, his last book was published in 1963. And, according to The Washington Post, no new writing of any kind has been published since a short story appeared in The New Yorker in 1965. This is why I have always regarded him variously as the most notorious sufferer of writer’s block and the most enigmatic literary celebrity of the 20^th century.

Rumors abound that he spent much of his time in seclusion writing as many as 11 masterpieces, all of which remained locked in a vault in manuscript form.  But if his three published, post-Catcher novels proved so forgettable, I’m not sure why anybody thinks these masterpieces, if they exist, would be any better. 

Nevertheless, just as it was with Michael Jackson, Salinger’s death provides a unique (and fleeting) opportunity for the executors of his estate to maximize sales from the release of any new material….

Salinger reportedly died on Wednesday of natural causes.  He was 91.

Here’s to catching little children as they’re about to fall off a cliff….

Farewell J.D.