RIP JD Salinger

That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "f*ck you" right under your nose. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "f*ck you." I'm positive.
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When I first read this passage, I began to laugh hysterically, all alone in my bedroom with a book in my hand. Now, as I read it again, I am not laughing. When I finished reading The Catcher in the Rye in June of 2009, I wrote a letter to J.D. Salinger knowing full well he would probably never read it, but secretly hoping he would. I never sent the letter and, when I read the headline today, I felt a terrible regret within me for this.

My mind was also immediately drawn to one of my favorite poem's by Robert Frost:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay
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R.I.P.
 
The Catcher in the Rye was my single favorite novel through out my youth. I re-read it a few years ago, and while it did not quite live up to the myth I had built up in my head over the years, there is something about that book, that character, that I relate to on such a visceral level. Holden Caulfield was a catharsis for me in so many ways. He was at once all that I longed to be, and all that I hated in my own mis-spent youth. A perfectly flawed character.

I never wanted Salinger to publish a sequel. The book is perfect for me. It's like the difference between the BBC and American Network Television. The BBC creates a story and runs it until the story is over. The American Networks create a story and then run it long past a point of diminishing returns...and often, diminishing respect. Holden's story, or at least the part of him that made THAT story, was over. Salinger knew that.

J.D., thanks for sticking to your guns. You owed us nothing, and gave us a piece of ourselves.

ConspiracyPenguin said:
My mind was also immediately drawn to one of my favorite poem's by Robert Frost:
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I too love that poem (and Frost). I remember hearing it on one of Julie Clark's Baby Einstein videos a few years back. I didn't know if I should be gratified, or horrified.
 
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Catcher was actually my least favorite of his work. 9 Stories has some of the best American writing of the century. "Bananafish" of course, but "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" is amazing.

And I absolutely LOVE the Zooey half of F&Z.

I guess I would say he'd be missed, but he's been away son long as it is...
 
It was nothing short of a thrill to read and discuss Catcher in the Rye in 10th grade English class with a gifted teacher. I was sick but couldn't bear the thought of missing out, even on the day only background information was being given.
 
We'll miss him. I'm one that enjoyed the sequels even more, also. Perhaps they'll raise those roof-beams high wherever he's headed, for he was indeed of great stature.
 
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