Writing Essentials Wednesday: July 25, 2007

Today is an open day, which means that writing which falls under the content/genre guidelines of  fiction, poetry, playwriting, creative non-fiction, memoir, essays about publishing or about writing, will be accepted or featured in Writing essentials. 

 

Here is a schedule of Writing Essentials Wednesdays. This schedule defines Features only. Content that falls under the guidelines will always be accepted in to the group. 

 

 

Wednesday, August 1: Creative Non Fiction; Essays about Writing or Publishing; Dramatic Scripts: Playwriting;  Memoir

Wednesday, August 15: Poetry

(A schedule after August 15 will be published later)

On all the other Wednesdays, I will feature articles about Fiction, Poetry, Memoir, Creative Non-Fiction, Playwriting or Screenplays, Essays about Writing or about the Publishing Industry.

You can send articles to Writing Essentials about ANY of the above categories on ANY Wednesday; that being said, on THEME Wednesdays, only content in the specifc THEME will be Featured.

As a bonus, I have decided to describe the life of one of American Literature's most influential yet controversial author: J.D. Salinger.  

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Jerome David Salinger is well known to Americans who are currently between the ages of high school and 65, largely for the success and controversy surrounding his novel, Catcher in the Rye.

 

Salinger was born and raised in Manhattan, New York, the product of several boarding schools, where he began writing short stories. He did attend college but dropped out without obtaining a degree and devoted most of his time to writing short stories. Salinger’s first short story was published in 1940. 

 

He served in the US Army during World War II, with the 12^th Infantry Regiment then worked in Counter Intelligence. Returning to New York in 1948, he published A Perfect Day for a Bananafish in The New Yorker. The publication of this first story inspired The New Yorker to sign Salinger but allowed them right of first refusal on all future stories. Salinger then began to publish his work exclusively in The New Yorker in the early 1950s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1951 also saw the publication of his only novel, Catcher in the Rye, which drew a markedly polarized response: it received rave reviews but the book was also banned in several countries and in several US schools, including many in Massachusetts. To this day, parents in Massachusetts have to sign a permission slip allowing their high school-aged child to read this book. 

 

Protagonist Holden Caulfield has influenced 50 years of adolescents, as they identify with Caulfield’s adolescent angst and alienation, and loss of innocence. Catcher still sells briskly, to the tune of some 250,000 copies a year. 

 

Time magazine wrote of Salinger in 1961 that “Salinger…has spoken with more magic, particularly to the young, than any other US writer since World War II.”

 

After Catcher, Salinger published three collections of short stories, Nine Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published piece is a novella titled "Hapworth 16, 1924," which appeared in The New Yorker in 1965.

 

 

 

 
Controversy has followed Salinger, as his popularity with youth brought attention, which he never wanted. In 1972, Joyce Maynard, 18, an experienced writer with Seventeen Magazine, was approached by The New York Times to write an article, which was published as "An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back On Life“. This article was published on April 23, 1972, and catapulted Maynard to instant stardom. Salinger wrote a letter to her in which he warned her about the perils of living with fame.

 

Much has been written of Salinger’s devotion to various religious faiths, including an early following of Zen Buddhism, but he was later attracted to diverse faiths including Christian Science and Scientology.

 In 1999, twenty-five years after the end of the relationship between Maynard and Salinger, Joyce Maynard decided to auction the letters Salinger had written to her in 1972. The sale of these letters helped publicize her memoir, At Home in the World: a Memoir, published in 1999. The letters were bought for $156,500 by Peter Norton who announced his intention to return them to Salinger.

In 2000, Margaret Salinger, who was Salinger’s only daughter by his second wife, Claire Douglas, published Dream Catcher: A Memoir. Margaret’s book described the control Salinger exerted over Claire and dispelled many myths Hamilton’s book had tried to promote. 

   

 

 

 
Hamilton had stated that Salinger had been left psychologically scarred with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from his experiences in World War II, but daughter Margaret claimed Salinger was a man who, though sickened by war, (as any soldier would be), was proud of his war service and continued to wear a military haircut, his service jacket and drove around his compound and in Cornish in an old Jeep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1961, the critic Alfred Kazin explained that Salinger's choice of teenagers as a subject matter was one reason for his appeal to young readers, but another was "a consciousness [among youths] that he speaks for them and virtually to them, in a language that is peculiarly honest and their own, with a vision of things that capture their most secret judgments of the world."

 

Salinger's language, especially his energetic, realistically sparse dialogue, was revolutionary at the time his first stories were published and was seen by several critics as "the most distinguishing thing" about his work.

 

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To learn more about Gather's Writing Essential channel, please view these articles:

Writing Essentials by Pam Johnston VP Community Engagement

Meet the Writing Editors by Pam Johnston  

Official Description of Writing Essentials by Jennifer Hodge, Gather Editorial Team

 
To join the Writing Essentials group: click   HERE  and then click on the JOIN button on the left hand column. 

 

Important: Please include the word "writing" to your tags, as well as the word or words, poetry, fiction, memoir, or creative-non fiction, so that we know your article is relevant.

 

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About Kathryn

Kathryn Esplin Oleski kathryneo.gather.com

Kathryn Esplin-Oleski was raised in Salt Lake City, but moved to Montreal with her family, where she finished high school and college. Kathryn has a BA in English Literature from McGill University and a Master of Science in Journalism (MSJ) from the Medill School of Journalism, at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Ill.

Kathryn's articles have appeared in The Montreal Gazette, The Globe and Mail, and Kathryn covered Utah politics at Medill from Washington, D.C. for The Ogden Standard-Examiner.

She freelanced for numerous computer/business publications, including a stringer story for Newsweek magazine on graft in the music industry.

Kathryn worked as a reporter and senior editor for International Data Group (IDG) for several years, and then continued to freelance computer/business articles.

She copyedited a technical book, Raggett on HTML 4.0, published by Addison-Wesley Longman, 1998.