Sad news today as we learn that JD Salinger, author of famed book Catcher In The Rye, has passed away. At the age of 91, he lived a long life. He did not give interviews, and lived his life as a recluse, but his words will live on far long after his passing.
Word of his death came from his agent, Phyliss Westburg. She said the man died on Wednesday in his home in New Hampshire. He had lived his life as a recluse since 1953 to avoid the fame his work brought him. His other work included Franny and Zooey.
The Catcher In The Rye was either loved or hated by many. The book was banned in some schools for its language among other things. However, it is often called one of the best novels of the 20th century, and it has sold 65 million copies worldwide. Here is one quote from his famous work below. May he rest in peace.
"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."
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Comments: 1
King Dork:
“The title of Catcher in the Rye comes from a misquoted poem by Robert Burns, which Holden Caulfied elaborates into a mystical fantasy about saving children from falling off a cliff. There are all these kids playing in a field of rye, and he stands guard ready to catch them if they stray from the field. A lot of people have found this to be a very moving metaphor for the experience of growing up, or anxiety about the loss of innocence, or the Mysterious Dance of Life. Or any random thing, really.
To use HC’s own terminology, it has always seemed pretty goddam phony and all to me. Fantasies about Jane Gallagher’s preppie ass? Check – even I have those. Fantasies about twisting yourself into a tortured symbol of the precious authenticity of youth? I don’t think so. It’s the kind of thing you’d make up to impress an AP teacher. And the AP teachers are duly impressed with it, of course. Suckers.
The brilliance of it, though, is that the people in the Catcher Cult manage to see themselves as everybody in the scenario all at once. They’re the cute, virtuous kids playing in the rye, and they also like to see themselves as the troubled but famous misfit adolescent who dreams of preserving the kids’ innocence by force and who turns out to have been right all along. And they also like to see themselves as the grown-up moralistic busy-body with the kid-sized butterfly net who is charged with keeping all the kids on the premises, no matter what. Somehow, they don’t realize you can’t root for them all.”