On the Passing of JD Salinger

So it goes.

Holden Caulfield: If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

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I got the news of the man's death on my cell phone, sitting in my car in front of the Garden City Public Library, adjacent to the Garden City stop of the Long Island Railroad. I figured there was probably a lot of symbolism about all that, and perhaps some day a better writer than myself can tie it all together with some neat word-bow, to make it seem to have some kind of deep significance. That writer is not me. Not today, anyway.

I have this theory, apparently a fairly ridiculous one, that the great writers are immortal. With each passing of people like J.D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. that little theory takes another hit from the grim realities of this life. Unfair, maybe, but true.

I can't remember now if it was the book by his former lover, Joyce Maynard, or his sister, Margaret Salinger, that detailed Mr. Salinger's file cabinet system of categorizing new, unpublished stories. It indicated which ones should be published how soon after his death. On a blackened day that thought at least offers a glimmer of something like light.

I do believe that it is important to have heroes, including heroes you have never met and will never meet. People who give you comfort just because you know they're out there, doing their thing and kicking ass. The sad thing is, when your heroes shuffle off this mortal coil, it hurts like Almighty Hell.

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Holden Caulfield: It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.


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