J.D. Salinger
January 29, 2010 at 4:15 pm 1 comment
J.D. Salinger died Wednesday at the age of 91. For a man of such vast literary repute, he published only four books: one novel, a collection of stories, and two novellas. I don’t imagine too many of us made it through high school without having been assigned to write an essay on The Catcher in the Rye. While the book never resonated with me, I did appreciate the original review, republished in yesterday’s New York Times obituary:
This Salinger, he’s a short story guy. And he knows how to write about kids. This book though, it’s too long. Gets kind of monotonous. And he should’ve cut out a lot about these jerks and all at that crumby school. They depress me. They really do.
I took a quick poll around the bookstore, and reactions ranged from, “Wasn’t that the book the dude that assassinated John Lennon was reading?” to “I’ll be interested to see what Joyce Maynard has to say” to “He was still alive?” 
The most thoughtful reaction came from Lily, who said, “I think that, along with the Beats, he struck a chord with the disaffected and his work helped set the stage for the youth movement of the ’60s. I mean, Holden Caulfield, with his questioning and rejecting of the status quo, was something of a proto-hippie.”
Do you remember what your reaction was to The Catcher in the Rye? How would you rate it among the most influential books of the twentieth century, and does it deserve its place in the pantheon? Or was there another book that really spoke to you when you were Holden’s age? We’d love to hear what you think.
Entry filed under: Book Recommendations.
R.J. Julia Booksellers Blog 
1.
Amy Silin Freas | February 2, 2010 at 10:12 pm
I was not one of the countless assigned Catcher in the Rye as a teenager, but came upon it on a bookshelf at home. I still cherish the memories of its initial reading as witty, sometimes laugh out loud funny and terribly bittersweet. I purchased 10 Stories for 20p. at the train station in Liverpool, England while a college student and was struck by the fear that adults may live lives of quiet desperation and pierced by the exacting word choice of the master, Salinger. To this day I still check cabs for someone else’s tossed cookies, and think about Bananafish when on a raft. I am praying that we get to read even more of his writing in time to come.