J.D. Salinger is dead. I’m not going to write you an essay about how The Catcher In The Rye changed my life when I was 15. That’s because while I spent a fun afternoon reading it, it didn’t dramatically change my life. It’s also because many others are probably writing more eloquent obituaries for him right now.
But there was a quote from that book that stuck with me (aside from Holden’s fondness for the words “crumby” and “phony” and the legendary “Fuck you” scrawled on the wall). I found it today: What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.
While I never felt that way about Salinger, a lot of people did, and many were eager to be the one to drag the legendary hermit out of his shell and interview him. It never happened, though I always admired him for his incredible tenacity in hiding from the public, something that only he and Thomas Pynchon seem to get away with.
Now his quote has me thinking about which writers I would most like to call up on the phone. But more of that in a later post. This one’s for Salinger.
The goddamn phonies at The Onion eulogized him best with their lousy, crumby obituary, so I’ll let them take over.
