Pajiba

Awwwww, the author of the only book Mr. Snuggie ever read cover to cover died! I'll have to tell him, then he will read it again.

Wait, I lie. He also read Billy Budd.

And I just read that Howard Zinn died...

Salinger woke me up, made me think. I owe him for enlightenment.

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. -Catcher In The Rye

I shall, sir. Thank you and goodbye.

I love Catcher in the Rye. I guess I can appreciate and respect the right of others to hate it, but I wish they would reconsider.

Wait, he was still alive? I thought he was already dead! Jesus....

After not understanding Catcher in high school I re-read it a couple years ago and was astounded. I actually hope they don't give us his unreleased stuff. Vonnegut in his later years paled in comparison to his Slaughterhouse 5 and Cat's Cradle years. Let's let Salinger rest in peace like he wanted. Leave the legacy the way it is. I'm sure Hunter S. Thompson had stuff laying around after he died but there was a reason it was never published in the first place.

Wait, was he 91 or 101? It's been a long day at the office, but the math is throwing me off here.

Jesus Christ People!! It's JD Salinger. When Brittany Murphy raw-carrot-a-dayed herself to death, there were tons of "oh how sad" comments. But one of the seminal writers of American fiction dies and we get 12 comments????

I'm one of those who didn't get Catcher in the Rye. I wanted to. It's my best friend's favourite book and she made me read it as a teen, gushing about how amazing it was. I love books that make you feel like that. Sadly, nothing. Nothing but anger and boredom and a severe hatred for Holden Caulfield. I don't know if I read it now if I would feel any different. I can't quite bring myself to pick it up again and see.

For me, Salinger and Vonnegutt were the bridge between childhood reading and literature.

Although Dustin has a point, it's not a terribly affecting loss since he never had an active public presence in my lifetime. Vonnegutt's death was a lot more significant. And is it ghoulish to wonder if there will be any posthumous publications forthcoming?

I wrote an 11 page paper on Salinger in high school for my junior year symposium. I had great respect for him and for his family, especially the Glass family. His writing made me curious, impatient and laugh out loud (ok maybe not all the time). He lived a long ass time and I will miss his rumoured life and intrigue. Salinger truly understood youth (as I saw it) and grappled with interesting spiritual questions in his writings and I look forward to rereading his books with fervor.

Reading CiTR my senior year changed my view of literature. I give Salinger mad respect for his work and the way it changed the literary landscape of America.

*pours out a forty for my homey JD*

Franny and Zooey always made me cry, in a good way.

i vote for the no-release-of-unpublished-work measure.

he set that writing out which he wanted read. it's a corpus of great beauty. let's let all the rest of it, and he, rest.

Paddydog: welcome to the alternative universe where the likes of Murphy are hailed as brilliant and Salinger is deemed "overrated."

I'm a longtime lurker but I needed to come out of the woodwork for this. J.D. Salinger changed my life. He inspired me to get into writing and English again after years of asshole high school teachers destroyed my love of the word. He is the driving force behind my English major, and Catcher in the Rye is easily my all-time favorite book (with 9 Stories being the best collection I've ever read). I cried when I heard of his death. He will be greatly missed.

To make this even more pajiban, I fervently hope there's NEVER a movie of CITR. One of those books where it's better that we each see it in our mind's eye the way we want.

As for unpublished stuff, I defintely imagine that someone's going to find a locked box full of ashes with a note saying that these *were* even better than CITR. He seems like that kinda guy.

I'm just saying that even if it might be "wise" it might not necessarily be good writing. Think Timequake by Vonnegut. Very wise, awesome insights into his writing process, and generally interesting. Yet when compared to his early work it's not as good as the earlier work of his.

I get that he may have wanted some of it published, in which case I'll be first in line. But all posthumous novels I've read (e.g. Tolkien in particular,) are disorganized, jumbled messes that just tarnish the otherwise sterling body of work that they had in life.

Roorda >> I see what you're saying, but I'm imagining manuscripts Salinger deemed finished (granted, without an editorial pass) that he simply didn't want published. I don't know what Salinger's process was, but it seems it's possible such items exist that are on the order of 20 or 30 years old (as opposed to something that had its regular creative process essentially interrupted because of his death). Given that we've had over 40 years without his writing - and assuming that he has been actively writing all that time - calling his stories from the 50s and 60s earlier works might be accurate, but we're potentially missing out on much of his evolution as a writer, i.e., his middle and late works.

In a way, I hope there is a movie adaption of CitR. In my opinion, I think it would expose just how atrocious the novel actually was.

Still, rest in peace J.D.

Wow, yesterday was not a good day to be an author of books sitting on my and my roommate's bookcase It's hard for me to be sad about this-as Dustin noted, he did get a lot of years out of life. Maybe one of his potentially unpublished masterpieces will impress me even more than 9 Stories. What I'm trying to say is that I hope I never have to do a eulogy for anyone, because I would not do well. So long, Sally.

i don't care what anyone says, but i have been in love with holden caulfield since the 10th grade and i think i married him.

and i hope it never gets made into a movie. ever.

I liked franny and zooey and raise high the roof beam. not that i really remember them, i gulped them down during an early adulthood voracious binge of literature consumption.

my experience with CITR, was reading it in random chunks out of order whenever i slept at my gf's house as a teen, because i had insomnia and it was either the salinger book, or sydney sheldon and i wasnt ever going there. i never understood the appeal or relevance of caulden holfield. perhaps i had already experienced enuff that his whining seemed just that, whining. but i always fondly remember the beat up paperback as part of lying next to my first love during quiet nights in an otherwise fairly insane life.

I also felt more strongly about zinn dying today. the world lost a hero.

Put me down as one of those who never got CiiR, probably due to my own shallowness. More interesting to me is the issue of his unpublished work. My analogy is if Will-I-Am Shakespeare only released Hamlet (for example) and burned the remainder under the personal-artistic-freedom defense, and what a tragedy (pun intended) it would have been.

Either Maynard or his daughter (don’t remember which) has said that the unpublished works are marked to distinguish those that can be published as is, and those in need of editing. The now sleeping Jerry Salinger can still answer his critics.

For those who are saying that they did not (or do not) get Catcher In the Rye ( by the way - the abbreviation CITR makes me remember that line from Joyce Maynard's 'An 18-Year-Old Looks Back On Life' -- "The whole program was called SRA and there were a dozen other abbreviations, TTUM, FSU, PDQ--all having to do with formulas that had reduced reading to a science.") - let me tell you, be happy that you do not get it. Be relieved. Getting it means you identify with it at some levels, and trust me - that in turn means you ARE in trouble. Not getting it means you will do all the right things in life, you will strive towards success, you will have the proper ambitions, you will be model citizens, you will know WHO are the ones that matter, and WHO don’t. Life will be simple, uncomplicated, and hopefully – happy.