JD Salinger dies provoking a host of articles about his literary career and the reclusive lifestyle he led for the last four decades. Some articles here and here and here and here and here and a podcast here.
I have a hard time remembering how, at the age of 15 or so, I laid my hands on his "Catcher in the Rye", but Holden Caulfield's indignant narration of his adolescent anxieties sucked me in from his very first line. Little wonder, it has become one of the most recognizable openings in literature and an instant entry into the hilarious world of the angry teenage reject at pains to find his own place and direction in life. I read the Polish translation, even though it wasn't at any point a set text in Polish schools, and I remember being seduced by Holden's way of speaking, with his frequent use of "bubek", a term of abuse I hadn't known before, and his ease in articulating his disdain and disinterest for people he was at odds with. His boldness, not just in language but in his choices and adventures, may not have inspired me directly to follow suit, but certainly lightened an avenue I suspected existed but was too shy and inexperienced to visualize. I might consider re-reading his runaway antics, though many say the book loses its allure with the passage of adolescence, not just to see if it still works with me, which I'm sure it does, but to refresh my memory and see how the original version feels. Interestingly, when it came out in 1951, it captured an entire phenomenon that soon spread to popular culture and affected economy - being a teenager, as opposed to a child or an adult. And, indeed, for generations of teenagers, irrespective of their nationality or circumstances, Holden has cut a formative character and reading "Catcher in the Rye" counts, next to such books as "Tropic of Cancer", "On the Road", "The Rachel Papers" or, further into the past, "Huckleburry Finn", as a rite of passage that marks their coming of age. In fact, much later after my own contact with it, our form teacher at secondary school continued recommending Salinger to any crisis-stricken 17 and 18-year-olds, brought down by their acne faces or shameful virginity.
In a twist of serendipity, a few years ago, I happened to purchase Salinger's collection of short stories at a book sale in a library in Napa, California, when I spent one summer there doing a work-and-travel programme. Just before returning to Poland, me and a friend of mine stayed for two or three days in sunny Sun Diego where
on a beach towel I swallowed one of them. In lots of ways, it's stayed with me until today, in particular one line in which one woman ironically noted that to avoid hurting her lover's pride it's important for her to maintain and repeat as often as possible that looking at all other men, no matter how handsome and elegant, provokes nothing but her vomit.
JD Salinger, since the 1960s living in self-imposed isolation, died of natural causes. As a total recluse, he continued until his death to refuse to publish his newer works and admitted nobody to his walled hermitage in rural Hew Hampshire, except a handful of lucky admirers, who often ended up making him feel betrayed, and his kindred spirit, the ex-editor of the New Yorker William Shawn. He also famously insisted on turning down any trappings of the adulation that his books had earned him, fiercely protecting his privacy and his literary output, never stopping short of suing journalists and editors for copyright infringement or privacy violation. Compared to another American recluse, the millionaire aviator Howard Hughes, JD Salinger was often seen as a crackpot (= a nutter), a reputation that was strengthened by the revelations of his former wives and the rumours of his enthusiastic embrace of various religious and quasireligious practices, like orgone energy.
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