You can hate me if you want, but Catcher in the Rye is my least favorite book by J.D. Salinger. In fact, it’s not even one of my favorite books by anybody. And yet, oddly enough, Salinger is one of my favorite writers.
Certainly I recognize the importance of Catcher in shaping the lives and outlooks of any number of angry young men (and, perhaps, the women who love and hope to understand them), and I realize too the profound cultural impact it’s had. However, it seems to me that Salinger was just warming up with that one.
I was sitting on an airplane once, reading yet again my worn paperback copy of Franny and Zooey, when the gentleman next to me said he had heard Salinger had only written one good book, that Holden Caufield one. This was probably twenty-five years ago, and the man appeared to be about the age I am now, though much more successful judging by the fabric of his suit, the shine of his shoes and the length of his belt.
I looked at him with every intention of explaining why the other books were at least as worthy of the praise – my God, the spiritual themes, the poetry, the letters, that wedding, the soldiers, the bathtub, the apartment buildings, the cigarettes…Seymour Glass, of all things beautiful and holy – but all I said was, “No, the others are really good too.”
How could I explain to him the magic and power of that slim little book I held in my hands; the way, after each reading, I’d slid into a cocoon of sorts, a place not completely unlike Murakami’s deep well where time and place and I were indistinguishable, and from which I emerged each time with renewed vigor and creativity as though I had indeed been a caterpillar waiting to blossom into a colorful butterfly, now free and vividly alive in the world – in it and of it – embracing and lifted by the spontaneous and erratic breezes of life? “No, the others are really good too.”
That’s all he needed to know, and probably all you need to know too if you haven’t read them. So do. Please.
Now J. D. Salinger has died and the irony is that we may see more new work from him than we did during his lifetime, if the rumors are true. And I hope they are.
RIP, Jerome David Salinger.
9 Stories
He gave me Nine Stories by Salinger
And I gave them all to you
Will you think of me every time Seymour dies?
Because you know I was over that line
I’ve been dreaming
I’ve been dreaming
I’ve been dreaming about bananafish and you….
Here’s a video with the 9 Stories song and some drawings by Tom Hachtman:
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