Thursday, January 28, 2010
So now we find out: Was J.D. Salinger writing all that time? Is there something in that file cabinet as good as "Frany and Zooey" (which I think is his best) or "Catcher in the Rye"? Or was it all a hype? Did he retreat to Cornish, New Hampshire and just live out his days? That's always been my theory. Why would he feel the need to write more? On the record of what he'd published it always looked to me as though he'd said everything he needed to, and was running out of ideas. Maybe he really was, as Mailer said, "the greatest mind ever to stay in prep school."
I think it is crumby that the man who killed John Lennon gets a mention in Salinger's obit, and I think it's too damn bad that Salinger must have died knowing that would happen.
(Apropos of today's earlier post, citations to the Uncollected Stories can be found here. Those with access to a decent library can track them down-- I spent several weekends in the bound periodicals section of the Geneseo library doing just that years ago. And The New Yorker has made the thirteen of the Salinger stories it published available here.) Esquire has posted "This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise", and "The Heart of a Broken Story".
Update: A New Yorker article by Louis Menand; an assessment by Janet Malcolm of similar vintage.
Update II: Here is Ron Rosenbaum's piece from Esquire about his trip to Cornish to seek out Salinger. I mostly generally like Rosenbaum, but the sort of Salinger obsessives who tried this sort of thing always impressed me as being a half bubble off level. I'm surprised that Rosenbaum hasn't weighed in with a piece about the Salinger manuscripts yet-- it has been 24 hours since the man died.
I think it is crumby that the man who killed John Lennon gets a mention in Salinger's obit, and I think it's too damn bad that Salinger must have died knowing that would happen.
(Apropos of today's earlier post, citations to the Uncollected Stories can be found here. Those with access to a decent library can track them down-- I spent several weekends in the bound periodicals section of the Geneseo library doing just that years ago. And The New Yorker has made the thirteen of the Salinger stories it published available here.) Esquire has posted "This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise", and "The Heart of a Broken Story".
Update: A New Yorker article by Louis Menand; an assessment by Janet Malcolm of similar vintage.
Update II: Here is Ron Rosenbaum's piece from Esquire about his trip to Cornish to seek out Salinger. I mostly generally like Rosenbaum, but the sort of Salinger obsessives who tried this sort of thing always impressed me as being a half bubble off level. I'm surprised that Rosenbaum hasn't weighed in with a piece about the Salinger manuscripts yet-- it has been 24 hours since the man died.
// posted by Bill @ 2:02 PM 
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