I spent about three hours this week reading through everything I could find that’s been written about J.D. Salinger’s death ““ and I could have spent all day.
Slate, an online magazine, had tons of articles about Salinger in the past week or so, including professions of love to Salinger’s characters, descriptions of Salinger’s reclusive small-town life and even thoughts shared by a woman responsible for reading Salinger’s fan mail.
Of all the things I read, many made me sad, a lot made me want to go back and read “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (one of Salinger’s most-loved short stories), and most would be really interesting to discuss here. But the one I reacted to most was the obituary of Salinger posted on People magazine’s Web site.
The obituary itself was brief and objective and is not noteworthy at all. What struck me was the phrase often seen in the reader comments: “A sad day for literature.” I get that this is just one of those polite things to say at such a time, but really? Was his death, at 91, of natural causes, long after he had retired from publishing fiction, such a sad day for literature itself?
I don’t mean to downplay it, but Jan. 27, 2010, was a sad day for the Salinger family. How about Dec. 8, 1980, the day that Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon in what he considered an homage to Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”? That’s what I consider a sad day for literature.
Most writers’ aspirations include having an effect on the world’s perspective, but there’s always the chance that someone will take your work to a sick and twisted place. I’m not going to go off on the negative effects of rap lyrics on adolescents, but it’s just frightening to think that something you write could inspire someone to do something so awful. If this column is making you homicidal ““ please, just stop reading.
After John Hinckley Jr. pointed to “Catcher in the Rye” as an influence in his attempt to assassinate former President Ronald Reagan, you start to wonder about the book itself. Why was it making people do crazy things?
In the Slate article “Salinger’s Genius,” Stephen Metcalf attributes this to a balance in Salinger’s writing “between the edge of sanity and a heightened perception of being.”
Another critic who really affected me was Jonathan Yardley, who wrote an article for The Washington Post a few years ago titled “J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, Aging Gracelessly.” In it, Yardley condemns “Catcher in the Rye” as “badly written” and wrote that re-reading it was “almost literally a painful experience.”
Perhaps it’s just one of those things where nearly everything that’s well-loved in popular culture must at some point be labeled as “overrated.” But Yardley doesn’t seem like just an arrogant contrarian. So if there actually is some weight to what he’s saying, why is Salinger so admired? If his prose is poorly written, if his comma use is shameful, how is it that “Catcher in the Rye” continues to sell 250,000 copies a year?
There’s no disputing the fact that what is truly great or genius is not always the same as what is popular. But I think it has to be evidence of some kind of brilliance, when you can make so many people feel, as Metcalf said in “Salinger’s Genius,” as if their autobiography had already been written.
So what has more value ““ literature that takes a doctorate in English to understand, or books that reach to the depths of our selves ““ whatever might be down there ““ and make us feel understood? That’s something I haven’t figured out yet.
“The Written Word” runs every other Thursday. E-mail Bastien at jbastien@media.ucla.edu.