Saturday, January 30, 2010

Where Have You Gone JD Salinger?

Author JD Salinger died this week at age 91.
Salinger is most famous for writing "The Catcher in the Rye" a book I have always intended to read but never got around to reading.
The only other thing most people know about him is that he is a recluse basically disappearing in the mid-60s.
His reclusiveness was the subject of an episode of the great mid-90s sitcom "The Single Guy" starring Jonathan Silverman. To impress a girl Silverman said he knew JD Salinger. His doorman, ably played by Ernest Borgnine tried to impersonate Salinger (made possible because he hadn't been seen in public for years).

Salinger may have spent his time in exile writing. We will soon find out the contents of a safe at his New Hampshire home.
It's is believed it contains a stack of finished, unpublished books.
Why would anyone write something then go to great lengths to make sure no one saw it?
"There is a marvelous peace in not publishing," J.D. Salinger told The New York Times in 1974. "Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure."

That's sort of how I feel about this blog.

2 comments:

Al Bundy said...

i hope he publishes whatever he's written.

master bates said...

i rank your blog write up their with Catcher in The Rye in literary history.