Thursday, January 28, 2010

J.D. Salinger's passing and cultural shadows


J.D. Salinger has passed away, and the New York Times obit is here.

What I have read on Salinger over the years makes him out to sound like a rather ornery person to deal with, raising the issue that art does not necessarily inform character. Of course, the harder someone tries to stay away from public attention sometimes, the more ways culture finds to tell the seediest stories.

Who, other than Salinger, gives English teachers more of an in-class rush than the analytical moment in Catcher when we can break down the meanings of Holden Caulfield's name during the rye field dream sequence? I have done it several times, and, though it's cheap thrills, it always gives me chill bumps.

Here's a quick brainstormed list of figures, actual and fictional, who bear the stamp of Salinger's influence:

Thomas Pynchon - Reclusive novelist
Cormac McCarthy - Nearly reclusive novelist, reforming a bit as of late
Max Fischer - Prep school flunky, hypocrite barometer, and genius in Rushmore
William Forrester - Reclusive fictional novelist  in Finding Forrester

Help me make a more comprehensive list. Who else?

4 comments:

  1. Bill Gray in Mao II by Don DeLillo (1991)
    Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (hypocrite barometer who would have befriended Holden) and Harper Lee, reclusive author

    Great post Pete! Thanks, Beth

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  2. I think the character played by James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams, Terry Mann, is based on J.D.Salinger. In the novel the movie is based on, Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella, the characters try to kidnap J.D. Salinger.

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  3. Great additions, Beth and Kathy. Thanks for putting your imagination to the task. I have been meaning to read Mao II for years.

    After thinking about it for another night, I think I might also add Quentin Compson (obviously not a descendant, but an antecedent) from Faulkner's novels and perhaps the narrator of Dostoyevski's Notes from the Underground. Heck, even Ellison's Invisible Man narrator. Holden is the most emblematic, but clearly we modern-folk love burying ourselves in alienation, don't we?

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  4. Apparently so! I also thought of another Holden-esque narrator/anti-hero in a very compelling contemporary novel: Lee in the novel Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld. I just started rereading Nine Stories last night...

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