Weekend Reading List:

During the week (Wednesday), J D Salinger, 91, the Garbo of letters (famed for not wanting fame), died at his 90 acre home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. I'll pull out my dusty copy of The Catcher in the Rye (1951) for another read. I've read it quite a few times already and am always struck by the wonderfully immediate whine that Salinger fashioned for the narrator Holden Caulfield — is it technique, or isn't it? It's hard to tell. I'm not good at writing dialogue (my attempts always come off stiff and arch) so I'm in awe at Salinger's colloquial, idiomatic language, his uncanny ventriloquism, a sharp ear for the rhythms and cadences of colloquial speech; And also, his ability to create stories within stories naturally. So, yes, I guess I am talking about technique. But it's also a gift, I think, something not easy to learn. On top of the amazing method, I never read The Catcher in the Rye without getting a lump in my throat and the prick of tears in my eyes, and this 'emotional' quality has made me gift this book over the years to not a few of those rebels and misfits amongst my friends (yes, there are many of those!). Holden Caulfield represented all the sensitive waifs who drift through life tossed and bruised by a vulgar and materialistic world, the freaks who never really outgrew adolescent feelings, the innocents who have never let go of their inner child. In this sense, there is overlap in his work and Bruce Weber's (the sentimentality and 'cuteness' is certainly similar).
"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.”
- J D Salinger