J. D. Salinger
Salinger was so reclusive and so silent in his seclusion, that many people were probably surprised to hear that he'd died because they thought he was already dead. I don't know whether teenagers are still reading Salinger with the same intense identification that I felt back when I was fifteen or sixteen. But Salinger could really write, and The Catcher in the Rye holds up; so do Franny and Zooey, Nine Stories, and the other books.
Rereading The Catcher in the Rye two years ago, I experienced the book from the perspective of a parent of two young adults, rather than the adolescent I was on the first reading. It is a book about sorrow and loss; in the years since I first read Catcher in the Rye I, like Holden Caulfield, lost a sibling. For years I kept my brother's old baseball glove hidden away in my closet. When I reread Catcher I realized that I had forgotten the detail of Holden's deceased brother's baseball glove. This poignant detail, a baseball glove covered with poems, is so beautiful and moving--it tells you everything about the dead boy. He is the kind of dreamy boy who stands in the outfield and reads poems from his mitt.
1 comment:
Beautiful ending, Lisa.....I reread (something I very rarely do) Catcher this past summer, as my daughter had it for summer reading. I was struck bu the difference in my perspective (probably shouldn't have been), and by how well the book had "aged" for me.
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