the rix mix

I read Salinger's slender books in high school because I thought I had to, so I can't provide an opinion on his writing style or skills or influence on John Irving. Let's say you live in a modest, small middle & working class Jersey town without wealthy people, attend a no frills public high school, rarely feel deprived - except when some of the kids mention spending the summer at the half-shacks their families own in the crowded beach towns north of Seaside Heights, bought by their fathers on auto factory union overtime. You have The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Motown, Jack Kerouac novels, cheap high school dances, & two good pizzerias. How well would you relate to a story about a rich preppie in the early 1950's who gets kicked out of his boarding school, calls everyone "phonies," & runs away to Manhattan for a weekend where he has an unpleasant enounter with a whore? How much would you care about the upscale Glass family? Existentialist crisis? Which Woody Allen movie do you really like better: Hannah & Her Sisters or Broadway Danny Rose.

But J.D. Salinger wrote what he wanted & lived the lifestyle he wanted to have, & Catcher In the Rye endured as an important book, a great accomplishment for an author.

Labels: obituary