Reclusive Salinger caught by a photographer, and none too happy about it
We talk here all the time about our criteria for all great art and writing and music and journalism and politics and even preachers and anybody in any creative pursuits and that criteria of course is: Does he or she have something to say.
And boy oh boy, did J.D. Salinger have something to say through the powerful, powerful and mighty powerful voice of that angry and sometimes funny and sometimes even sweet and sensitive and usually wonderfully cynical young man Holden, the greatest young character in literature this side of Mr. Twain’s incredible Huck. And like Mr. Twain’s Huck, Mr. Salinger’s Holden is one of the greatest characters in American literature, period. I’d rank Huck no. 1, Holden no. 2, and would have to think on what character in American literature would rank after that. (Mr. Updike’s “Rabbit” comes to mind, of course.)
And boy oh boy, did Salinger go against the national grain with his obsessive, insistent wall of privacy and distaste for fame. Most writers would die for one hour on Oprah or, at least a nice, quiet, late-night interview with Charlie Rose on PBS if they tend to shy away from the spotlight.
Or, they love to get out there and self-promote because of all the agonizing time they spend alone, writing. Even Mr. Twain relished the spotlight and became practically a stand-up comedian.
But Salinger??? Lord only knows what drove that obsessive, insistent privacy that was so well sustained that even the people in that little New Hampshire town either knew precious little about their famous resident outside town or were very cool about helping him maintain that obsessive privacy.
Well, watch now these two Salinger scholars in an interview with one of the best TV journalists around. Some interesting discussion around the great Mr. J.D. in this.
I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all . . . I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye.
J. D. Salinger
