THE LAUGHING MAN

The New York Times reports that JD Salinger has died, at the age of 91.

91 is a great span of years to live, but I still can't help but feel vaguely upset, in that way you do when well-know personages whom you greatly admire die.  Though his death will doubtless be "eulogized" in some incredibly half-assed way on Twitter and Facebook, I still feel moved to write a few things about Salinger and his work.

Not even the venerable Times is able to write a eulogy of Salinger without essentially reducing his fantastic (if admittedly rather small) body of work to one book, the ubiquitous Catcher in the Rye.  Like so many others, I was an instant fan of Catcher, and yes, it meant a lot to me as a youth.  But the primary argument against that novel, that it was juvenile or facile because its primary themes were too "angsty" or (in our generation's parlance) "emo" always range hollow.  Of course the book spoke to angry, confused teenagers who were frustrated by the world and considered everyone around them stupid or misguided.  The overarching tale, though, is not of a teen struggling against the constraints of adulthood, insomuch as it is of a person attempting to make peace with an imperfect world.  For some that's an easy--or nonexistent--task, but for many others it is a daily struggle that lasts a lifetime. 

Salinger himself was a prime case study of that struggle.  An extraoridinarily talented young man who met with quick success, he was nonetheless unable to come to terms with what that meant; he also always struck me as, eventually, afraid to share himself any further.  No doubt he had always been that way somewhat, and the spotlight of literary celebrity shone too brightly, and too hot.  I never really blamed him, even if I was frustrated that he seemed to have books upon books just stashed away in a safe in New Hampshire.

Though my copy of Catcher is definitely worn, I am also extraordinarily fond of Franny & Zooey, and I always considered it more of a novel unto itself than a set of two short stories.  Salinger's oeuvre is substantial enough to require and reward repeated readings, as he built up the mythology of the Glass family through over a dozen delicately calibrated and intertwined stories.

He may not have released a single book in my lifetime, but I can't help but feel a tinge of loss today.