A Slice of Rye

01/29/10 - posted by jb

Just read in the Irish Sporting Green that J. D. Salinger died at the age of 91 in remote Hew Hampshire. If you want to know the truth, this makes me really sad because the guy wasn't a phony and here he writes this great book and then disappears from the public for the rest of his life, not wanting to deal with fame and all that crap. I mean, he could have sold his story to MGM or Disney and bought a jet or something, but he just went to live in the woods and had his last short story published in the New Yorker 45 years ago, right about the time many of us young kids were celebrating our first Christmas with Holden Caufield.

Now there was a real prince if ever there was one and when you see these kids with their caps turned backwards, do you think they know who started doing this first? I always get this feeling like I should run up and tell them it was Holden Caufield and how he flunked out of Pencey Prep and forgot the fencing teams equipment and sneaked in to his own home to visit his sister, Old Phoebe, and everything and how they should read the book and turn their lives and caps around but you can't keep kids from falling off some crazy cliff and besides, "don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you'll start missing everybody."

Rest in peace, J.D. Your boy lives on!