Reports are that J.D. Salinger has died. Awaiting confirmation. Update: The AP obit. Update: The full AP obit is here. Still awaiting (any) other obits. We are praying that the Times has a secret and extensive video obituary in the can. That would be amazing. Update: Huh. Sorry, still nothing new to read anywhere at all. The Times put up a hasty blog post. Update: "Just called Joyce Maynard. Her voicemail is full." Update: Charles McGrath on J.D. Salinger. Update: That is very good and also originally included "Quote TK from Salinger's agent about surviving manuscripts."
I was totally wondering about that last week! Like, how people would know.
I'm sure his forty-something year old wife would have told some people.
I didn't say I bothered to find out if there was an obvious answer! I just wondered. Don't harsh my mellow.
Once TMZ confirms, we'll know it's true.
Maybe it's just Breaking News's son who says. *hoping Salinger's still with us*
Oh no.
The author of that obit has been waiting for this day for decades. Also I had no idea about any of that stuff in the article so it's probably best to ignore me.
Oh, the good news is, if he wrote anything in the last twenty years, maybe we'll get to read it now.
[Secretly hoping it's TNG fanfic.]
"Everytime I stepped into the holodeck, I felt like I was disappearing."
Why? It's not like we saw or heard anything from him.
That doesn't actually bother me at all. I just liked knowing he was around. UNTIL I STARTED KNOWING THINGS AT 1:13 PM.
Sad. But at least not phony.
Love and Squalor
If you're posting now, does that mean that we're on our own for updates on La Tormenta? One of the babies is still on the plane!
Aye yi yi!
WTTF obit?
"He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H."
Why does it have to be self-imposed isolation? Maybe he just didn't like people. To not be a social butterfly and do the Today show like every author sounds like such a problem.
"The Catcher in the Rye" with its immortal teenage protagonist..."
Was he immortal?
"Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines. Give me an honest con man any day."
n, -1
Foster, I hate to break it to you but he probably hated bloggers too.
"Honest con man."
Nah, now they just call that "advertorial."
Crap. Now, I'll never get to meet him.
That's exactly how I felt about Howard Zinn last night.
Cause of death: on a visit to the high-speed kneading room of Levy's industrial bakery, he got caught in the rye.
Too soon.
OK. Time's passed. HA!
Sorry, got carrawayed.
Silver Lining: maybe now we'll get to see what he was writing all those years?
I heard rumors of a World War II novel.
"Little Teddy Needs to Fly" ?
There have been reports he destroyed a great many manuscripts, but who knows. I love the man for the mystery alone.
There were many things about him that make me wary (the borderline pedophilia) but I respect his steadfast isolationism, and do not think it was simply to increase people's interest in him.
Maybe partially.
what's "borderline" about a college student? The dude was living the dream.
I really hope he didn't burn it all. And I really hope it's good.
IM from a literary friend: "Heard from Alastair Reed that he's been writing, all this time." "Really?" "Yeah. He said that he has huge notebooks. Big, and that he writes by hand on one page, and leaves 2 blank for revision. And that he's been doing it for fifty years. But Alastair Reed can't necessarily be trusted."
I know a guy who tracked him down. From Salinger's driveway:
GUY: Mr Salinger, I have a novel for you!
SALINGER: (W/ bullhorn.) Thank you, but I already have one.
DOOR SLAM.
I like this story.
"Ee says ee's already got one"
lol
Wait, I heard the same story, but with Bill Murray.
As an homage, I'll drink some of my urine after I finish this cup of coffee.
Who the hell doesn't drink his own urine and speak in tongues nowadays?
It's the New Frugality.
Eduora Welty.
or, you know, Eudora.
Oh, great. Now we can look forward to lots more Joyce Maynard. Maybe she will finally tells us how big Salinger's dick was.
Ohchristonhisthronethatwoman.
Salinger's Big Dick is Your New Bicycle?
Choire: you could probably coast on this post for the rest of the day.
I hear he's working on another post, but that he's written and destroyed at least 4 posts.
They're starting to become a tad precocious and esoteric, really.
"I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse."
(Just swiped this from Skygazer at MeFi but, it's just that lovely):
O Jenny is all wet, poor body,
Jenny is seldom dry:
She draggled all her petticoats,
Coming through the rye!
Coming through the rye, poor body,
Coming through the rye,
She draggled all her petticoats,
Coming through the rye!
Should a body meet a body
Coming through the rye,
Should a body kiss a body,
Need a body cry?
Should a body meet a body
Coming through the glen,
Should a body kiss a body,
Need the world know?
Should a body meet a body
Coming through the grain,
Should a body kiss a body,
The thing is a body's own.
Updike: 1/27/09
Salinger: 1/27/10
!!
:(
WHOAH!
Pynchon's date of decease will be a graph of diminishing probabilities that he is still alive. Whether it ever gets to the zero...???
Oh well done.
*clap *clap *clap
I hope he did it for the Fat Lady.
The Times obit editor needs a kick in the pants - yesterday's Auchincloss ("AW-kin-kloss") obit stated that he "entered the Groton School in Connecticut in 1929" and I LAUGHED YES I DID. Come on, like there aren't at least seven Groton grads lurking about the newsroom who could've helped out with that one?
Yikes, really? That's a pretty weird category confusion to mix up the TOWN and the INFAMOUS SCHOOL.
To be fair, the INFAMOUS SCHOOL is also in a town called Groton, so.
If anybody wants some good reading (and not only about J.D., but the general phenomenon of authors who disappear) there is a wonderful segment with Salinger in Enrique Vila-Matas' "Bartleby & Co."
I keep coming back to this line in the obit: "As a young writer Mr. Salinger was something of a ladies' man and dated, among others, Oona O'Neill, the daughter of Eugene O'Neill and the future wife of Charlie Chaplin."
It reminds me that there are people named Oona in this world.
NY Times is using the phrase 'Salingerologists*.'
Remind me why I am supposed to pay for their articles again?
*I can only assume this involves drinking your own urine.
Remind me why I am supposed to pee for their articles?
Has anyone checked in on Pynchon lately?
Chrissake.
I saw him at The Strand, he's fine*.
*(seriously, I could tell by the teeth; he was laughing at the Zak Smith illustrated Gravity's Rainbow)
I just wrote my high school AP English teacher a letter. I'm not even sure why.
Had a high school teacher who taught Catcher and Power and the Glory in a way that let me realize there was a lot going on in those books. I did write her a letter many years ago.