Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye. This excerpt is from a longer essay, "The Real Holden Caulfield," available at the Fiction Advocate.

It was either dumb luck or artistic excess that led Salinger to give his most sentimental and developmentally arrested character the name “Holden." Salinger jammed his foot into the trap set by that name, and only managed to walk away because, as with everything about Holden, there is an authenticity that insulates him and his author from the annual term paper analyses that he is “holdin’ on to his innocence” or “holdin’ back his emotions.” According [...]

Amazing: I had no idea that the late J.D. Salinger's son Matt starred in the 1990 film version of Captain America! I don't know why I'm so delighted by that, but I am. Also, Ronny Cox, Ned Beatty and Darren McGavin? How did this thing disappear so quickly? (Don't answer that, I have a pretty good idea.) Anyway, blast from the past and all.

Remember that unauthorized sequel to a classic piece of literature we talked about earlier? The Smoking Gun has discovered the responsible party. Turns out this isn't his first book! The anonymous author of the purported sequel to "The Catcher in the Rye," which has triggered a lawsuit by J.D. Salinger, is a Swedish man whose previous published works include "The Macho Man's (Bad) Joke Book," "The Erotic A-Z," and a volume listing the 100 best heavy metal albums.

Ironically, one reviewer of "The Macho Man's (Bad) Joke Book" referred to it as "the 'Franny & Zooey' of the genre," so this might actually be a good fit.

"Suddenly, Salinger wheeled around. 'What are you looking at? Answer quick, without thinking!'" -Oof.

This has since been deleted-and then reposted!-but we thought we'd still share. [Via]

Who's up for a sequel to The Catcher in the Rye? Well, certainly John David California, the 32-year-old "former gravedigger and Ironman triathlete" who is also the writer of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, an unauthorized follow-up to the classic novel which everyone thinks is completely deep when they're fifteen but hopefully grows out of very soon after. Anyway, the new one features an aged Holden Caulfied escaping his nursing home and wandering around the city. California talks to the Guardian.

"He loved children with no holds barred, but never with the sentimental fakery of admiring their 'purity.' After watching his son, Matthew, playing one day, he said, 'If your child likes-loves-you, the very love he bears you tears your heart out about once a day or once every other day.'" -Lilian Ross remembers J.D. Salinger.

The New Yorker has made the 13 stories they published by Salinger available to everyone. Here, to revisit, is Janet Malcolm's 2001 defense of the post-Catcher Salinger. And here is that horrifying article from a few months ago about how the kids can't even read him. Also, here are two more immediate reactions to his life and death.