On December 8th, 1980, Mark Chapman went up to John Lennon, shot five bullets, and dropped his gun and a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, the controversial novel by J.D. Salinger. By then, Mr. Salinger had been living in a forest in New Hampshire for nearly two decades. He had become a hermit, studied Buddhism and Scientology, had frozen peas for breakfast, drank his own urine, and struggled to escape the success and fame of his work. As a recluse, he dated very young women: an actress, a college freshman, and a nurse forty years his junior, whom he eventually married. He died in 2010 at the age of 91, forty five years after his last publication in 1965.
Salinger became famous for wanting not to be famous, and every attempt to legally maintain his privacy ironically drew even more attention to him. So, what is it about this strange man and his stories that has captivated killers, teenagers, readers, and onlookers alike? Here’s a list that might clarify it.
His stories are addictive
@worldrebelThere’s something about his writing that simply grabs you. His stories aren’t always necessarily plot-driven, but his focus on everyday, ordinary characters with ordinary concerns feels oddly relatable. His stories also feature tons of dialogue, which brings me to the next point.
His gift of dialogue
Salinger is quite concerned with representing intonations, diction, and vocabulary that feel real. He uses italicized words to make a particular emphasis on certain words, and also uses odd spellings to portray a more natural phonetic feel. His incomplete sentences reflect the way people really talk. It allows Salinger to better portray characters that are sardonic, cynical, and quite vernacular. It’s also his way of building character through what one character might say about another one, or what one character says out loud versus what he says as a narrator.
He revolutionized structure
You’ve been taught that stories have a beginning, middle, and end. But Salinger often starts his stories in medias res, right in the middle of the action. He doesn’t provide context immediately, but instead of getting confused, you end up being caught in all the emotions of the story. No context needed.
The Catcher in the Rye is about you
@alice_lavrenIn a world governed by competition, some of us are bound to rebel against it. Why should you compete, anyway? Why not just… bail? That’s exactly what Holden Caulfield does when he heads to New York City, rents a hotel room and sort of just hangs out. Unlike many of us, Holden has means and can therefore not do anything. But it’s the spirit of nonconforming and his ditching society which speaks to all of us.
Nothing ever happens because every opportunity seems pointless. Holden embodies millennials in that he shows how to move forward within the constrains laid out for him. Holden also gets kind of whiny, but he seems to suffer from mental illness. With depression, anxiety, and other disorders on the rise, it’s no wonder he’s still such a symbol of teenage angst and even the slight misanthropy we get from time to time.
The Glass Family
While Holden Caufield is fascinating, Salinger also created the universe of the Glass family, made up of two ex-vaudevillian dancer parents and seven genius children.
@_frannyglass_Perhaps the most famous of these is Seymour Glass, a WWII veteran, and protagonist of “A Perfect Day For Bananafish,” the story that put Salinger on The New Yorker’s radar and pretty much jumpstarted his career. Then came Franny and Zooey. There’s a network of short stories about the Glass family, and each focuses on one or two siblings, and their discussion on religion, philosophy, or their time serving in the war. Salinger was so obsessed with this fictional family, that it’s almost scary. Luckily, we got many stories out of his love for the Glasses.
Then, there’s a whole list of writers who grew up reading and looking up to Salinger. So look, if you’re not going to read his novels and short stories because they’re good, you should at least read them because of their influence. Salinger set out to write the Great American a novel, and boy did he succeed.
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