J D Salinger Dead at 91

#1

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 1:19pm

A loss. And Dick Cheney still lives.
J D Salinger Dead

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"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick My blog: http://www.roscoewrites.blogspot.com/

#2

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 1:29pm

I didn't know he was still alive. Rest in peace.

#3

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 1:33pm

I hope this means we'll get to see whatever pages he's been hiding away all these years.

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"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe." -John Guare, Landscape of the Body

#4

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 1:40pm

If legends and rumors are true, he never stopped writing.

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#5

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 1:42pm

My father will be inconsolable.

PalJoey, I hope you're right. It would be wonderful to be able to read more.

#6

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 1:47pm

He also refused to have a "Catcher" movie made as long as he was alive.

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"They're eating her and then they're going to eat me. OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!" -Troll 2

#7

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 1:48pm

His published works have all changed me in profound ways.

I read Franny and Zooey anytime I need a reawakening to the beauty of living.

RIP, Mr. Salinger.

I hope the world gets to share with you whatever you've been writing for the past fifty years. There are enough people who love you and your work to save you from the invasiveness of publishing, to let you keep your peace.

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"One no longer loves one's insight enough once one communicates it."

The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.

#8

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 1:48pm

When I read THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, I was 11 years old, and it changed my life. Suddenly, I understood the difference between creating literature and writing a book.

I then read everything else he wrote (which, of course, was not much.) Let's see if he really did have a safe full of manuscripts and how good they are...IF they are.

I read the biography that came out a few years ago and distinctly remember two things: 1) he was nuts and 2) he had a bizarre crush on some actress in DYNASTY.

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#9

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 1:52pm

Such a sad loss. Glad for all the wonderful things he left us with. I'm going to go reread Catcher now!

#10

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 1:53pm

"he had a bizarre crush on some actress in DYNASTY."

Catherine Oxenberg/Amanda Carrington! So strange.

#11

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 1:54pm

And wasn't this a most wonderful opening sentence:


"If you really want to hear about it,
the first thing you’ll probably want to know
is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like,
and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me,
and all that David Copperfield kind of crap,
but I don’t feel like ... going into it,
if you want to know the truth."


Millions of readers read that and were instantly hooked.

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#12

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 2:00pm

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."

~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 22, spoken by the character Holden Caulfield

Updated On: 1/28/10 at 02:00 PM

#13

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 2:12pm

I"ll have to look for that biography.

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KFTC!!!!!

#14

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 2:24pm

New York Times article

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"All our dreams can come true -- if we have the courage to pursue them." -- Walt Disney We must have different Gods. My God said "do to others what you would have them do to you". Your God seems to have said "My Way or the Highway".

#15

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 2:28pm

Nine Stories is my all time favorite book.

RIP

#16

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 2:28pm

RIP...The Catcher in the Rye is just brilliant. One of my all time favorite books.

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"This show had the WORST magnets on Broadway!"

#17

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 2:55pm

I'm devastated by the news. I read Catcher at age 14 and swore that I would move to New York City and the first day i was here on my own I walked through the park...I'm at a real loss for words.

. That book changed my life. R.I.P

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RIP Natasha Richardson. ~You were a light on this earth ~

#18

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 2:58pm

how sad.
i can honestly say that the book "nine stories" (and the accompanying lesson in my lit class) changed my life.

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#19

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 5:08pm

I'd taught CATCHER IN THE RYE almost every year of my teaching career. When I was a young teacher (38 years ago) the kids loved the novel. They identified with Holden and often devoured the entire book in one night. Parents used to call the school and complain that I'd "over-motivated" their children.

Then, roughly ten years before I retired, the tides changed. Students HATED the novel. To the kids I was teaching at the latter part of my career, the novel was "corny" (TRANSLATION: boring) and Holden was "whack". All those kids wanted to read was PUSH or a prison journal called MONSTER.

I think it's a sad commentary upon society when students want to learn only what they already know.

Still, I pray that J.D. Salinger rests in peace.

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"Long live God!" (GODSPELL)

#20

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 6:00pm

I wonder if they'll finally make a movie of "Catcher in the Rye".

#21

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 6:26pm

In the early pages where the tough-guy buddy cranks out a fart in church is one the most hilarious things I have ever read.

Dolly -- My American Lit teacher made me have my parents sign off a disclaimer because it had THAT word in it. (And to my surprise, they did. My dad said, "It's about time he learned that word." And my mom said, "Henry, He'll go straight to H.E. double hockey sticks.")

I have a little sister too, and she was my Phoebe.

"My husband plays GOFF" -- Don't we all know someone who can't speak no Inglish too very good?

#22

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 6:28pm

Salinger explicitly made sure that his estate will never authorize a film adaptation of any of his work. This was due to how horrified he was by the Uncle Wiggily In Connecticut adaptation on the big screen.

RIP

Catcher In The Rye still holds up in my opinion. I read it when I was 15 and it struck me how much of Holden was around my high school, myself included. I will always remember that Holden had the same opinion of Romeo & Juliet as I did. The stories of the Glass family stories in his other work was amazing as well.

#23

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 7:08pm

This makes me sad. The world was a little more interesting, knowing that he occupied a small and private corner of it.

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"Jaws is the Citizen Kane of movies."

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blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22

Updated On: 1/28/10 at 07:08 PM

#24

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/28/10 at 7:37pm

"If you really want to hear about it"...
I have my old paperback of Catcher next to me, I paid 75 cents for it back in 1966/67, my junior year in high school. This novel influenced me like like nothing else. The appreciation of innocence, and the distaste of phonies (hypocrites), meant so much to me at the time with what was going on in the world.
Growing up in suburban NJ, JD Salinger's books also peaked my interest in all things NYC, and eventually to theatre.
The only sad memory is Mark David Chapman's connection with the murder of John Lennon. I just write him off as just some crazy nut, and difficult as it is, I can't let him spoil what I loved so much.

#25

J D Salinger Dead at 91

Posted: 1/29/10 at 3:36pm

Something tells me more fascinating Salinger events like this one will come to life after his death.

Read and imagine what it was like to be him.
Publisher recalls book deal with J.D. Salinger that went sour

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