I remember that I, like most boys, loved Catcher in the Rye and was hugely influenced by it in middle school and probably to this day, but I don't remember the story. I remember loving 9 stories too, and liking Franny and Zoey a lot too. But about all of them I remember more a feeling of kinship, a humor, than the plots and characters.
I remember that I cried, surprizing myself, when I read For Esme, With Love and Squalor, in high school. Rereading it today, I didn't cry, but I enjoyed it a great deal. For the wit, and all that detached sadness. I also thought about how much more pedophilia might be an issue that would unavoidably spring to mind for a first time reader now.
One of the elements that seduced only-child me the most in my early relationship with my first wife was how much her family resembled Salinger's Glasses, with all their genius and tragedy and neuroses, if I recall the Glass family at all correctly. They were all tall and strong and brilliant and odd and reserved and conflicted and sardonically witty, and loved each other dearly, and/but were perhaps a big to aware of the existence of the Glass family, maybe even held them up as some kind of aesthetic icons, especially her youngest brother, still a Holden Caulfied of the first order when he was pushing thirty, probably still today. He's an expat last I heard, living in Germany, running some sort of a mobile food stand, ostensibly writing.
I'd like to reread Salinger sometime, but who really knows when that will happen. At least I reread For Esme today.
When I think of Salinger, I think of his work, but also of The Royal Tennenbaums, and Eggers A Heartbreaking dot-dot-dot, both of which by turns inspire and annoy me, moreso the Eggers to both extremes; the movie I pretty much just enjoyed and enjoy each time I see it or a snippet of it again. Those works and so many others wouldn't exist without Salinger. It too reminds me of my first set of inlaws, who also by turns inspired and annoyed me, moreso than the movie, less so than the Eggers book.
RIP J.D. Salinger, I'm glad you existed.
