Thursday, January 28, 2010

RIP JD Salinger


JD Salinger passed this morning at the age of 91. i feel like salinger's death has strangely coincided with the end of the stage in my life the catcher in the rye so brilliantly speaks to...or has it? of salinger, one critic put it best, "he was in this world, but not of it."

read salinger's obit at the new york times and kindly add the catcher in the rye to your re-read list. here are some ML and  friends' favorite salinger quotes. please leave yours in the comments section.

update: the new yorker has published seven of jd salinger's new yorker stories from 1946-1965:

That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.
- holden caulfield

Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody. -holden caulfield

I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what kind.... It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, "It's a secret between he and I." Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. I just don't know. - mr. antolini

The true poet has no choice of material.  The material plainly chooses him, not he it. - from Seymour: an Introduction

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.- holden caulfield

i was sixteen then, and i'm seventeen now, and sometimes i act like i'm about thirteen. it's really ironical, because i'm six foot two and a half and i have gray hair. i really do. the one side of my head-the right side-is full of millions of gray hairs. i've had them ever since i was a kid. and yet i still act sometimes like i was only about twelve. everybody says that, especially my father. it's partly true, too, but it isnt all true. people always think something's all true. i dont give a damn, except that i get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. sometimes i act a lot older than i am-i really do-but people never notice it. people never notice anything. - holden caulfield

it was nice, though, when we got out of the dining room. there were about three inches of snow on the ground, and it was still coming down like a madman. it looked pretty as hell, and we all started throwing snowballs and horsing around all over the place. it was very childish, but everybody was really enjoying themselves. - holden caulfield

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

"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

Anonymous said...

this is such a surface blog post, followed by a surface comment.

Lowla said...

ooouch!! I love this blog; best regards from spain :D

http://whatever-lowla-wants.blogspot.com

Yukon said...

"I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect."

Juliana said...

cool
foto in cristal-www.fotocristal.ro

Maria S. said...

I'm sorry to hear that J.D. Salinger died. I am a big fan of A Catcher in the Rye. I hope the high school English teachers will put the book on their reading lists.

Your blog is pretty awesome, could you check mine out?
http://randomnessinthebrain.blogspot.com
THanks
Maria

California Girl said...

nice tribute.

Alexander Bujak said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kschenke said...

I think you either get Catcher in the Rye or you don't. I read it when I was about 13 or so and I totally got it. Maybe I just liked the fact that Holden was honest (or as honest as he could be) with the reader... that he said exactly what he felt and he seemed like any teenager in America, even in the late 90s when I read the book. I also loved that while he was bitter about certain things, he also saw the good in people, too, especially little kids. And at the same, it made him immensely sad because he knew that so many of those kids would turn into the kinds of adults that he disliked so much.

Anyway, I always liked Salinger's stuff and was really sad when I realized he had only published a handful of books.

Kschenke said...

"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."

As someone who is still trying to figure out what the hell they want to do for a living, I can relate.

Anonymous said...

A book like The Catcher in the Rye is unique... like The Turner Diaries.

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