Salinger Dead. Good. (Updated 1/30/10)
My advice to young people has always been this-- if you meet someone, even someone who seems otherwise attractive, whose favorite author is J.D. Salinger or Ayn Rand, leave that person's presence with all possible speed, screaming optional. Salinger's death at the age of 91 Wednesday does nothing to change this.
While his work as a narrative stylist is somewhat interesting before the subject matter drives this reader off the page, Salinger's celebration of stunted adolescence, particularly in the excruciating The Catcher In The Rye, has been a woeful cultural influence, contributing to, among other imitations and homages, Mark David Chapman, the twee quality that makes Wes Anderson's movies so difficult to watch, the movie "Purple Haze", and, arguably, the smug, entitled something for nothing ethos at the heart of modern conservatism (Dennis Miller's son's name? Why, Holden, of course).
Salinger, apparently, wrote what he knew, managing to spend his entire later career at the writerly equivalent playing the piano "in the goddamn closet", allegedly producing reams of material that he considered too precious to be put out into the nasty, phony world and parlaying his status as a recluse into a cult following that probably wouldn't have survived continued publication.
Some of this later work is likely to be released by his estate. Keep your eyes peeled for people who are excited by this prospect, and avoid those people.
UPDATE: I was talking with the lovely Em last night, who told me that when she was in high school she had avoided reading The Catcher In The Rye because it was popular and because it was expected of her, and hadn't read it to this day. Never having read it, she missed the irony inherent in her attitude towards it, but organic irony is the best kind.
