J. D. Salinger, 1919-2010

On June 6, 1944, J. D. Salinger landed on Utah Beach with the rest of the 4th Infantry Division and fought his way into France. He would later see action in the Hurtgen Forest and at the Battle of the Bulge--incredibly bloody battles--before suffering a nervous breakdown and checking himself into an Army hospital in Nuremberg as the Allies advanced on Berlin. There, he began writing stories. During the next twenty years he would produce a slender body of work that would appear in The New Yorker magazine and high school classrooms. And of course, in 1965, Salinger vanished from public life permanently.

Salinger died sometime yesterday, of natural causes. He was 91.

It's fitting that I heard of his death at a high school, from many sources: I got two separate e-mails, one teacher popping in to tell me, and one student yelling up from the library as I walked past the railing. I paused my American Lit classes later, and said a few words. We finished reading "The Catcher in the Rye" not three weeks earlier.

J. D. Salinger is still a provocative figure. People have opinions about his work, probably because most of them read him in high school, and conclusions formed when we are young are hard to shake. Conservatives still rail against the profanity and "debauchery" in his books, and try to get them banned in schools. Many people consider Holden Caulfield, his most famous character, an aimless whiner, or worse, an "emo." On the other hand, those of a more alternative bent quickly identify with Holden (and Salinger) and consider "The Catcher in the Rye" the best text in school. Salinger's stories still crawl under our skin; they still make us uncomfortable.

I went to a Catholic high school that didn't teach "Catcher." I first read it in my twenties, when I began teaching it, and at first was underwhelmed. Nothing seemed to happen; Holden seemed "emo." But, unlike most people, I thought about the book after I initially judged it. I realized the fantastically subtle shift in tone, and the starkly moral world that Salinger presented. I considered that the book was about grieving (Holden's younger brother died before the events in the story), not about "phoniness." Even now, I think about the book in the larger context of Postwar America and Salinger's life, and it resonates further. People don't usually pick up on that, especially the conservative book-banners, and so "Catcher" remains thought of, generally, as a book about an angry teen.

Reading Salinger's other works is even more rewarding. "Franny and Zooey" (two novellas, each a funny name) is one of the most thought-provoking and uplifting books I've ever read. The title characters are siblings in the Glass family that appears several times in Salnger's works. There is a clear messianic message in the "Zooey" portion that unravels skillfully and honestly, and I haven't talked to anyone who wasn't moved by the ending. "Nine Stories," his short story collection, is heartbreakingly close to his own postwar experience, especially the terrifying "A Perfect Day for Bananafish."

The huge Salinger fan in me wonders, now that he's dead, if the mythical "other" works that Salinger was rumored to write will surface. I mean, he had to do some writing in the 45 years of seclusion, right? I'd love to read more. Salinger the person, though, is clearly is as brilliant and misanthropic as his characters. There must have been a reason that he didn't want to publish any more. Maybe he's like John Cheever, who wanted his "Journals" published posthumously. Or maybe he's like Kurt Cobain, whose handwritten journals were published without his consent.

I felt good about getting Cheever's (extremely personal) "Journals." I didn't even thumb through Cobain's. I have some respect for dead geniuses, so I'll wait to see if I'll read any new stuff, see Salinger's intent about all this. After school, though, I did head on over to Borders and pick up the last Salinger book that I didn't have, "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction." I'm excited to start reading it.

Today in class, in front of a bunch of apathetic youth with their own problems (a room of Holden Caulfields), I held up an imaginary glass.

Here's to old J. D. Salinger, who taught us that profanity can betray tenderness, that the good things in life change too soon, and that baseball mitts can be poetic. We never understood you, but we were glad to have had you in our lives.

I smashed the imaginary glass against the floor.