In Nick Hornby’s first installment of his monthly essay “What I’ve Been Reading” for The Believer magazine, where he talks and differentiates between the “books bought” and the “books read” each month, he purchased all of Salinger’s works, and read them all. He had this to say:
The realization that you could polish off a major author’s entire oeuvre in less than a week was definitely part of the appeal—you won’t catch Dickens being pushed around like that—but it was still tougher work than I thought. Just about every one of Nine Stories is perfect. . .
I guess that Salinger’s limited published works is part of the appeal, and also, I would add, part of the legend. We started talking about Salinger’s life in my class by looking at his transformation from a somewhat prolific, published writer into a reclusive individual who, for the last forty years, has not submitted a single work for publication.
Time magazine completed an interesting feature article on Salinger in 1961, focusing on the recent publication of Franny and Zooey and also looking at his life and influences.
Also check out Sarah Morrill’s “Brief Biography of J.D. Salinger,” which is organized into Frequently Asked Salinger Questions (FASQ’s), where she answers inquiries such as how Salinger writes his fiction (on a typewriter with the two finger method, apparently), whether he is a Scientologist or not, and if he continues to write. She also does a good job of addressing and dispelling some of the rumors that are always present around Salinger’s life and works. Spoiler alert: both articles ruin parts of “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” so read the story (reading log due on Monday, by the way) before you follow these links.
Lastly, when I was reviewing some of Salinger’s publishing history with my classes, I mentioned one early work that Salinger finally got published in The New Yorker after World War II, titled “Slight Rebellion off Madison” (which, if I’m not mistaken, was the first story of his to be published by the magazine). Check it out if you want to see how bad it would be to read an entire book about Holden written in the third person.
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Awesome links, I found the Sonny article too this summer; it’s quite long though
but I’ll try reading it again.
As for the Slight Rebellion, I was looking for that to read – trying to get through all of Salinger’s work.. which is a little hard but good thing I like it – but Ack, I’m really glad Catcher’s written the way it is. In third person it loses much of the impact Catcher has.