JD Salinger. So It Goes.

There has been a lot of literary loss in the last few days. The deaths of Louis Auchincloss and Howard Zinn are sad, especially when lumped in with Robert Parker. However the loss that affected me personally was the death of JD Salinger yesterday at 91. I don't know why but I guess I thought that he would live forever in that New England cocoon he enclosed around himself long ago. Whether he was crazy, psychologically disturbed, or just done with the human race, I never held it against him that he disappeared back in 1965. His literary work was all I ever needed. In a world where it seems everyone will whore themselves out for a tangential moment of fame, I appreciated the Salinger enigma. I never wanted to know what he ate for breakfast in the morning or whether he was dating Angelina Jolie. He would always be a mix of Seymour Glass and Holden Caulfield to me. And that's fine.

Now I've written about how I stumbled upon Catcher in the Rye here but that actually was not the first time I encountered JD Salinger. The first time was in 1989 when I read Shoeless Joe Comes to Iowa by W.P. Kinsella. At this time in my life I was obssessed with baseball. Not because I'm any good at sports, really I'm not, but I love anything with a history and mythology. To me baseball was magical with heroes and villians, feats of strength and redemption. It was my mom who picked up a copy of Shoeless Joe because she knew I was looking forward to seeing the film Field of Dreams. That movie is based on Kinsella's book and I love it to this day.

However one of the major changes that was made in the literary adaptation is that the character of Terrence Mann, played by James Earl Jones in the film, was originally JD Salinger. Kinsella used Salinger as the perfect archetype of an author who had become lost in his own cynicism. The book version of Salinger, who is actually named JD Salinger, finds spiritual redemption in Kinsella's baseball field. Now as a 10 year old I didn't understand the full ramifications of that characterization. It's really quite daring of Kinsella. Upon reflection I think that Kinsella was exercising his own form of wish fulfillment. We've all wondered when those secret writings would be published. When would our patience be rewarded? It turns out the real Salinger was never worried or was interested in what we wanted.

As I think back today I realize that I wouldn't want it any other way. Starting at age 10 I began to understand that not everyone is meant to be understood. JD Salinger had his own demons, fears, and desires. I can love his work without trying to understand why he choose to become reclusive. The wish fulfillment of Shoeless Joe was one way to cope with a perceived loss. With his death today I am drawn back to the conclusion Holden Caulfield does at the end of Catcher In the Rye:

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

J.D. Salinger may not have needed us. But we needed him.