Archive for January, 2010

JD Salinger is dead

Published
by
Colm
on 29 January, 2010
in Books (and the like) and Writing
. 7 Comments

I speculate that the coverage for this is going to boil down to I Liked Catcher In The Rye/I Did Not Like Catcher In The Rye. So a few thoughts here on why a) you’re wrong not to like it and b) JD Salinger was way more important than one book.

The standard view on Catcher is that it’s some mopey teen wandering around being angsty. This polarises people: his worldview resonates with an awful lot of readers, particularly adolescents, but everyone else just wishes he’d cowboy up. The debate never seems to go deeper than that, which is a crying shame, because there’s way more going on in the novel.

Firstly, Holden’s mopiness isn’t just Gawd-no-one-understands-me angst. There’s a line near the start where he says1 “Sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen”. Holden was thirteen when his brother Allie died; his brother, whom he adored, placed at the absolute centre of his universe. Allie’s death destroys Holden and, though he never confronts it head on, the entire novel details his attempts to come to terms with it.

Secondly, despite what many people seem to think, we’re not supposed to see Holden as a role model. Arrested development is not something to aspire to. All-encompassing cynicism is not something to aspire to. If there’s a how-are-we-to-live message in Salinger’s writing, it’s that no matter how hard it might be, the best thing we can do is find a way to get outside ourselves, stop acting like everything is about us, and keep moving forward. There’s an excellent distillation of this in the second part of Franny & Zooey. Or, more conveniently, you could read this speech by David Foster Wallace, who was heavily inspired by Salinger.

At the risk of turning into a wild-eyed evangelist, I think it’s a tragedy that Holden Caulfield is the only one of Salinger’s narrative voices that most people are familiar with. He’s dour and self-absorbed and I can see why you might not like him, whereas Salinger’s writing as a whole is characterised by a genuine warmth and humour that most writers couldn’t even approach. His short stories are phenomenal (see for instance the title story in For Esme, With Love & Squalor). He can do this thing where, in about four or five words, he describes a gesture or facial expression so perfectly that a character’s entire history, state of mind and motivations are dumped directly into your brain.

Ok, wild-eyed evangelist. Breathe.

Right now I’m going to read over these two letters a few times (the latter being some of the best writing advice ever dispensed). Then I’m going to go home and read the books again. Then I’m going to wait for all the manuscripts he’s finished since he retired from publishing to surface. And then… I don’t know what I’ll do.

  1. I’ve no copy to hand, so I’m quoting from memory. [↩]

Compulsion

Published
by
Colm
on 27 January, 2010
in Books (and the like)
. 11 Comments

There’s something like my weight in books sitting at the end of my bed these days. I’m not counting shelves, you understand – only the bags of just-bought unreads. Some people seem to feel like this would be a daunting prospect, as if reading is something you have to push yourself into. Which, I don’t know. I spend minutes at a time just smelling books. I build them into a fort around me, laughing like a maniac the whole time. If I could swim through the things Scrooge McDuck-style, you’d better believe I wouldn’t be here talking to you people.


Because it’s funnier in Dutch, that’s why.

The catalyst for all this was the €100 of book tokens I got for Christmas. I was going to save them til my in-tray had diminished a bit, but on my first day back in work I went for lunch and – oh hello, I appear to have wandered near Hodges Figgis. You know they’re gonna have some sweet deals, might as well check those out.

I ended up buying seven books by accident. Which is to say, I didn’t specifically intend to buy seven books. I just kind of fugued. Also, the cashier was pretty.1

So ok, that’s gonna keep me going for a while. However, and for reasons outside my control, I happened to end up in Waterstones a few days later. Now, the thing about Waterstones is they have those 3-for-2 deals which, obviously, you’d be a fool not to take advantage. Not only that but there’s a best-of-the-decade table. I don’t want to spell things out for you, but let’s just say I woke up hours later with a brutal hangover and Random House’s number tattooed on my chest.

That should have been the end of it. But no: one morning the following week I forgot to put a book in my pocket on my way out the door. The whole way in on the bus I was just staring into space. Have you ever noticed what other people sound like? What they smell like? It was a nightmare. What the hell was I going to do on the way home? Gnaw my own arm off? Clearly, an emergency fix was needed. So into Hodges Figgis at lunchtime – Garrison Keillor, you say? And only €4? Job’s a good un. But on the other hand, if I find another book for €6 that means I’ll get a stamp on the ould loyalty card, and that’s just sensible.

It goes on in this vein. I’m going to trail off now, because I’m giving myself the vapours and my bank account can’t withstand another blackout. And because there’s a book of EU tax legislation here that I haven’t put to bed yet, and man do I want to see how that turns out.

  1. A fun game in bookshops is to try get the cashiers to check you out. I think I caught her attention with the Pynchon, but on reflection Rape: A Love Story wasn’t my smoothest move. [↩]