Posted by Sol Luckman
As a relatively established indie writer who has never so much as posted my photo online, I’m in a better position than most to innerstand JD Salinger of CATCHER IN THE RYE fame.
I don’t even own a cell phone—and neither would have Salinger if such invasive, time-wasting contraptions had existed in his time.
What emerged from reports from inside the lines of Salinger’s legendary reclusiveness was a snapshot of, frankly, just another eccentric artistic genius who probably felt similar to his iconic protagonist Holden Caulfield who said,
“I was surrounded by phonies … They were coming in the goddam [sic] window.”
Salinger was into certain controversial “alternative medicine” practices (and that was back in the day), preferred health menus to the terribly SAD Standard American Diet, loathed the media with every fiber of his being, leaned toward the kinky with his love interests—you get the picture.
The jury’s still out on the breadth and scope of his erotic proclivities, and honestly, at this stage of Western decadence when the worst perversions are rubbed in our collective faces daily, who really cares?
What impresses me most about his biography isn’t the talent or even the wild overnight success it engendered, but the fact that as his fame grew to superhuman proportions, he cared less and less about it.
Maybe other celebrities experience this kind of nonattachment, but rarely do they just drop below the radar of the world like an extraterrestrial submarine—and stay there.
As time went by, in fact, though he kept writing copiously, he simply stopped publishing.
“There is a marvelous peace in not publishing,” he told one lucky reporter in a rare interview. “Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.”
Elsewhere, Salinger admitted to an overabundance of literary inspiration even as his publishing days came to an untimely end: “I’m up to my ears in unwritten words.”
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Snooze 2 Awaken 