Contemporary Classic

I didn't read "Catcher In The Rye" until I was twenty-three years old. I understood that it was a classic, and there were plenty of sideways looks when I told people prior to that time that I had somehow missed the opportunity to experience J.D. Salinger's masterpiece. This was not unlike my experience when I told folks that I had never read "Lord of the Rings." I didn't get around to those until sometime after the movies came out, and I read them aloud to my son. A good deal of my reticence stems from my ongoing need to ignore Classics, illustrated or otherwise.
This is an interesting response from a guy who read "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" before he was twelve. "War of the Worlds" and "Treasure Island" too. My contrariness began when I started hearing the phrase, "Oh you liked that? Then you really should read..." It felt like I wasn't getting any credit for the books that I had read. There was always one more hill to climb, one more page to turn.
That is why Mister Salinger's book sat out there for so long without me as a reader. I understood its importance in the cultural landscape, and understood it from a Cliff's Notes point of view. And as my troubled youth sped by, it never occurred to me that I could be relating to Holden Caulfield. Or not. I was far too busy with Billy Pilgrim and Tralfamadorians. Mark David Chapman was the reason why I swore off the book for another five years. When the smoke finally cleared, I found myself sitting in my apartment with "nothing to read," and so I borrowed my roommate's well-worn copy of "Catcher In The Rye." It was a quick read. I enjoyed it and was able to imagine how it could become the text of a generation or two. Youthful angst that predated Woodstock and Generation X. It was the poetry of alienation. J.D. Salinger caught lightning in a bottle, and before he became tiresome, he quit.
And for that, I say "hurrah." His novel that made it okay to not be okay was a sign at the end of a road. After a few more stories in the New Yorker, that was all he had to tell us. He had the good sense to shut up. What would the world be like if Bruce Springsteen had called it a career after "Born To Run?" Picasso hung up his easel after his Blue Period? Bill Cosby left TV after "I Spy?" So many people want to know what is hidden inside Salinger's safe. Unpublished novels? Essays and stories that chronicle his later years? Or just a stack bills, cash money from the sixty-five million copies he sold of his one book.
Sleep tight, J.D. Salinger.