A Paranoid in Reverse: Revisiting J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

Like this Story?

Get the Arts Newsletter: Get the latest news and offers from the LA art scene sent directly to your email address. Exclusive events and art related sales you won't hear about anywhere else!

Make sign up easy with:

Something to look forward to! What must they be like? Easy to imagine that many of his better uncollected stories, published in Colliers and The Saturday Evening Post of the 1940s, have been reworked into the Glass saga. (Several of them have already been radically reworked into Catcher.)Or, consider the possibility that the wild, Zen-Buddha-happy, high-risk direction suggested by his last (1965) published piece, Hapworth 16, 1924, has been pursued to a fare-thee-well. The result could either be sublime revelation or an unreadable Zennigan’s Wake.One can only look forward to the fistfights with fellow critics.

According to Buddy Glass, “Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next. Is he never wrong?” That hope is what Salinger’s work provides, finished or unfinished, time and again.