On January 27, JD
Salinger's corpse will turn two years old. Franny and Zooey--though nitpicked
by Updike, who is a cad, and by Joan Didion, who is the greatest nonfiction
writer of the past fifty years--is Salinger’s finest moment. If you haven’t
read Salinger since high school, start with either that or Nine Stories.
Don’t start with Catcher in the Rye unless you are a sexually frustrated
teenage boy.
Because I was a sexually frustrated
teenage boy, I started with Catcher in the Rye. For a book report, I had
to pick one novel from a pre-approved list of fifty. I picked Catcher
not because I was a twelve-year-old version of Holden Caulfied, but because my
older brother already owned it, which meant I would not have to borrow a book
from the library, which meant I would save the $1.50 of late fees I would have
inevitably incurred.
I’ve reproduced the tale here not just
because I invariably go out of my way to recommend a good prose pacifier to
divorced parents of petulant twelve-year-olds, but for quite another reason.
What directly follows is a question about quality versus quantity, a question
that is only fair when it pertains to artists who are already deceased.
If you’re a Salinger junkie, you have little
choice but to read and re-read his slender oeuvre to get your fix. This is not
healthy or admirable or even advisable. Since he published a mere four books,
roughly eight-hundred pages in all, whenever I get that Salinger itch, there’s
no place to scratch but the slim spine of one of my pocket-sized paperbacks.
And I hate that. Like a more traditional junkie, I find myself lying to my mom
instead of telling her the truth, instead of telling her that I am re-reading Franny
and Zooey for the second time this month. It’d be a boon, not a bane, to
his fans if Salinger had been more like Bob Dylan or Woody Allen or Philip
Roth. Every year it seems there’s a new Roth novel in my stocking or a Woody
Allen movie in my NetFlix queue or a Dylan album in my iTunes -- some
superlative, some in that middle ground between mediocre and good, and some
which are embarrassing, but totally have the right to exist. Regardless of
their merit, however, I taste and decide for myself if I should return for
seconds. Who knows? In a decade or so I might actually enjoy Bob Dylan’s
Christmas album.
So which do you prefer: Artists who produce
prodigiously, even if their production might occasionally be embarrassing? Or
artists who are pickier with their output, producing less, but producing
consistently superb art?
Elliott Krause is a Defunct staff reader and contributor to Ye Olde Blogge.
