JD Salinger

 I watched this film last night.  The first film I have watched in a long time.

Back in the day, I was fascinated by JD Salinger, not so much by his writing, as by his mystique.  I found Catcher in the Rye to be annoying, and much more appreciated his Glass family stories.  And his disappearance from the public view into Sasquatch like mysteriousness was what really held my fascination. I thought it was the greatest thing to find a copy of Catcher in the Rye that had his photo on it -- this was in the daze before the Internet.

But then I matured, and got more reactionary in my outlook, and so I forgot about him.  I took note of him again when he died.  I was able to see more pictures of him, and I assumed he was a family man who valued his privacy.  I remember this detail about his thoughts about Burger King food being mentioned in a personal letter.  It seemed his taste in food was pretty pedestrian.

At the recent Rotary book sale in Brandon, I bought a copy of his Nine Stories.  I am not sure why I did other than an urge to see how it read after all these years.  I had reread a novel by Henry Miller, another young-me fascination, and saw that that book had some literary merit.

Recently, I was listening to a Coffee and a Mike Podcast where JD Kunstler talked about his recently published novel which had Salinger as a character.  Kunstler mentioned that there was this documentary about Salinger put out in 2013.  Kunstler also discussed the details of Salinger's life.  Salinger was a strange cat to say the least.  In the next paragraph, I will go into the details.  Suffice to say that Salinger was a man with literary ambitions who suffered from what they would call PSTD symptoms on account of his time in World War Two where he experienced and witnessed a lot of horrific things.

The podcast prompted me to find the documentary online and I watched it right away.  The details, some of which I found surprising, I got from the documentary:  Salinger, for a brief time, was married to a Nazi.  Salinger did a bit to foster his reclusive turn on success image.  Salinger was into Buddhism.  Salinger had a mother who was Catholic.  Salinger was meticulous in his writing: caring a lot about punctuation and being angered if editors added even one comma.  Salinger remarried.  Salinger had platonic relationships with young girls.  Salinger was a better parent to his literary characters than to his real children.  He built a bunker in the forest where he would spend weeks on end writing.  Salinger was in combat for over 200 days and he apparently never got over it.  Salinger had a girlfriend who married Charlie Chaplin.  Salinger had another who was also in a relationship with Orson Welles.  He tastes in Music included Lawrence Welk.  He loved watching old movies.

The documentary was okay and included appearances by Gord Vidal, Martin Sheen, John Cusack, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The assassinations of John Lennon and Ronald Reagan were mentioned because the assassins had a fascination with Haulden Caufeld from Catcher in the Rye.  However, we were never told what Salinger's reactions to these events were.  In fact, the documentary came to an abrupt ending.  And the documentary was a hodge-podge of styles, and facts thrown in without a consistent theme.  The documentary ended with a promise of Salinger's unpublished writings that don't seem to have actually come out.  It was a three stars out of four.

My ultimate assessment of Salinger.  I appreciate his hatred of the modern world.  However he could have better dealt with its phoniness if he had embraced Catholicism.  This world is what it is and there has to be a better one we can aspire to it while we are in it.