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JD

There is a new biography of J. D. Salinger. Here is a review in the NYTimes.

Love and Squalor

The review is worth reading as it summarizes the Salinger story and, not surprisingly, Salinger stories.

I have not read them all. To do that, I would need to have the New Yorker archives, well I do have access to them sort of, and an ability to find the "lost" ones.

Salinger, among many quirks, had a thing about only collecting the very cream of the crop by his estimate and that is all most of us have.

I am fascinated with Salinger and have been for a long time but not enough to buy this book. I am grateful for the research into Salinger's totally horrendous experiences in WWII. His regiment in D-day was decimated and he survived all that to just make it into the Battle of the Bulge.

He admitted himself to a mental hospital for what was almost certainly post traumatic stress.

The rest of it is really undocumented stories about his life and times.

Salinger was a devotee of eastern religions and believed in smashing and transcending the ego. He did a good job.

He presumably lived quite well on the royalties of Catcher in the Rye in Cornish NH and was able to cultivate relationships with people in the town and elsewhere who protected him to the extreme. They would give false directions to anyone coming to town to find him.

But he was gregarious and many people report sightings almost all of which had to do with quite distant issues and subjects from his writing.

He had several girlfriends.

We who are and have been decades long fans await the actions, if any, of his executors and editors. Is there a mountain of writing that has been unpublished? Will they permit a full story collection? And so on.

With his death last year, he is more of a wonderful mystery.

Like many others, I long ago adopted the Glass family as my own. I want more.

That was his great gift. Always leave them wanting more. Even Catcher has that effect. All the stories the same. We want more. More. And there is less.

Now there is a zen lesson for all of us.