Goodbye, JD Salinger

JD Salinger died yesterday, the same Salinger who died to the literary world dozens of years ago when he hid himself away in New Hampshire. Like just about everybody who grew up suburban, and white, I read Salinger with devotion, latching on to his depictions of affluent ennui and existential noodlings, and declared him a soul mate for about two years. He may still be responsible, in an indirect way, for my over-zealous and potentially gratuitious use of commas, parentheses, semi-colons, and other methods of dragging – some would say mutilating – sentences to unnatural, and unwelcome, lengths.

I suppose the next few weeks will see some sort of Salinger mania begin to take over the literary world. I don't know who his executor is, or who will be the guardian of his estate, or what to expect when it begins to be reported what is or is not found in his home in regards to manuscripts. If they were there, I hope he would have had sense to burn them all. I think he would have liked for the silence to continue, and for all of him that remains to be only four slim volumes quietly selling themselves without context or hype.