i was thinking this morning about writing a post about the relation of an author’s biography to that author’s work, and then j.d. salinger went and died, and i watched everyone’s reaction to it from this corner i sit in on the internet, and that threatened to complicate my argument, but not in the good or productive way, and to tell the truth i was getting bothered by all these people being “sad” about the painless death of a 91-year-old man who didn’t want anything to do with them and who hadn’t felt the need to share his work with them in almost 50 years, which was his prerogative and i was fine with it.
thank you, ed, for all you've given us
this was beside the point, so fortunately someone took care of it for me. i’m not one of these onion people — i’ve only ever laughed at a couple of their articles — so don’t worry, i won’t link to them again. but this is probably the best tribute salinger will get.
for the record, i’m a huge fan of his work. maybe i will write about it later, but for now i will hope that the stuff he was purportedly writing while being reclusive is good and will be published, and i’ll wish his family the best as they deal with their loss. but not you. i don’t think you lost anything today.