J.D. Salinger's Death

"Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody. ~J.D. Salinger, Chapter 20, The Catcher in the Rye

That's right. J.D. Salinger kicked it.

And now the battle begins: who gets to hold on to Holden? What the hell will his family do with all the nonsensical writings Salinger has been hiding away for all these years? Are there even any writings to discover and will they be any good?

I can't wait to find out, because the intellectual property of Sir Salinger is now wildly at stake. I keep waiting to hear about shootings and insane public reactions, mass hysteria and madcap folks running about in the streets. Or not. John Lennon isn't walking around pretending to be Jesus anymore. And everybody knows where the ducks go in winter. I mean really.

But back to what I wanted to say:

For most of my college career I've wanted to write about Salinger. Hell, I wanted to write about Holden and Salinger even before I knew I wanted to write, or what it meant to write. Last year I submitted a proposal to complete a master's thesis on J.D. Salinger and Holden Caulfield, specifically concerning the future and evolution of Holden Caulfield: what is essential Holden within the eyes of Salinger, what has happened to Salinger's creation, and what will the future be for Holden--what will he morph into within the public sphere, within the pop culture masses? My thesis will (with ensuing halirity and hysteria) be finished this May. This is all in specific relation to that Swedish fellow Fredrik Colting's banned book 60 Years Later: Coming through the Rye, and what it means to pick up a piece of writing 60 years later and metafictionally twist it into something entirely other. Surely there will be more interpertations. There already are. And even I will be writing about them in a probably not so scholarly manner.

And now because I'm hiding out in the computer lab on campus writing about Salinger like a crazy person in between classes, I will leave you for the moment. Later I can explain the dramatic and confusing day I've had explaining to EVERY PERSON I SEE about Salinger.