JD Salinger

I saw a pretty terrible documentary on JD Salinger this afternoon.  It was riddled with cliches, overstuffed with sentiment, spectacularly unfocused, and pretty much at odds with everything I believe this stoic icon stood for.  Case in point, do you think Jerry would choose Coldplay to help score his life story?  Anyway, the damage is done and based on a 33% approval rating on Rottentomatoes, we don't have to worry too much about anyone adopting this piece of pedestrian garbage as the definitive word on the elusive JD...well, except maybe for some hipster posers reading Catcher in the Rye on bus benches in Los Feliz.

To be totally honest, I'm glad Salinger sucked.  JD is one of my heroes (well antiheroes), and it's his enigmatic genius and refusal to be pigeonholed into any category other than a fiction writer that makes him so special to me.  To explore the man outside the page is to fail in understanding the man.   The first time I read Catcher in the Rye was in Mrs. Kotzen's fifth period English class.  Like Holden Caulfied, I was seventeen years old and pretty disappointed with everyone.  I suppose you could say Holden despised everyone (I know I did), but I think that would be a extremely limited interpretation despite his often scathing critiques.  Holden seemed to be searching for someone who could help guide him through adolescence and into adulthood. When he discovered that such a person did not exist, he envisioned himself as the potential savior, the person who could save all those once sensitive children from going over the edge.   When I read this passage that gave the novel its name for the first time, a transcendent feeling enveloped me.  The person I'd been hoping to come along, to show me the way, was speaking to me directly through the words on the page.  Of course the irony of that message was that there is no one else.  The only person who could catch me from falling off a cliff was...me.

Since that day, I've read everything of Salinger's that I could get my hands on.  I've enjoyed it all,  but it's Catcher that still serves as my literary bible. And all I can say to Shane Salerno* is go back to writing crappy screenplays.**  So what if he never published another novel!  If he wanted to, he would have.  Mystery solved.  The important thing is that he left something behind that truly speaks to people.   And in my wildest dreams as I writer, I hope to do the same.  To leave one great work behind.  Something that twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years from now, people still cherish.  I've been saying this since the day I started writing. Not just because it's romantic or because that was JD's story, but because I believe to truly create something great, it takes the wealth of one's experiences, inspiration, dedication, and hurt.  All of that is limited, but it's the last one especially that makes it clear I have a finite number of attempts at greatness in me.  Every time I put pen to paper (or fingers to keys), and attempt to honestly mine the nuggets of truth that nest deep inside of me, I feel like I'm chipping away at my soul.  The better the writing, the more pain I experience.  And messed up as it is, it's hardly a surprise that almost every time I set out to write something, I simultaneously embark on a relationship that helps soothe the masochistic beating I'm levying onto myself.  What can I say?  Writing is a narcissistic and consuming venture.  The sooner I extricate this one tumor, the better person I'll be. And if I decide to write something else, well, it will be for me.


-Rye Frost



*Seriously dude, WTF was up with the reenactments and that idiot hauling a log of wood up a mountain. Are you kidding me???  And Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Why do I care what he thinks about JD Salinger?  Why didn't you ask Kim K?  At least that would be funny.


**Maybe Savages 2?