The terrible day that J.D. Salinger died
by Matthew Fiorentino
GRAPHIC ALEX MANLEY
Raise high the roof beam, carpenters.
Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man.
—Sappho,
Fragment LP 111
Dear __________,
How are you? I am fine. Regarding that Cornish hen biting the dust—it was certainly a goddamn peculiar way to start the weekend. Not that he was some spring chicken, mind you, but you can begin to see where I’m coming from. I imagine that he’s up in heaven right now listening to 10,000 Chinese nuns chanting Buddhist vows. Old Holden Caulfield leaves this world through the backdoor of sin and enters the Holy Kingdom by means of crashing through the skylight. Now there’s a thought that makes me howl.
I am flattered that you would ask me to write a few words about the situation, though there’s a nagging suspicion in the back of my mind that I’ve been deceived into white-washing your fence for you, so to speak.
I love to write and I assure you I write regularly (I’m quite Catholic about that). I write for myself, for my own pleasure. It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer’s feelings of obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his working years. But I suppose the situation has struck a sympathetic chord within my breast and so I humorously give you permission to read my thoughts on it.
I don’t mean to make it sound like such a Jesus Christ sacrifice on my part or anything—and I don’t feel like getting into it if you really want to know the truth—but I cringe at the thought of this letter losing itself in the deluge of jejune narcissism worse than Catcher in the Rye itself that has been written by various newspaper figures in the wake of his death. I imagine that’s what Somerset Maugham used to talk about. If am to be the ale then they are at least the cakes, not to mention the gin and bitters.
As all the good picaresque adjectives have already been taken in describing Salinger’s life, at best I can try to limn the nooks and crannies of his work with what meagre insights I have available to me. I can already hear that crazy bastard Zooey Glass applauding madly from the bathroom. Are you familiar with Jacob Boehme’s Signature of all Things (the eyes being a mirror of the soul, etc.)? Or the Basho poem “Along this road goes no one, this autumn eve”? They make for droll companions but I feel they are the key to beginning to understand his work.
In any case, I bet all this Vedantic insight must be a terrible bore for you. I would continue on but I am tired and already I can see through my window that a roselight is beginning to bloom on the horizon like a circlet of flowers. See: ((((())))). Morning. The ghost of electricity is beginning to move through the city. And don’t you know—listen to me, now—don’t you know that we’re ghosts too?
Ah, buddy.
Anyways, I guess this letter is really just about a bunch of unhappy Andover grads that have been waiting decades for the blue-striped unicorn of the literary world to croak so they can finally get their grubby hands on his unpublished stories and find out if those precocious Glass kids didn’t accidentally psychoanalyze each other to death with a bunch of Jungian crap while they were waiting.
I’d hate to be the editor that comes into work some morning only to find 15 of this guy’s goddamn posthumous manuscripts sitting on his desk.
Who knows, maybe it’ll be you.
With much invisible ink,
Mr. F
The Link Volume 31 Issue 01