RIP - J.D. Salinger

Apparently, J.D. Salinger has died. While sad, this isn't exactly a shock. I originally read through Salinger's work in my teens, but a few years ago, decided to go back to see if it would still appeal to me in my late-20s. Much to my surprise, I actually thought it was even better then than it had been in high school. I think Catcher in the Rye was the one that was most to my tastes in my teens; not surprisingly, while I didn't find it weak or bad, it didn't resonate in the same way the second time. That said, Nine Stories, Frannie and Zooey, and Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters/Seymour: An Introduction were even more impressive the second time around. Too often, so-called the production of "literary giants" doesn't really hold up, but Salinger, perhaps due to his minimal output, was absolutely deserving of that title. Salinger was a titan, and in that regard, his passing is sad (if inevitable); but with Seymour, Zooey, Holden, the Glass family, and others still commonly read, it's hard to be too upset.

RIP John Updike

John Updike dead at 76. I haven't read an abundance of his stuff, but what I've read, I've really enjoyed. Rabbit Runs has what is quite probably one of my two favorite endings both in terms of ways to end a book and in terms of linguistic structuring (the other being Portnoy's Complaint), and the collection of short stories that came out a few years ago offers a great argument that Updike is one of the greatest short story writers ever in any language. Certainly, his New England regionalism may not be everybody's cup of tea, and I've heard that his longer novels could be hit or miss. Still, his passing marks the loss of one of the greater literary talents of the 20th century.

R.I.P. David Foster Wallace

Friday night, (in Claremont, CA, about 30 minutes west of where I live) the author David Foster Wallace committed suicide. The NYT has the obituary.

I first read A Supposedly Funny Thing I'll Never Do Again in college, and ended up reading a number of his works after that. Even if I ultimately didn't like everything I read of his, I always appreciated the technique, the sheer power of his virtuosic writing (I do disagree with the many people who thought Infinite Jest was in need of editing; to me, the sprawling, expansive length seemed almost necessary to the project as a whole). In any event, author deaths are always strange to me, especially under circumstances like this one.

Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the phrase "zeitgeisty buzz" in the Times article.