In the wake of J.D. Salinger's passing and instant re-assessments of his literary career, you may be making plans with the club as we speak to re-read The Catcher in the Rye or Nine Stories.  Good luck getting copies of Nine Stories on Amazon or The Catcher in the Rye at the library.  This is the moment to parade around your dog-eared copies from high school and college, not only for their authenticity and memorial quality, but to insure your discussion about the eclipse of real and literary time gets off to a rousing start.

In the meantime, do not fail to check in with The New Yorker which is offering most of the nine stories including Salinger's first, "Slight Rebellion Off Madison."  Published in the Dec. 21, 1946 issue, the story introduces Holden Caulfield in a kind of literary sketch for what was to become The Catcher in the Rye.  The story features Holden's known world: New York City in the 1940s, movies, literature, teen love and preoccupations, phonies, drinking and seering dialogue for its day. Does it hold up? Please discuss. (In strolling obsessively through The New Yorker archives you will also note that this issue contains the famous full-page Charles Addams cartoon of the family dumping a cauldron on those eternally clueless carollers who just happened into the neighborhood.  Will they never learn?)

As we all know by now, J.D. Salinger got his wish for a secluded, hermit-like life in Cornish, New Hampshire.  By the time he appeared on the cover of the Sept. 15, 1961 issue of Time magazine, his publishing life would be over in a few years.  Time wrote at the time, "His face, after six years of struggle, shows the pain of an artistic battle whose outcome still cannot be seen."  We know the rest.  What we don't know is whether there will be a huge library of Glass Family volumes unearthed and published.  We can only dream. 

To prepare for this possible and possibly mythical event, suggest to your club his last published story, "Hapworth 16, 1924."  It takes up much of the June 19, 1965 issue of The New Yorker and it is at least a novella.  Written as a letter from camp by the impossibly precocious 7-year-old past and future suicide Seymour Glass, it is like nothing else you have ever read.  Filled with Glass family preoccupations, what surprises today is how much literature matters to Seymour.  Don't miss his memorial to the Benet sisters.  Yes, they are here, too.

J.D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91: The New York Times

Postscript: J.D. Salinger: The New Yorker

Sonny: Time Magaine