Salinger's timelessness lives on

You've probably heard about the death of J.D. Salinger, who died Jan. 28 at the ripe old age of 91. Since then, there have been headlines like NPR's "It's Pretty Personal And All, But I'll Miss Salinger" and my personal favorite from the Onion: "Bunch of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger." Of course, this seems like the way the author of The Catcher in the Rye (1951) would want to go out of this world. But I'll spare you the temptation to talk like Holden Caulfield for now. As a long-time fan of Salinger's writing, it's refreshing to see others take renewed interest in his work. Any time a great artist dies, there are plenty of bandwagon "phonies" who step into the limelight and claim to be fans while the real fans sit back in disgust. And it's understandable why some would refrain from expressing their affinity for stories written by a guy who had an incriminating past - who lived as a hermit for years, drove his wife away and had a relationship with an 18-year-old girl when he was 53. What a role model, right?

Regardless of his personal life, Salinger had an undeniable gift for not just telling a story, but recreating life experiences through fiction. The kind of stuff that makes you finish a whole book in a single sitting. Reading Catcher for me has come to be a very sentimental experience, and each time I re-read the book it's impossible not to laugh at the dialogue about rich people, little kids or nuns and say to myself, "That is so true!" And that's just the sort of style his characters, especially Holden, have always evoked.

"Part of the genius of Salinger is that he makes you feel part of a very special club, and an a--hole at the same time - and you love him and agree with him on both counts," said Wall Street Journal writer Thomas Beller.

I couldn't agree more.

Every high-schooler in America has probably read the coming-of-age tale about a foul-mouthed teenage boy struggling with growing pains and human emotions like love and loss, it's an English class staple in the United States. Of course, it was the most censored piece of adolescent literature for nearly 20 years for its language and sex talk, but how can you explain the way it has survived more than half a century of renown? The answer is simple: Salinger understood people.

When I first read Catcher I was sucked into the mind of the young narrator who talked nonstop in a way that was easy to understand. Sure, he turns out to be crazy, but who can deny the rawness of this narration that reads like a marble notebook journal of an extremely observant and rebellious 17-year-old.

But although this 214-page paperback is a gem to many readers, I find it unfair to dub the author as a one-hit wonder based solely on its success. Even before Holden's novel hit bookstands, Salinger was already submitting a number of short stories to magazines like The New Yorker, many of which were compiled into a book fitly named Nine Stories (1953). Here lay a gold mine of tales starring characters like a teenage girl who has a crush on her friend's older brother, an American soldier who shares a conversation with a little girl while overseas in England and a struggling art student studying under a quirky painter.

If you read a lot of Salinger you'll come across a lot of the same themes, one being suicide. The young character Seymour Glass, who is introduced in the novel Franny and Zooey, reappears in the short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," where the details of his suicide unfold. And like Holden's mental illness, you don't see it coming until the end.

Another motif I've noticed throughout is child geniuses. They pop up everywhere - from the Glass family of child prodigies who star in the fictitious TV show "It's a Wise Child" in Franny and Zooey to the college-educated 10-year-old Teddy in a short story by the same name. The outcome of both scenarios show life to be tough for the smart kids of their generation, since the grownup Glass children struggle with depression and (no surprise) suicide and Teddy convinces himself that life is meaningless.

While Salinger's serious side may have been rooted in his Zen Buddhist beliefs, he rarely made his agenda clear. Unlike other American writers of his time, his stories focused more on character psychology than the anti-war rhetoric shooting from Kurt Vonnegut or Ernest Hemingway. Did Salinger care at all what people thought about his writing?

"There is a marvelous peace in not publishing," he once told a reporter in 1974. "Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I love to write for myself and my own pleasure."

All aspiring writers can take a lesson from this example. Salinger made waves by daring to write in a painfully honest way. Not just the "goddams" and heaps of cigarette ash that filled his pretend world, but the way he could find both humor and significance in the mess. So as we bid farewell to one of the most beloved American writers of the past century, I picture old J.D. penning the words of Holden:

"I don't care if it's a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it.