J. D. Salinger, Fashion Victim

J. D. Salinger remains for the time being in Purgatory. This most famous of living American authors, who has dwelt in eremitical obscurity and cantankerous silence for the past thirty years, is dead to the literary world, at least, and has not yet been reborn. He is, not exactly dated, but intensely different from what our culture has become since he was last heard from. At the same time, those few decades have been too brief a span to integrate him into the living past, as it has happened with Fitzgerald and Dreiser.

Salinger’s reputation has recently become an issue once again with his startling decision to bring out in book form his last published novella, “Hapworth 16, 1924,” which appeared in The New Yorker in 1965. Michiko Kakutanv’s article about it, which was the lead story on the New York Times arts page of February 20, appeared long before the book’s publication and attests to the seriousness with which this unlikely development is being viewed in literary circles. The very circumstances in which Salinger has agreed to publish at all bespeak a secretiveness verging on misanthropy. He has bestowed the honor on an entirely obscure company, Orchises Press in Alexandria, Virginia.

JG

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James Gardner

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J. D. Salinger remains for the time being in Purgatory. This most famous of living American authors, who has dwelt in eremitical obscurity and cantankerous silence for the past thirty years, is dead to the literary world, at least, and has not yet been reborn. He is, not exactly dated, but intensely different from what our culture has become since he was last heard from. At the same time, those few decades have been too brief a span to integrate him into the living past, as it has happened with Fitzgerald and Dreiser.

Salinger’s reputation has recently become an issue once again with his startling decision to bring out in book form his last published novella, “Hapworth 16, 1924,” which appeared in The New Yorker in 1965. Michiko Kakutanv’s article about it, which was the lead story on the New York Times arts page of February 20, appeared long before the book’s publication and attests to the seriousness with which this unlikely development is being viewed in literary circles. The very circumstances in which Salinger has agreed to publish at all bespeak a secretiveness verging on misanthropy. He has bestowed the honor on an entirely obscure company, Orchises Press in Alexandria, Virginia.