Thanks to our favorite haters for tipping us off to this 1957 letter from J.D. Salinger to a “Mr. Herbert” as to why Catcher could never be made into a film. The Catcher in the Rye is a very novelistic novel. There are readymade “scenes” – only a fool would deny that – but, for me, the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice, the non-stop peculiarities of it, his personal, extremely discriminating attitude to his reader-listener, his […]
“Dangerous” Choices in Ugly Man by Jonathan Reiss
Reviewed by Jonathan Reiss According to the back cover of Dennis Cooper’s new book of short stories, Cooper is “the most dangerous writer in America.” What constitutes a dangerous writer? The Catcher in the Rye has been banned on and off by schools and libraries since its publication and was cited by Mark David Chapman as his reason for killing John Lennon, despite the fact that the book isn’t even about killing rock stars. In Ugly Man, the majority of […]
Bites: Edith Wharton, James Wood, Twitter, Holden Caulfield, Frank Lloyd Wright
After just finishing an Edith Wharton, it now seems the nineteenth-century satirist is popping up everywhere. In the upcoming New Yorker, Rebecca Mead writes about Wharton’s early letters to her governess, some of which will be up for auction at Christie’s on Wednesday. James “King James” Wood is surprisingly charming in this LA Weekly interview. On being well-read: I never seem very well-read to myself — I only notice the gaps, the thin bits, the bald patches (yes, the analogy […]
Saving Salinger From Himself
Salinger is suing, as we know. Ron Rosenbaum, who revisits the “What the fuck has he been doing all these years?” question, at Slate seems to think that we the people, as some kind of right, deserve to see Salinger’s work. Most of Rosenbaum’s speculations are unlikely. Because let’s face it, we know there are finished works locked in Salinger’s freezer, and I think there’s going to be a masterpiece hidden in there. What strikes me most is the fact […]