The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: twyacht on January 28, 2010, 03:38:27 PM
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Seemed he chose to live a life of isolation in NH.
Neighbor Tom?
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26185613/ns/today-the_new_york_times/?GT1=43001
Excerpt from article:
But success, once it arrived, paled quickly for him. He told the editors of Saturday Review that he was “good and sick” of seeing his photograph on the dust jacket of “The Catcher in the Rye” and demanded that it be removed from subsequent editions. He ordered his agent to burn any fan mail.
In 1953 Mr. Salinger, who had been living on East 57th Street in Manhattan, fled the literary world altogether and moved to a 90-acre compound on a wooded hillside in Cornish, N.H. He seemed to be fulfilling Holden’s desire to build himself “a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made and live there for the rest of my life,” away from “any goddam stupid conversation with anybody.”
He seldom left, except occasionally to vacation in Florida or to visit William Shawn, the almost equally reclusive editor of The New Yorker. Avoiding Mr. Shawn’s usual (and very public) table at the Algonquin, they would meet instead under the clock at the old Biltmore Hotel, the rendezvous for generations of prep-school and college students.
He died of natural causes at 91.
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There are lots of us recluse genius crazy types here in NH! ;D
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Salinger, required reading for us old guys. I think I had to read "Catcher" in the 6th or 8th grade and was happy to do so. Franny and Zoey as well.
A bit of a brilliant, strange, reclusive nutcase who people loved and hated depending on their moral fiber.
I might just read "Catcher" again for old times sake. It's only been forty years.... ;)
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There are lots of us recluse genius crazy types here in NH! ;D
Until 2012 :D
I might just read "Catcher" again for old times sake. It's only been forty years.... ;)
Required reading for me as well.... but it's only been 35 years!! ;D
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Required reading for me as well.... but it's only been 35 years!!
Whippersnapper!!!
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Does anyone know if it's reading material in today's gov't schools? Not college Lit. classes but actual High School, also Melville, Hawthorne, Paine, Thoreau, Whitman, Franklin?
Nevermind,....
Thankfully, it was required reading in the early 80's but I'm sure times have changed.....to you know, "My Two Daddy's", .... :'(
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Shooter,
Is will stay in NH to represent all the crazy, recluse genius types here in NH, and God willing, telecommute as Tom and TT's Assistant Red Button Pusher when their thumbs get tired!
;D
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Does anyone know if it's reading material in today's gov't schools? Not college Lit. classes but actual High School, also Melville, Hawthorne, Paine, Thoreau, Whitman, Franklin?
Nevermind,....
Thankfully, it was required reading in the early 80's but I'm sure times have changed.....to you know, "My Two Daddy's", .... :'(
They are required reading for my two kids, along with the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. My eleven year old Emily gets tears in her eyes like Glenn Beck when I read the Bill of Rights with her. I trust the government take care of my garbage every week, but not with educating my children....
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My reading has been less structured, Melville I read "Billy Budd" but never Moby Dick, Thoreau I read parts of Walden and On Civil Disobedience, Bits and pieces of Paine and Franklin , I read one story by Hawthorne, didn't care for it so never read anything else he wrote, and I never got past the first page of Whitmans "Leaves of Grass".
However I read Homer and Virgil for fun, They were kind of like westerns with Gods and swords instead of indians and guns,
On My bookcase now, between The Federalist Papers" and the Machinery's Handbook are, Jack London Herman Hesse and Kurt Saxon ;D
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Seemed he chose to live a life of isolation in NH.
<snip.
“any goddam stupid conversation with anybody.”
<snip>
He wasn't to isolated, since he had a live in 18year old girl friend for a while. ;)
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Kurt Saxon ;D
Kurt Saxon...a name from the past.....He still around?
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I don't know if Saxon is still alive, but the Poor man's James Bond is doing fine ;D
Salinger wasn't "isolated" he was just more of a loner, he was at Dartmouth for 2 basketball games just last week.
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I don't know if Saxon is still alive, but the Poor man's James Bond is doing fine ;D
Salinger wasn't "isolated" he was just more of a loner, he was at Dartmouth for 2 basketball games just last week.
I used to have the set of PMJB and his Survivor series plus the smaller publications but they have gotten away from me over the years. I found a site that seems to over the whole thing on CD... not sure if having Survival reference works on CD makes sense.
Yeah, about Salinger. To the News Media, if you had fame and now don't choose to show up at every media event possible and spout your opinion on everything from Global Warming to the fate of blind cave fish, you are a recluse.
Of course, he wrote Catcher when he was about 30 and his own "coming of age drama" was still a fresh memory. It may be that he demanded his picture be taken off further publications of the book because, at an advance age, he didn't feel quite the tolerance for all that Teenage Angst anymore.
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Read a comment somewhere that having Catcher in the Rye on high school reading lists was stupid, teens would learn more from Romeo and Juliet, It reinforces the value of learning things.
Like how to take a pulse ;D
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Read a comment somewhere that having Catcher in the Rye on high school reading lists was stupid, teens would learn more from Romeo and Juliet, It reinforces the value of learning things.
Like how to take a pulse ;D
Don't get me started on Romeo and Juliet...........
I helped my son do an "interpretive" essay on the subject. It was one of those things where the teacher asked, "What was on Shakespeare's mind when he wrote........" type things.
I was like, "How the hell should I know what was in Ol' Bill's mind when he wrote the story? For all I know he could have been high as a kite and wrote the thing sarcastically as an Elizabethan primer on how to deal with troublesome teens".........
:o
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Read a comment somewhere that having Catcher in the Rye on high school reading lists was stupid, teens would learn more from Romeo and Juliet, It reinforces the value of learning things.
Like how to take a pulse ;D
I must preface my statement by saying that I was NOT an English major in college, nor do I consider myself an expert. That being said, with the emphasis now placed on writing, it should be required reading, if not for literary value, then as an example of character development in composition. I didn't think much of it story wise, but, it is THE perfect example of a painstakingly cultivated character. "Catcher" was the only uneventful book that I was unable to put down.
Swoop
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I'd also say that the level of 'required reading' is nowhere near what it was 30 years ago. Ask a teenager who Charles Dickens was and you'll get a blank stare.
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Read a comment somewhere that having Catcher in the Rye on high school reading lists was stupid, teens would learn more from Romeo and Juliet, It reinforces the value of learning things.
Like how to take a pulse ;D
The little bastards would learn more from Orwell, or even Heinlein. I let, my little brothers borrow from my expanding library, most of the books I've got I haven't read, but they tear through them so I buy 'em.
I did read Catcher in the Rye a few years back in high school though, didn't care for it much, but it did display excellent character development, which I learned from.
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Dante............... now there's a rip snorter......... ;D ;D ;D
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Dante............... now there's a rip snorter......... ;D ;D ;D
The most pompous of them all he is.
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I never read Catcher in the Rye, I always thought it was just how the Government kept track of it's brain washed assassins.
Don't get me started on Romeo and Juliet...........
I helped my son do an "interpretive" essay on the subject. It was one of those things where the teacher asked, "What was on Shakespeare's mind when he wrote........" type things.
I was like, "How the hell should I know what was in Ol' Bill's mind when he wrote the story? For all I know he could have been high as a kite and wrote the thing sarcastically as an Elizabethan primer on how to deal with troublesome teens".........
:o
Most likely he was thinking about nailing the little serving wench in the bar across from the Globe theater ;D
+ 10 on Heinlein
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Never read Catcher, faked it, and got a B on the paper I wrote on it in english class way back when. Did the same thing with the Great Gatsby. We read Romeo and Juliet aloud in class and I got stuck reading Romeo almost evry single day and none of the Juliets were cute or smart. My english teacher didn't like me, probably for good reason, but that is another story. Those books just aren't my kind of reading, but maybe I'll read Catcher now.
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Never read Catcher, faked it, and got a B on the paper I wrote on it in english class way back when. Did the same thing with the Great Gatsby. We read Romeo and Juliet aloud in class and I got stuck reading Romeo almost evry single day and none of the Juliets were cute or smart. My english teacher didn't like me, probably for good reason, but that is another story. Those books just aren't my kind of reading, but maybe I'll read Catcher now.
Me either. No guns, bombs, bazookas, or anything else that can blow shit up. ;D