JD Salinger dies

RIP.

I've read him more than 15 years ago and still can't figure out whether I liked his work or am indifferent.

Are you Hamlet in disguise?

The catcher in the rye was a favourite book of many private adolescents.

The Catcher in the Rye, whether you liked it or not, is probably the greatest work written in American conversational idiom, as opposed to Standard English, since Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (as well as also centred around a dysfunctional youth). In structure, it is specific to both time and place anchored as it is in a day and a night in post-WWII New York, in the same way that James Joyce's Ulysses is anchored in a single day in pre-WWI Dublin, shown through the internal thoughts and monologue of the central character

It has much in common with the alienated absurdism of Albert Camus' The Outsider written 9 years before. It is also one of the greatest one-hit wonders in the history of literature as Salinger wrote nothing else apart from a few novellas and short stories. Here are a few others:

10 Literary One-Hit Wonders

Franny and Zooey wasn't bad.

And some of the others were basically poets or philosophers, so it's a bit snide to write them off ( - see what I just did? - ) as one-hit wonders.

I started reading it...

Without looking at your link Allan, these would be in my list of literary 1 hit wonders:

Gone With The Wind.

To Kill A Mockingbird.

Confederacy Of Dunces.

I'd think Kerouac's On The Road but he wrote some other books. But if Salinger is in that list.... also, some of the 60s beat writers could be on that list.

What else?

Saw the list.

Congrats, Furri, I wouldn't have got Confederacy of Dunces. I agree with Peter CS that it is rather pedantic to dismiss Franny and Zooey as a novella whilst retaing CITR as a novel when there's not much difference in length. Oscar Wilde can also hardly be described as a "one hit wonder". I noticed that Gone With The Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird and Dr Zhivago all produced major film adaptations within a short time of the publication of the novel concerned that became as, if not more, famous than the books which inspired them and Wuthering Heights and Dorian Gray have inspired numerous film and TV versions yet CITR remains virtually unfilmable (according to the IMDb site a video version came out in 2008 which consists of "75 minutes and 8 seconds of blue screen") although Joseph Strick managed to put Ulysses on screen in the 1960s.

I also thought what might be the best debut novels - Dickens' Pickwick Papers, Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Camus' The Outsider and, more contemporaneously with Salinger, Ian Fleming's Casino Royale (1953) and William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954) although I have probably overlooked many more significant works.

Casino Royale is an interesting choice, though I see where you're coming from.

I'd include "Valley of the Dolls", purely because it's interesting and she only had one book in her.

Bradman wrote:she only had one book in her.

So said the doctor after the emergency operation.

She should've had an emergency op with a subi doctor after the publication.

Allan D wrote:Congrats, Furri, I wouldn't have got Confederacy of Dunces. I agree with Peter CS that it is rather pedantic to dismiss Franny and Zooey as a novella whilst retaing CITR as a novel when there's not much difference in length. Oscar Wilde can also hardly be described as a "one hit wonder". I noticed that Gone With The Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird and Dr Zhivago all produced major film adaptations within a short time of the publication of the novel concerned that became as, if not more, famous than the books which inspired them and Wuthering Heights and Dorian Gray have inspired numerous film and TV versions yet CITR remains virtually unfilmable (according to the IMDb site a video version came out in 2008 which consists of "75 minutes and 8 seconds of blue screen") although Joseph Strick managed to put Ulysses on screen in the 1960s.

I also thought what might be the best debut novels - Dickens' Pickwick Papers, Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Camus' The Outsider and, more contemporaneously with Salinger, Ian Fleming's Casino Royale (1953) and William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954) although I have probably overlooked many more significant works.

Catch 22 amongst them.

RIP

Bradman wrote:

Allan D wrote:Congrats, Furri, I wouldn't have got Confederacy of Dunces. I agree with Peter CS that it is rather pedantic to dismiss Franny and Zooey as a novella whilst retaing CITR as a novel when there's not much difference in length. Oscar Wilde can also hardly be described as a "one hit wonder". I noticed that Gone With The Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird and Dr Zhivago all produced major film adaptations within a short time of the publication of the novel concerned that became as, if not more, famous than the books which inspired them and Wuthering Heights and Dorian Gray have inspired numerous film and TV versions yet CITR remains virtually unfilmable (according to the IMDb site a video version came out in 2008 which consists of "75 minutes and 8 seconds of blue screen") although Joseph Strick managed to put Ulysses on screen in the 1960s.

I also thought what might be the best debut novels - Dickens' Pickwick Papers, Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Camus' The Outsider and, more contemporaneously with Salinger, Ian Fleming's Casino Royale (1953) and William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954) although I have probably overlooked many more significant works.

Catch 22 amongst them.

Was "The Wit of Walker" Maxie's first?

What and you like the annual Chapelli telling of the 1-450 story.

Or every Oz cricketer mentioning the Don (those trees were a lort shorter back then) golf story.

It's a tyradition of Oz summers. ex-Players telling stories instead of comentating, Richie bitching about the no-ball rule and Henry running a one man campaign to rename one of the SCG ends.

FFS! Sydney Uni end is onl masrginally bettr than 'Air Force Flats' end.

I'm glad to see you maintaining the friday arvo gin soaking tradition

Gotta keep the malaria cells at bay somehow.

Plus it's cheaper and prescription painkillers are shit.

Bradman wrote:Henry running a one man campaign to rename one of the SCG ends.

FFS! Sydney Uni end is onl masrginally bettr than 'Air Force Flats' end.

Why not call them the shithole of a city end and the opposite the shithole of a city end?

Catcher in the Rye is possibly the most over-rated book ever . .only challenged by Dickens and Rushdie . . .

...is it any better after it's translated into Greek?

No . . it doesn't translate . . . the grammar is too farked up . . .

Didn't JD Salinger die years ago when he walked into the ether after watching Shoeless Joe Jackson play baseball? Or was that James Earl Jones?

With Salinger keeping out of the spotlight for so long it's hard to remember what he looks like.

Catch 22

tac wrote:Catcher in the Rye is possibly the most over-rated book ever . .only challenged by Dickens and Rushdie . . .

Have you ever opened a copy of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake - most highly-rated (and over-rated) work written in no known language.

just coz you can't read it, AD . . .