I Agree, His Work Meant A Lot To Me

GLOBE EDITORIAL J.D. Salinger: It’s the words that matter January 30, 2010 Our celebrity culture is ill-equipped to comprehend a literary figure like J. D. Salinger, who died Wednesday at 91. A Martian reading the author’s obituaries might conclude he was eminent for being a recluse, for not publishing since 1965, for suing anyone who tried to make unauthorized use of his fiction or his letters, and for dabbling in weird beliefs. But as W. H. Auden wrote in his elegy on the death of William Butler Yeats: “You were silly like us; your gift survived it all.’’ Salinger’s work will last because of his gift and his craftsmanship. “Catcher in the Rye’’ is still read not simply because it appears to indulge the youthful narcissism of high school students. Like Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield speaks directly to the reader, telling his story in his own pitch-perfect idiom, creating a pure fictional artifice. The perfection of that artifice is the reason for readers who never met him to wish a fond farewell to Salinger. He did what serious writers do: he left behind a world apart from this one, confected out of words alone. And his confidants say he also left behind 15 unpublished manuscripts. His gift survives.