Who will write your obituary, Mr. Salinger??

Jerome David Salinger is no more...

Contemporary and competitor, Joh Updike predeceased him...

Now, the thing that immediately popped in my head mind when I heard of Salinger's death was not what the world will miss (because he hasn't written a book in the last half of his life and at 91, one wasn't really expecting anything from him at all), but who will write him a fitting obituary now that the rockstar of a literary/culture critic of all times is no more.

I am confused...I don't know who I like more...Updike or Salinger....I don't know what saddens me more...Salinger's death or the fact that every obituary (and there will be many) will repeat every boring cliche that every existed on the man (reclusive, cool, crazy, inspirer of assasination plots and the whole Mark Davuid Chapman-John Lennon reference etc etc etc) in the absence of Updike, who, if alive, would have produced a legend of an obituary..yet another thing to remember Salinger by, after Holden and the Glasses!!

That, however, is not to be for reasons as mundane as mortality....

But I remember reading a review of 'Franny and Zooey' a few years ago by Updike, which confirms the big loss I just talked about.

'Franny and Zooey' is a big favourite with me despite my contempt for precocious children which is exactly what this book is all about. But I guess the written word can change all of that, which is what Salinger is loved for...for turning phonies into heroes, idiots into icons!! :-)

Anyway, F & Z was panned by critics as a rich person's guide to raising children all wrong. Updike shared this view:

Salinger loves the Glasses more than God loves them. He loves them too exclusively. Their invention has become a hermitage for him. He loves them to the detriment of artistic moderation.

but ended the review on a note of respect and appreciation:

When all reservations have been entered, in the correctly unctuous and apprehensive tone, about the direction [Salinger] has taken, it remains to acknowledge that it is a direction, and that the refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

and the words which perfectly explain why I, like many others, love Salinger:

We live in a world, however, where the decisive deed may invite the holocaust, and Salinger's conviction that our inner lives greatly matter peculiarly qualifies him to sing of an America where, for most of us, there seems little to do but to feel. Introversion, perhaps, has been forced upon history; an age of nuance, of ambiguous gestures and psychological jockeying on a national and private scale, is upon us, and Salinger's intense attention to gesture and intonation help make him, among his contemporaries, a uniquely relevant literary artist.

Salinger had the rare ability to convert extraordinary feelings into ordinary words (incidentally, that's what all writers intend to do) and who could know it better than Updike!!

That Updike feeling is what I am going to miss when I read those factory-made obituaries about Salinger that I shall read starting later today.