R.I.P. J.D. Salinger, Reclusive Literary Icon

J.D. Salinger, the enigmatic American author best known for his classic novel "Catcher in the Rye" died Thursday at the age of 91.

Jake Gyllenhaal as Tom (who calls himself Holden in honor of Holden Caulfield) in "The Good Girl" (2002).

"It’s been the dream of many a producer — and perhaps the nightmare of many a faithful reader — that J. D. Salinger’s novel “The Catcher in the Rye” might someday be translated to another medium. Mr. Salinger considered a stage version of the novel in which he himself would play its teenage protagonist, Holden Caulfield. That (mercifully) never happened; nor did offers for film adaptations from Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan, Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein, all of which the author summarily turned down.

"I keep saying this and nobody seems to agree, but “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 asides about gasoline rainbows in street puddles, his philosophy or way of looking at cowhide suitcases and empty toothpaste cartons - in a word, his thoughts. He can’t legitimately be separated from his own first-person technique. True, if the separation is forcibly made, there is enough material left over for something called an Exciting (or maybe just Interesting) Evening in the Theater. But I find that idea if not odious, at least odious enough to keep me from selling the rights". Source: artsbeat.blogs.nytimes