History, like its scruffier cousin Memory, just gets in the way of making a profit.
The death of JD Salinger will most likely be heralded by the shrinking community which reveres art and culture, knowing that without them, society is a sterile, shallow, casually consuming mass.
Oh. Yeah. Ahem.
Do young people read him anymore? Or are they just too engrossed in World of Warfare to notice that more than any electronic game which would ascribe impossibly godlike characteristics to any basement bound consumo-nerd that a far more potent avatar would be found in the person of Holden Caulfield?
Sorry to be a snob (and nowhere near as well-read as my outrage would presume) but I get the feeling that our culture has become mechanized, nothing more than a virtual conveyor belt of impersonal data to be absorbed like a sublingual melatonin and then flushed from the system to make room for more bits and bytes.
When Marlon Brando died, I was fairly appalled at the cursory attention paid this cultural icon. Unique, provocative and confounding, Brando managed, in the space of really a small body of work, to alter modern culture profoundly. And yet, his societal contributions lay buried beneath what he had become physically and all he had endured publicly; his arguably eccentric personality exacerbating the problems he had in his private life became fodder for the gossip rags and late night comedians.
So it will be, I suspect, with Salinger. More and more the masses are becoming unworthy of the geniuses who struggle to make more of themselves and their world, having chosen (or been forced to choose) dreck over splendor.
And it's not just the arts which suffer from a lack of respect. It is the very workings of our political system which of late seems solely to bank on the short and/or defective memories of its citizens. It's in our consumer society which hails the innovation of the latest I-Thing with nary a subconscious twitch, a remnant from the last similarly hailed innovation only two years ago, which burst upon the scene with virtually assured obsolescence as part of its charm.
Depth, introspection, reality -- these are qualities American society should embrace if it is to survive with anymore sophistication than a crap-encrusted farm animal. JD Salinger's work was the embodiment of those powerful qualities, and more.
Maybe someone should come out with a Franny and Zooey app?
Frank Portman: Salinger Is Dead. Happy Now?
That's the sort of message you get when you've written a book whose narrator hates "The Catcher in the Rye" and the author of "The Catcher in the Rye" dies.
Second, the sense of cultural diversity we took out of the Sixties badly damaged the idea of a "canon" of "great books" every educated person should have read.
Third, the point about reading, to me, is less about content but about the ability to analyze and the opportunity for introspection. People might get that from different sources today, I am not sure.
Having said that, reading is important. And books are so much cheaper than an X-Box.
I grew up watching Dick Cavett and listening to the 'fun stuff' on the BBC -- weird word games and stories by brilliant (and possibly drink-addled) authors and thinkers. I've assumed for years that any chance at fame and general appreciation for actual worth was long gone. But then it occurred to me, while reading your lament: Doris Kearns Goodwin got a rock star welcome on the Daily Show last night.
We might be under the heel of our overlords, and at the mercy of long-corrupt civil servants, but we can still encourage the writers and thinkers in our midst. We just need a larger midst.
I'm a teacher to little kids and, sadly, I don't foresee this getting much better any time soon--children now are learning to be excellent little fact regurgitators but can't solve a problem to save their lives. The kids I work with who I feel great hope for always, always come from homes where many different kinds of quality books are read. These families are few and far between; it's a big worry of mine.
Can I also add that I really, really hate Kindle? Or anything that even smacks of Kindle? Computer books are hard and cold, and they don't let you write notes in the margins when you see things that really, really move you. It makes me sad for literature. (In this sense, I'm much like Steven--often outraged, yet not as well-read as my outrage would lead one to believe) (but I have read CATCHER IN THE RYE, and once got 3/4 of the way through WAR AND PEACE).
I consider myself intelligent, I am successful, I understand the world and politics and can make my own choices. My freedom of choice to not read Salinger or other "great" authors is my freedom and choice. I should not be looked down upon by those lofty on their pedestals thinking pop culture, mass market paperbacks and video games are "rotting the brains of our society".
Society is changing; not always for the worse like many people older than I am (34) insist that it is. Entertainment is more widespread thanks to technology. The advances we have made in the past century have allowed for more creative forms of entertainment. The writing and story of many video games, TV and movies rival the story telling of any author (granted ther are many awful stories and horrible writing in those genres also). Although I would bet many bad books were written along side all the great ones; we just don't know about them know because they were so bad.
Your contention comes down to the claim that kitchen math makes you capable of decoding the human genome. Nuh uh.
Often the path to depth, introspection and reality meanders through shallow, extrospection and fantasy. Salinger was vilified by many when Catcher was released because of his use of gutter language and has been placed in the same box as video games and comics by those who would ban things.
I have two sons (17 and 23) and both are incredibly well read because growing up, they always saw me with a book in my hands just as I always saw my parents with books. I remember my oldest, after he read Heart of Darkness coming to me quite excited that suddenly he gets so many Simpsons and Family Guy references (especially the Bart of Darkness episode). Both my kids cut their teeth on video game guides. They were my first tool in getting them to love reading but now, both have read through most of the cultural and historic classics. They both see the value to reading. I think parents who read have kids who read, just as parents who don't eat junk have kids who don't eat junk.
Tiger Woods will never again be studied for just his excellant golf game. The 2008 elections were handled the same way, where the personalities were portrayed larger than the issues.
Keep this in mind as the majority of the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics broadcasts where the actual sport with be padded with the "human interest" stories behind each of the athletes.
I think I may be growing up, seeing beyond the shallow. I shall have to pay more attention to ur acting and less to ur mind, Mr. Weber ;)