"...all the david copperfield kind of crap..."

j.d. salinger turned 90yo today.
i imagine he got up, brewed some coffee & went to work, writing. just like i imagine he's been doing the last 50years or so. like a monk w/his meditation. i'm imagining that salinger views writing pretty much as a kind of meditation, a way to slough off the encumberances of self.
in william gaddis' great book, "the recognitions," there's a moment when the main character, wyatt, describes working on a painting & losing yourself in the work to someone & they say, " well, that must be satisfying" & wyatt is stunned by this failure to SEE, " there is no one to be satisfied," he stammers. but his interlocutor persists, "well, at least YOU know you've done something." "it's just the doing, it's never done," wyatt mumbles.

"catcher in the rye" is one of those incredibly deceptive novels. it seems to be a quick read, seems to address teenaged angst. but the novel is hanging on a more significant story structure, one that most westerners aren't aware of. i think this was one of the first novels whose underlying structure i discovered for myself. a little satori moment. i'd been studying the world's religions. i just read the buddha's life story. it all just clicked. holden was the buddha.

& he is, kind of. that's the kind of thing you do in college lit courses. it's the kind of thing that probably drove salinger to his very famous reclusiveness. maybe cornwall is a nice, peaceful place. who knows? but he hasn't published anything for a long time now. i do imagine him writing. every morning. & i'm hoping for a HENRY ROTH miracle. i remember years ago, in the nyt, john updike listed in his top 10 novels of the year, "hard heart," by salinger. what the hell happened to it? back into the famous file cabinets, i guess. maybe he's just teaching us about patience. & desire. maybe "hard heart" & all the imagined books will be published sometime in the future. until then, we can always re-read:

"That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'F- you' right under your nose."