Catcher in the Wry.

I heard the news last night oh boy, that J D Salinger had died. Although the news was rather sad, I never was a big fan of Catcher. But I got to thinking once again. I enrolled at LB City College seven years after graduating from high school. It was the summer of love, 1967. When I went into the Navy, I never had any plans of attending college. It just wasn't part of the game plan. Fast forward seven years. I was nearing my eight year Navy stint and had attended Guided Missile A School, Terrier BT3 surface-to-air missile C School and Missile Technician advanced B School. Add in two tours over to Viet Nam and I was a very different hombre from the hopeless kid who left Cleveland. I figured that if I could pass College English, I could probably get through college. I not only passed, I got an A. The instructor, he never taught or actually instructed, would have us write for an hour at every "class". Near the end of the term, we were to write a term paper on a literary work subject to his approval. I wanted to do Catch Twenty Two. He would have no part of it. It wasn't worthy enough and didn't have enough source material available. What bullshit. He assigned me Catcher In The Rye. So write I did, on Catcher. Because of that incident, I've always have borne an ill-logical resentment to both Catcher and JD. Well now he's gone so I guess that I'll just have to get over it.

In reading about JD, how he only wrote one work of fiction and was a recluse for most of his life, I got to wondering if JD wasn't the model for Sean Connery's role in Finding Forrester. The movie is one of my favorites and I think it is very well written.

Come to think of it, Joseph Heller the writer of Catch 22 didn't crank out all that much verbiage either and I don't recall seeing his picture on the cover of People Magazine.