Christensen: Enigma, a success of the past

A quarter of a century ago, J.D. Salinger disappeared into his New Hampshire home. His death… A quarter of a century ago, J.D. Salinger disappeared into his New Hampshire home. His death last month initiated a new discussion of his small collection of works and, perhaps more prevalently, his famous reclusiveness.

Along with other literary hermits like Harper Lee, Salinger was eminent for his talent as much as he was for his enigma. He was a writer who didn’t write for an audience — he once famously called publishing an “invasion of privacy.”

What Salinger did then would never fly now, in a time when self-promotion is as much a part of an artist’s success as his talent.

Every band has a manager, every aspiring writer an agent — a whole industry built upon personal advertising. Does an author’s work lose potential when it is not constructed upon celebrity?

If “The Catcher in the Rye” were written today, it wouldn’t matter how much it spoke to a generation of disenchanted adolescents. Salinger would have had to run a blog and website to get the manuscript on a publisher’s desk. He would have to go on book tours and spend some time on Oprah’s couch to get anyone to look at the thing. He would need interviews on NPR and the “Today Show,” an appearance on “Larry King” and “The Colbert Report.”

To make any kind of money, Salinger would have to sell his work to a whole crummy slew of phonies. He would have to make sure he wanted it out there for the world to read and criticize.

Salinger would never have made it onto the New York Times best-seller list.

“The Catcher in the Rye” was included in a 2005 Time magazine list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.

The success of a book that lacks an audience makes me wonder what genius manuscripts float around today, hidden under the mattresses of authors too shy and insecure to expose their inner thoughts on Twitter.

Perhaps the greatest works come from the humblest of sources.

The lesson I take from Salinger is to look at this new generation of self-promoting authors and artists with a grain of salt. A single voice can resonate louder than a handful of mediocre self-promoters.

If the publishing industry were modeled more on Salinger and less on Hollywood sensationalism, we wouldn’t have deceptive authors like James Frey messing with our heads.

Today, the likes of Dan Brown and Sarah Palin frequently occupy the New York Times best-seller list. If fame were taken off the table, artists who invested in their work without agenda would barely have any room to enlighten us.

One of the first lessons I learned in my English writing classes is the importance of writing with a message tailored toward the reader.

We learn that a work should never be totally self-indulgent.

Modern authors succeed because they aim for a particular market. Stephanie Meyers wouldn’t have made her millions without a generation of brainwashed, over-sexed teenage girls.

On the contrary, Salinger proves that unmarketed, disconnected writing can successfully tap into a social undercurrent — in his case, issues like identity, belonging, connection and alienation.

Then again, perhaps the disconnected writer will never be able to write about anything besides those issues, at the risk of becoming tiresome.

In life, Salinger wasn’t too different from Holden Caulfield, a fictional character in “The Catcher in the Rye.” According to his daughter, Margaret Salinger, he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, likely from his time spent in the military during World War II. He married twice, the second time to a woman 40 years his junior. He also had an affair with an 18-year-old when he was in his 50s.

Disconnected from his own age group, he formed his best relationships with children. In letters to friend and author Lillian Ross, Salinger referred to the townspeople in his home of Cornish, N.H., as “crummy parents, summer parents.”

Salinger could write well about alienation because his life imitated his art.

I will always have a soft spot for “Nine Stories” and “Franny and Zooey” in particular. In “The Catcher in the Rye,” Holden Caulfield says, “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours.”

Salinger wrote a terrific book, but he was far too estranged to be a terrific friend.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what the man was like. It doesn’t even matter if he wrote the books for me to read.

But subconsciously, Salinger was able to transcend his self-indulgence to craft stories applicable to any lost, disenchanted adult teen. He didn’t try to make me worship him. He didn’t stand on a soapbox shouting for me to heed his call.

For that, he has my ear more than any celebrity author ever will have.

E-mail Caitlyn at cac41@pitt.edu.