One of my favorite authors, J.D. Salinger, passed away yesterday. Four years ago I started a collection of his ("Raise High the Roofbeams," I believe) and quickly devoured all of the short stories he ever published. I never made it more than a third into "Catcher in the Rye." I was, perhaps, the only young American who simply couldn't sympathize with Caulfield. But the enigmatic Glass family had me charmed. Salinger's use of literary irony and his way of astutely crafting dialogue between family members -- intimacy without being overwrought with affection -- warmed and delighted. So, thank you, Mr. Salinger, for being a writer. Thank you for publishing these stories. They have had such a tremendous impact on my writing as well as modern America and its literature. Even if you never wanted to achieve such success, you did.



Update: I really cannot recall with which book I started. But I recall afterward recommending all of the books, though they were (in my opinion) best when read in a particular order. I will have to see if I have it written anywhere which order exactly it was.

Here is one of the excerpts from "Raise High" (a very funny one, though not the absolute best) I quoted on my blog in 2006:

As the Matron of Honor followed me toward the bedroom, where the phone was, the bride's father's uncle came toward us from the far end of the hall. His face was in the ferocious repose that had fooled me during most of the car ride, but as he came closer to us in the hall, the mask reversed itself; he pantomimed to us both the very highest salutations and greetings, and I found myself grinning and nodding immoderately in return. His sparse white hair looked freshly combed - almost freshly washed, as though he might have discovered a tiny barbershop cached away at the other end of the apartment. When he'd passed us, I felt a compulsion to look back over my shoulder, and when I did, he waved to me, vigorously - a great, bon-voyage, come-back-soon wave. It picked me up no end. "What is he? Crazy?" the Matron of Honor said. I said I hoped so, and opened the door of the bedroom.

Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

Just when you have given up all hope, here I am! Where? Here, at my desk in our new apartment -- a place that deserves the title of "home," the object of a mission I have assigned myself to for over three years now. The apartment is in the sort of Victorian building easily found in Seattle. It has smooth, wooden floors and a picture rail from which we will hang pictures. The kitchen is small, but the appliances new. The space is bright and warm. The apartment sits high, on the third floor in a building atop Capitol Hill, which is one of Seattle's highest points. I am a couple of blocks from a district known as "Millionaire's Row" as well as the Volunteer Park Conservatory. But I am also walking distance to the co-op, a few independent movie theaters and a branch of the public library. When I look out of this Craftsman-styled window, I see a residential street and wide strips of grass. Beyond the trees rest the snowy Cascades. Is it snowy here in Seattle this January? Not a bit -- over the past few days the temperature has hovered around 50 degrees. It has been fairly sunny, too, I must add.

Is it an adequate substitute for Berlin? No. But what city in America is?
Am I better employed now than I was in Europe? Not really.
Do I feel the tiniest bit caged?
Does the jealousy of my youthful romps rot through the surface of my soul? Yeah, it does.

But nothing means that I can't again cave in to my wanderlust. For now I ought to accept some responsibility and put my education to "practical" use (if I can manage). There are some things that must be tended to.

A day or two before we embarked on our cross-continental jaunt, my mom presented me with a Garmin Nüvi 255. Matt had been suggesting that we pick up a GPS unit for the trip, but I wanted to do it the old-fashioned way, relying on our instincts and a Triple-A atlas.

While I have no doubts that we would have reached our destination just fine without the navigator, the Garmin helped tremendously in ways I had not anticipated. Whether we needed to find a Papa John's pizzeria in Billings, Montana, a motel to stay for the night in Kadoka, South Dakota, or the route to tourist attractions off the highway (Corn Palace, Mitchell, SD), the Garmin was there. Riding on those long stretches of highway with little in sight, you often wonder when you will have another chance to stop at a rest area or gas station. Even though it wasn't always 100% accurate, the unit was able to give us some inkling of what was to come.

Seattle driving is a bit of a mess. Downtown always has heavy traffic, streets intersect in the middle of steep hills, parking is expensive ($1.75 an hour at the meter -- if you can find a spot). There are many one-way streets and thick highways criss-crossing one another. It gives us directions to the entrance of the Arboretum, to the co-op, to the movie theater and, when we can't find it ourselves, to home.

Like I said, it's not perfect. It doesn't have every single destination in its pre-programmed list. Sometimes the route is not direct (three left-hand turns?!), but all in all, it is incredibly useful. The size allows it to be stashed in a pocket in case I'm shopping downtown and want to find a specific store. I look forward to taking it on all my forthcoming trips as I get more familiar with the city -- even if it means sacrificing the better (read, more engaging) way of doing things.

(Plus, it's just one new gadget to accessorize. Last week I ordered this little, leather protective cover in brown.)

With mountains as its jagged teeth, the horizon loomed ahead like a devouring mouth stretched wide, hungry. With nothing to block the way save for a rare tumbleweed or cornstalk snake, the smooth highway lapped us deeper inside.

Like this, we drove across South Dakota, through southern Montana and on into the slick, snowy hills of Idaho. The small towns along the way hosted truck stops and the occasional IGA, selling knives and bison jerky to the pilgrimaging hunters. Schools resembled penitentiaries. The pit-stop motels of these towns are tropes for the modern-day writer, plucked by the likes of Cormac McCarthy and the beloved Nabokov, signifying the simultaneous freedom and imprisonment of anonymity. No one knows you, no one can track you down. But no one will save you, and no one cares. You become a target.

On the highway, the scenery romances its tourist. A cattle ranch in Montana doesn't sound so bad after all, especially considering the easy access to four-packs of sarsaparilla.

The Badlands, as Matt describes them, resemble some alien planet or lunar surface. For hours there is little to see except for flat grasslands, then with a slight detour off I-90, long-eroded ravines and towering rock formations in gray, yellow and sienna dominate the landscape. Signs warn of rattlesnakes and cars pull off the road to photograph mountain goats. Just outside of the park, we passed a large prairie dog colony and, nearby, a patient hawk.

Idaho possessed none of the flat potato fields I expected. Instead, we drove nervously along high ridges, overlooking the snow-covered evergreens of national forests and wondering if it was too late in the season to spot a bear. Our iPod, fueled with over 24 hours of short fiction and other storytellers, kept us going.

We arrived in Seattle midweek, reaching our short-term sublet just south of downtown. The next day I began a Netflix account (our apartment has a projector and large pull-down screen), and Matt walked down to the central library. Yesterday - Thanksgiving - we went for a run around Green Lake on the north side of town, putting up with a little drizzling rain. Our dinner was late (9:00), but neither of us minded. We made a small vegetarian feast complete with pumpkin pie. For our main course, we made a broccoli-portobello-gouda quiche with homemade crust. For our sides, we had a cranberry-walnut sauce, garnet yams with a butter and mustard vinaigrette and garlic sauteed green beans. And with plenty for leftovers!