"Don't ever tell anybody anything...

If you do, you start missing everybody. "

This is the last line from J.D. Salinger's iconic Catcher in the Rye, a book that almost every high schooler has read since its publication in the early fifties. I did some research on Salinger, and was surprised at my findings. Maybe I had learned these things in the ninth grade when we read the book; if so, they have escaped me. He apparently hated the popularity that Rye achieved. Its success caused him to despise the publishing industry and retreat to a home in New Hampshire where he lived in seclusion for the rest of his life. He gave very few interviews, his last being in 1980.

I guess I am almost jealous of this escape from the public eye. Someone who could write a book full of so much searching and angst would undoubtedly be bothered by celebrity and all of the outside definitions that go along with it. Franny and Zoey, published after Catcher in the Rye addresses his yearning for privacy. As a reader and person curious as to the lives of those that I revere, his reclusive lifestyle is frustrating....We want to know how you think and what you do and how often you sleep and what your house looks like and who your friends are and....! On the other hand, it is totally acceptable, even admirable, that he was able to thwart off biographers and snoopy literary critics and snobs.

Even in the face of his reclusiveness, we can paint ourselves an imaginary portrait of his personality through his numerous quotes and quips (yes! I love quotations...). They are pretty funny and thought provoking:

“It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.”

“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 "Fuck you" right under your nose.”

“I hope to hell that when I do die somebody has the sense to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetary. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.”

“It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.”

“An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.”

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as some day, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.”

“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”

“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”

What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by, or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.”

“I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”

“I don't exactly know what i mean by that, but I mean it.”

“Mothers are all slightly insane.”

“I don’t know about bores. Maybe you shouldn’t feel too sorry
if you see some swell girl getting married to them. They don’t
hurt anybody most of them, and maybe they’re all terrific
whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me.”

“I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty... you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.”

Looks like I'll be adding some Salinger onto my 2010 reading list...