Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

As many readers know by now, author J.D. Salinger died yesterday.

And many readers have read Salinger. Even not-so-lit me read "The Catcher in the Rye" when I was too young to really understand all the East Coast stuff it inhabited.

Speaking of reading preferences, what were Salinger's?

Roger L. Simon comes to the rescue with this anecdote. Key passage:

My encounters with Salinger happened when I was a Dartmouth student (1964). The already reclusive Salinger would appear on the campus occasionally, usually to make a stop at the Dartmouth Bookstore to stock up on books. (He lived some twenty miles off in the town of Cornish, N. H.)

When he was around, word would go out to the artier types at the college and we would slip over to the bookstore and, well, stalk the famous writer, I guess you could say. By then he had published Franny and Zooey, among other works, which we greatly admired. But many of us were puzzled that the majority of his purchases were mere mystery paperbacks – Dorothy Sayers was one of his favorites. Undergraduate snobs, we had expected Dostoevsky or Camus.

This deserves further comment, but I'm not equipped to deliver. Are you there, Michael Blowhard? Anyone?

Later,

Donald

Why is it so surprising? I always assumed that if you loved writing, then you loved reading, and loving reading means reading what you take pleasure in. I love the heavy stuff, but if one was to go through my Barnes and Noble purchase ratio, the bulk of it would be science fiction and graphic novels. In other words Neal Stephenson is as important a writer to me as Dostoevsky.

Posted by: Spike Gomes on January 29, 2010 12:44 AM

"Undergraduate snobs, we had expected Dostoevsky or Camus." Perhaps he didn't enjoy reading in Russian or French. (Surely no snob would imagine reading those chaps in translation?)

Posted by: dearieme on January 29, 2010 1:29 PM

And another thing. Dorothy Sayer is good fun if you enjoy seeing an author falling in love with a character that she created.

Posted by: dearieme on January 29, 2010 1:30 PM






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