I read Catcher in the Rye when I was a teenager, and remember liking it.
Followup discussion with his son:
I’m not surprised.
IIRC, one of the few people who was able to talk to Salinger (maybe 20 years ago) quoted him as saying he was still writing every day.
Cool. Are they going to produce that game show he was working on?
Has he written any novels or just short stories, essays, and ramblings? Novels would be interesting.
The Catcher in the Rye is his famous novel:
Um…yes, I mean in the decades since he stopped publishing.
:dubious:
Now we can find out if he knew things and what he knew!
Isn’t that the truth!!!
It is whispered that his philosophical, even quasi metaphysical musings about the symbolic importance of the introduction of Cool Ranch Doritos to the collective American psyche during the dark days after the Invasion of Grenada has kept his most devoted scholars up debating for days on end.
Sure. He just used “Thomas Pynchon” as his pen name.
Then he really got reclusive because everyone was trying to pinch on him.
Since he stopped publishing, how has he stayed afloat? Is Catcher in the Rye still selling that many copies?
It was and still is a fantastic read. One of my favorite books.
Sadly, it turns out it was almost entirely Terminator fanfic.
If it ever sold well enough for him to buy a house, and he bought that house someplace relatively cheap to live, did a fair job managing his budget, etc. I could see someone successfully going into early retirement based on a big seller like that and pulling it off.
The key to living off book sales is to not live off your book sales, it’s to live off the percentage small enough that your investments continue to grow/diminisht at an appropriate rate for your expected lifespan + fudge room
Yes, I think that for many years, it was super common in high schools and the sales money from that book probably provided enough salary to not need anything else.
I would guess Harper Lee also made enough to live well enough just off her one book.
Catcher is still in print and selling enough to provide enough income to live on. In addition most of his other works are also available and are often taught at the college level. His stories continue to be anthologized.
I once read an account about a woman hired by his publisher as a secretary who had to deal with “the Jerry problem” – keeping people from finding ways of contacting Salinger.