Fu Xiaoping
J.D. Salinger wrote a short story, "The Best Days to Catch a Banana Fish," published in the January 31, 1948 issue of The New Yorker. There is a sentence at the end: "Then he went over and sat down on the empty single bed, looked at the girl, pointed the gun at it, fired a shot, and the bullet went through the temple on the right side of him." The sentence shook the hearts of the editor-in-chief at the time, Harold Ross, who immediately decided to sign a contract with the 29-year-old, stipulating that all his future short stories would be preferred by the magazine.
Facts prove the New Yorker's vision. On July 16, 1951, "The Catcher in the Rye" was published. "If you really want to hear me, the first thing you want to know is probably where I was born, how I spent my inverted childhood, what my parents did before they gave birth to me, and such David Copperfield crap, but I honestly tell you, I have no intention of telling you all this." 」 From the first sentence, the novel brought a whole new voice to American literature and quickly attracted a large number of admirers. Great director Woody Allen said: "Reading 'Watchman in the Rye' is a pure enjoyment. The author's responsibility is to entertain the reader, and Salinger lives up to expectations, making it incredibly easy for you from the first sentence of the novel. ”
First edition of Catcher in the Rye
Salinger did not write easily. When he began writing The Catcher in the Rye, he was a soldier. He chose to join the army voluntarily in 1942 and received air force training and counter-espionage training, although he was born with aversion to war, and was deeply resented by the death of a family of Austrian Jews in concentration camps in the 1930s. During this time, he wrote as long as he had time, as long as he could find an empty trench. Even when driving a jeep, he carried a typewriter. One of his comrades recalled that when the area he was in was attacked, he was curled up under a table typing quickly. His Allied forces fought in the Bloody Battle of Utah Beach on the first day of the Normandy landings, suffering heavy casualties. And he survived the cold mud and bullets in the "fox hole" that made the warriors fester, with the manuscripts of the first six chapters of the novel. The brutal war left him with permanent mental trauma, and he volunteered to be hospitalized. During this time, he visited Hemingway in Paris, who greatly appreciated his talent. He married a French female doctor who had been interrogated by him, but soon left. In any case, Salinger refused to retire early due to illness and persisted until he retired. His daughter, Margaret, recalled that her father had collected his military medals and that he had always lived like a soldier.
He also guarded the manuscript of the book like a soldier guarding honor. After retiring from the army, Salinger overcame the trauma of the war while continuing to write The Catcher in the Rye, including the work that was completed in the pre-war war, which took him a full decade. After the novel was published, American students competed for a time to imitate the protagonist of the novel, Holden, and learn his speech and actions. Among them may also include Philip Ross, who later became a great writer, at least he witnessed the publishing event. Twenty-three years later, in 1974, he wrote that the university student's response to Salinger's work showed that he was closer to the times than anyone else and captured the significant struggle that was taking place between the self and culture at that time. Salinger is also considered the spiritual leader of the "Beat Generation" in the United States because of the rebellious spirit embodied in the novel. After all, six years before Kerouac wrote On the Road, he had already used this novel to poke at the backbone of the existing system; after all, before the "Beat Generation" became angry, the "Wheat Field Watcher" named Holden had perfectly interpreted the essence of "Beat".
Teachers and parents at that time naturally had no time to predict the literary historical value of this book. With the exception of a handful of people who thought it was an "extraordinary, talented debut," it's no surprise that the vast majority thought the book was full of truancy, smoking, drinking, sex, and foul language, and that it was banned by many schools in the United States at the time. Moreover, several homicides that occurred in the early 1980s are still inseparable from it. On December 8, 1980, chapman actually sat on the road and read "The Catcher in the Rye" after shooting the singer John Lennon, and he even recited the classic sentences in the book in court, explaining that the shooting of Lennon was to protect his innocence. The following year, in the suitcase of Hinckley Jr., who assassinated President Reagan, a rotten copy of "The Catcher in the Rye" was also found. All of this can only prove from one side that the novel has a great impact, and at the same time, it has contributed to the novel's greater impact.
12 years later, "The Catcher in the Wheat Field" crossed the ocean to China. At the time, the novel was only published in the form of a yellow book. The novel was really well known to Chinese readers 20 years later. That year, Lijiang Publishing House launched what became known as Shi Xianrong's translation. Sayings such as "The mark of a mature man is that he is willing to live humbly for some kind of cause" have been remembered and circulated by generations. Musician Gao Xiaosong named his company "Wheat Field Music"; singer Faye Wong sang "Watching the Wheat Field" written by Lin Xi; Da Zhang Wei confessed that it was this novel that created him today. This novel has influenced and created many writers. Su Tong frankly said: "Salinger is my most obsessed writer"; critic Xie Youshun said that the reason why Xu Xing and Liu Sola's writing was popular at that time was mainly due to imitating the language and narrative method of the Sellin format; and the critic Zhi An bluntly said that if there was no Salinger, there would be no Wang Shuo and no Wang Xiaobo.
Today, the novel, once recognized as a "banned book," is recognized as a classic of modern American literature, selling more than 60 million copies worldwide. And "wheat field" has also become a cultural symbol, engraved in the youth memories of generations, and what they remember in their hearts is certainly the enigmatic Salinger. The year after the publication of "The Catcher in the Rye," he bought an old mansion in Cornwall, New Hampshire, which was not accessible to water and electricity, for a modest fee, fulfilling Holden's dream of "building a log cabin with his own money." Another year later, he moved into the chalet. That fall, Salinger became acquainted with some local teenagers and allowed one of the middle school girls to interview her. He thought the interview would be published on the high school page of the local newspaper, and the resulting article was featured on the editorial page. Feeling deceived, he broke off his association with the teenagers and built a six-and-a-half-foot-high fence around his residence.
Since then, Salinger has rarely spoken to the press, published fewer and fewer works, and soon ceased altogether. His last published work was Hapworth 16, 1924, a short story of about 25,000 words that took up the entire 18 pages of the June 19, 1965 New Yorker. Meanwhile, his novel Uncle Wigley of Connecticut was adapted into the film Wishful Thinking, which was so bad that Salinger was no longer willing to sell the film rights, even if the big director Spielberg's request to adapt Catcher in the Rye was not spared. Since then, he has refused to transfer the copyright, whether it is television, film or stage plays, even if he publishes related audiobooks.
Salinger appeared on the cover of Time magazine
But the more this happened, the more Salinger received attention. Especially after it appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1961, more and more journalists ran to the town to find him. But for him, he has to protect his privacy like a hen protects his chicks. To this end, he did not hesitate to fight with people frequently. This really bothers the "Salinger fans". You know, like all writers who aspire to get ahead, he was known for his mind when he was young. Salinger was born on January 1, 1919, in New York, to a Jewish merchant's house, and as a teenager attended several preparatory schools before boarding at a military academy. Although he was intelligent from an early age, he was unremarkable in his studies. At the age of 18, he was sent to Europe by his father to learn the business of importing cheese and ham, but his interest was clearly in European art. After returning to the United States, he attended two universities, neither of which graduated. He fell in love with the playwright Eugene O'Neill," while she married Chaplin, who was enough to be her father. It wasn't until he was a student at Columbia University's night school that his talent was discovered by mentors. During this time, he boasted of his literary talents and ambitions and wrote letters to the editors of Story magazine to show off. But once the success came, it quickly lost its attraction to him. He told the editor of the Saturday Review that he had "greasy" the photo of himself printed on the cover of Catcher in the Rye, demanded that it be removed in a subsequent version, and ordered the agent to burn all fan letters.
Nevertheless, Salinger published his collection of novels Nine Stories in 1953, according to the literary critic Malcolm Bradbury, that if "The Catcher in the Rye" "reflects the protagonist's desire to trace the origins of responsibility and to make attempts to transcend barriers and distinctions in a world full of deceit, hypocrisy, and oppression," then Nine Stories "sees the world of children as real, and the world of adults as one that is being destroyed from within. Sacrifice human love forever in a despicable and dirty place". Salinger then published Frannie and Zuy in 1961 and 1963, respectively, and Elevate the Wooden Beams: Carpenters: Seymour: A Short Biography. These two mystical novels are very challenging to the reader's brain.
The Catcher in the Rye
It is as if the goldfish-keeping child in "The Catcher in the Rye", Holden's novelist brother D.B. wrote the short story "The story is so moving, it almost costs my life" that the protagonist of the short story "The Secret Goldfish" refuses to let people see his goldfish, because the fish was bought by himself, and so was Salinger after the hermitage, and there are rumors that he wrote a huge number of works, but refused to publish it, not to show it to anyone.
"Salinger fans" are naturally also particularly concerned about whether Salinger has written other works. In the absence of any empirical evidence, there are endless theories: he did not write a single word until his death; he wrote the same sentences repeatedly like the writer in Stephen King's novel The Shining; he wrote as much as Gogol did before his death, and then burned it. The testimonial accounts give people some hope. In her 1998 memoir I Was Salinger's Lover, the female writer Joyce Maynard, who revealed a 10-month affair with Salinger in the 1970s, saw an entire shelf of notebooks documenting his elaborately constructed large and eccentric Grass family, believing that Salinger had at least two new novels locked in a safe. Margaret said Salinger established a sophisticated archiving system for his manuscripts. The red marker indicates that the book can be distributed unchanged as it is, and the blue marker indicates that the manuscript must be edited again. Her account also hints from one side that Salinger may still have unpublished works. Salinger, on the other hand, seemed to be seeking only the "perfect peace" of not publishing anything, ignoring the "pleas" of some scholars: "Please assure us that if you have been writing all along, they will one day be printed in lead— at least in our lifetimes." In one brief conversation with a Reporter from The New York Times, he claimed that "I like to write, I love to write, but I only write for myself, purely for my own amusement."
Whether this is the case or not, only Salinger himself knows. All we know is that he spent more time and effort than most people embracing the world to escape fame, only to increase his fame, as the New York Times commented. People have speculated about why he is hidden. Some say that Salinger has "gone into Zen"; some say that this is a manifestation of "Jiang Lang's talent"; some people speculate that the experience of counter-espionage work during World War II made him like to "lurk"; some people think that he is mysterious and deliberately creates a sense of mystery to form some kind of "legendary" effect; some people speculate that he is fulfilling Holden's wish: "A hut built by himself somewhere, where he spends the rest of his life, 'away' from' the damn, stupid conversations with others." Others say it was a misreading of the youthful Andy Calfid that somehow led to Salinger's guilt. His "rejection" is to avoid re-reading and distorting the original.
And so on, and there are many opinions and disagreements. In my opinion, we may as well regard Salinger's reclusiveness as a gesture of "watching", which is the belief he has adhered to all his life. As the commentary suggests, his watchful eye is a reminder to people, to remind ordinary people to stop and think about their original dreams and beliefs. In any case, 70 years after the publication of Catcher in the Rye, it is the best day for us to read or revisit this "epic of youth". As we read, we might as well ask ourselves: When we are young, how many years later will we be able to "watch" our dreams like Holden? Or are we already grown up, and in the daily banal life, are we still "watching" our dreams?
Editor-in-Charge: Zang Jixian
Proofreader: Luan Meng