[Prestidigitweeze]

I seek explorations of frailty, loss and viciousness that also navigate the outliers of empathy. Failure can be a more precise indicator than success, as Flaubert demonstrated in nearly every story he wrote.

My main issue with J.D. might be this: I object to his editorializing in the form of disillusioned interior monologues.

Salinger seems to privilege certain characters whom he feels to be morally superior, which in my view is the problem with choosing the Christ model for fiction: too often, you end up depicting virtue in the form of a self-portrait, which is not what an artist like Durer is really doing. And I tire of being expected to identify with main characters uncritically. Nabokov understood the vanity of that expectation.

But that doesn't mean new work by Salinger is unwelcome. His limitations and (in my view) ethical myopia don't cancel out his genius.

I can't recall whether I've mentioned this here before, but if not:

My mother was a high school music and English teacher who used to assign Catcher in the Rye in order to gauge students' understanding of social conformity. She wanted to see whether they recognized Holden Caulfield's depth or dismissed him as an outcast, complainer or twit.

Sadly, it is easy for modern readers to notice they're supposed to like H.C., so I'm not sure my mother's exercise worked beyond the mid-1960s (which is when she began to teach).

Coriolanus might have proved a better gauge.