When somebody dies, you can safely say they no longer live. But in the case of author JD Salinger, who
died last Wednesday and was most famous for his 1951 book
The Catcher in the Rye, evidence of his continued existence will remain littered throughout our contemporary culture for ever.
You can see his influence on parents who name their daughters Phoebe, in young men with severe antisocial personality disorders, and in every single neurotic actor and writer ever put upon God's earth. Popular culture will continue to reflect the work of this great man, so even though we all miss him let's remember him today by watching one of these films or listening to one of these songs or inviting one of these celebrities over for a highball.
Here's a few places you can still find the man's legacy alive and well.
1. Winona Ryder
I actually don't think that Winona Ryder would even
exist if it weren’t for JD Salinger. She
is one his creations. From her ability to roll her eyes more sarcastically than anyone else on the planet, to her hellish descent from preternatural wise-child to professional career suicide ever since she shot herself in the head with that shoplifting scandal, she's straight outta Salinger.
Also, for her very first audition when she was 12, she recited a monologue from
Franny and Zooey which is just one of those 'fun facts' I like to keep you regularly informed with to reward you for watching. PLENTY MORE OF THESE TO COME.
2. PJ Harvey
Remember how, before you got the internet hooked up at home, you didn’t really know that much about your
favourite celebrities except for what you could glean from the occasional
Smash Hits interview? So you just listened to
their music and learnt all about them that way instead? Well, when PJ Harvey released
Is
This Desire? in 1998, from the very opening track 'Angeline', when she sings the line '
Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes', I knew that we were instantly bonded together forever by the fact we had both read the short story of this title from Salinger's collection,
Nine Stories.
3. John Lennon's assassination
Just as another random ‘Fun Fact’ segue, DID YOU KNOW that PJ Harvey shares a birthday with John Lennon? (October 9.) This information is made even spookier when you find out that there was also a Salinger connection to the Lennon murder—the man who shot him, Mark David Chapman, was carrying a copy of
The Catcher in the Rye at the time and the book was partially blamed for his atrocious act. This leads me to:
4. Six Degrees of Separation
The Catcher in the Rye features heavily in the amazing film of the play
Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare, where a brilliant Will Smith espouses his theory about the book to Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland:
This film has nothing to do with Kevin Bacon and if you have held back from watching it because you were under that impression, PLEASE go back and view it immediately because it will honestly blow your mind.
5. Field of Dreams
Remember this Kevin Costner film? No, I didn't think so. Anyway, one of the characters in it, the guy who is the reclusive author, is based on JD Salinger. The original novel that the film was adapted from (
Shoeless Joe by WP Kinsella) used his name and everything, but they weren't allowed to call the character 'JD Salinger' for the film so they called him 'Terence Mann' instead. FASCINATING.
6. Zooey Deschanel
Named after the male character in
Franny and Zooey. All my opinions about ZD are documented in painstaking detail
here so it would just be exhausting and tedious for us all to go into them again.
Let's move on instead to a flashback from 1994:
7. Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories
How much must Lisa Loeb's backing band have loved Salinger to name themselves after his short story collection, huh?!
Just as an aside, I find it outrageous that all those film critics who create the ‘Best Long Tracking Shot Ever’ lists consistently ignore this video clip for 'Stay' that sees director Ethan Hawke use a brilliant, single, unbroken tracking shot. The one is
The Conversation is ok-aaay, I guess, and that one in
Kill Bill is vaguely impressive too. But I still find this one gripping beyond belief.
8. 'The Young Folks'
The name of Peter Bjorn and John's hit 2006 song is also the title of Salinger’s first published
story from 1940. ANOTHER FUN FACT TO ENTERTAIN YOUR FRIENDS WITH.
9. Joyce Maynard
Joyce Maynard is famous for having an affair with Salinger when she was eighteen. She also wrote the screenplay for
To Die For, that movie Nicole Kidman was in,
and now director Jason Reitman (
Up in the Air,
Juno) is about to adapt her latest novel,
Labor Day, into a
film.
Incidentally, if you ever want to read one of the most cringe-worthy accounts of what it might have been like to have sexual relations with Salinger, her memoir
At Home in the World is the place to go. Please don't though, you'll only upset yourself.
10. The Royal Tenenbaums
Director Wes Anderson loosely based his 2001 film on
Franny and Zooey and Salinger's other Glass family stories. And once you can get over the fact that it's Gwyneth Paltrow who is playing your beloved Franny character, you realise she's actually sort of good in the role and the film becomes highly enjoyable.
BONUS FINAL FUN FACT
DID YOU KNOW
The Catcher in the Rye is
the only book Ricky Gervais has ever read? Wow!!