J. D. Salinger is dead. We can’t say the world will miss him, because we’ve been missing him for almost 40 years. And if Hemingway’s example is anything to go by, I hope we never do see the novels he never intended us to read, for the sake of his legacy. But he did leave us a hell of a legacy and a literary benchmark to aspire to. Wherever you’ve wound up, Mr. Salinger, I hope you have found peace–you’ve escaped the world at last.
Good-bye, Mr. Salinger
Published by Samuel Snoek-Brown
I write fiction and teach college writing and literature. I'm the author of the story collection There Is No Other Way to Worship Them, the novel Hagridden, and the flash fiction chapbooks Box Cutters and Where There Is Ruin. View more posts
