Tag Archives: J. D. Salinger

Imagining Little Ocean’s Future

Looking for the literary significance of my latest grandchild, I turn to Walcott, Whitman, Masefield, Coleridge, and Byron. What emerges is a mystical seeker.

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Reading My Way to Adulthood

As an adolescent, I used fantasy in an attempt to hold on to my childhood innocence and hated “Catcher in the Rye.” Little did I realize that Salinger’s novel describes my struggle.

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Portrait of the Lesbian as a Young Artist

Proust and James Joyce were particularly important in helping Alison Bechdel negotiate her complex relations with her father.

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Women Making Sense of Their Lives

The female Bildungsroman arose to help women make sense of their lives in the feminist era.

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What Holden Would Say about Mitt

Holden Caulfield would definitely apply his favorite word to Mitt Romney.

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To Esmé and Alban with Love (No Squalor)

With names from Salinger and Blake, my two new grandchildren have promising destinies.

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The Brave New World of Twitterature

Depending on your point of view, literature reduced to tweets is either comic or horrifying.

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Author PTSD Led to Billy Pilgrim, Holden

It can be argued that “Slaughterhouse Five” and “Catcher in the Rye” were both shaped by their authors suffering from PTSD.

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Parents, Kids, Schools & Banned Books

Parents pressure schools to ban books because they want to protect their children. Their children want the books because they have a different set of needs.

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