J.D. and Me

I first met J.D. Salinger back in the 7th or 8th grade; can’t remember exactly. Not the author, of course, but his (perhaps) alter ego, Holden Caulfield, the catcher in the rye. It would have been around 1953,4. Ike was President. “I Like Ike,” said his campaign buttons, but my family, being good New York Democrats, liked Adlai; not much rhyme there.

The Korean War, which wasn’t a “war” despite the fact that lots of people fighting in it were dying, was either winding down or over, as I recall. It made the news sporadically, and it was only newspapers and radio in those days, TV not yet ubiquitous. The so-called Cold War was going on, and we learned about using the subways as air-raid shelters, and practiced ducking under our school desks in case the Russians had decided to drop a nuclear bomb on us – as we had on the Japanese. It was an uncertain time in the country and in my own life as well. And then Holden, his cap on backward, came along.

I went to a private school in NYC, my hometown, from the 2nd grade through the senior year in high school. The 2nd grade class I first entered was small. I don’t think there were more than 15 kids in it, probably fewer, and all boys. Private schools, usually called prep schools, were segregated by sex, economic class and racially as well, though there might be token minorities from wealthier families, or scions of well-off families from Latin American countries. But, like Holden’s prep school, these were (almost) all white, all same sex, middle and upper class bastions of privilege, and all were rigidly hierarchical. Acceptance of and obeisance to authority was the mind-set of the day, as was so in the past and would remain so for some years to come.

Coming into this school in the 2nd grade I was a newcomer. Most of the others had been there since kindergarten. It took awhile to make friends, not being an outgoing type, quite the opposite in fact, but I did fall in with a small clique of boys, three or four of them. We connected through sports, which I always loved and still do. We remained a tight coterie for five years, until the 7th grade. Then there was a falling out among this band, and they kicked me out of their midst. It seems so trivial now, almost 60 years later, but at the time it was quite devastating. I went from five or six close friends, kids I’d known since the 2nd grade, to no friends in a class of about 30 by then. Not a fun time. Then I met Holden and we became friends.

He said out loud what I’d only thought. He explained my inchoate thoughts and feelings to me: the resentment, the longing to stay a child though on the cusp of adulthood, or feelings of tenderness or longing that could never be allowed expression no less even harbored. He spotted the phonies, of which I’d been one, and he felt things that weren’t permitted in the world I knew, where authority wasn’t questioned and hypocrisy wasn’t made evident. No one said what he or she felt or what he or she really thought. We’d been programmed entirely differently. And Holden walked into my isolation and alienation and unexpressed longings, and in a sense saved me. It saved me from being alone, knowing that someone out there knew and understood an adolescent’s misery. A catcher in the rye.

J.D. Salinger died this year, 2010, an old man in his 90s, an enigma and self-imposed recluse. I read recently that early on, when he and his books first became renowned, he enjoyed his celebrity. That may be true, but it didn’t stay that way for long. For most of his life, Salinger eschewed celebrity, notoriety or accessibility. In fact he jealously guarded his privacy and remained outside and apart from any need for attention; certainly a rare bird in today’s world of desperate “Look at me!”

I’ve read his books, more than once, and as so many others waited for the next one that was never to come. Rumors abound that he continued to write even after he’d stopped publishing, that there are books and other manuscripts secreted somewhere where he lived in New Hampshire or some other place, and perhaps may get published some day. But that’s all just speculation as of now. Maybe in death J.D. will stay as mysterious and as inaccessible as he did in life. Maybe he just no longer needed acclaim, or felt the desire to express what he thought and felt. Perhaps his Buddhism had brought him to that place of detachment and unconcern with achievement or recognition or any of the morsels ego feeds on. Whatever his motives for reclusion, or need to be apart from the world’s goings on, will probably stay a mystery unless it’s revealed in some future publication of his writing; if in fact there is any.

So one is left to sit and wonder what becomes of Holden, or Franny, or Zooey and the whole Glass family. Which one was Salinger, or was he more likely all of them? Why did the teacher quit teaching? Was he fed up with us; with himself, what he saw all around him in the news of the world? It must have seeped through his fortress of solitude. Then a thought comes up – if he truly wanted anonymity why not live in another country? Why burrow in rural New Hampshire where, sooner or later, some will seek you out? Or was that part of the plot? Was he saying, “If you want me, truly want me, you’ll have to come and get me?” It seems that some did, and he was a man with a wife and family, so he was known to a privileged few. What he was like as an ordinary person is anybody’s guess, but I’ll always admire that he chose ordinariness and what must have been a plain existence in isolated countryside. Life comes down to routine and immediate relationships in such slow changing settings, and the distractions constantly dangled before us can be shut off, or at least limited,

I have a hunch he continued to write. Where his thoughts took him, what he wanted to observe, how he wanted to construct a story, what he thought he might say to us is, again, anybody’s guess. But I, for one, want to know.

This guy, in the guise of a disillusioned teenager, had entered my life, crossed my path, and made me see things differently. I was spoken to by someone I felt in league with, and who understood what a shitty place the world could be sometimes, and who would easily comprehend your pain. At the same time he sparked the rebellion and resistance you felt but kept at bay. He unlocked the resentment and anger that lay just under the surface, about being shoved forward, competing for some prize that must be had, or following some path that had to be taken. There was this driving pressure to become something, someone, when what you wanted was to slow down and find out who you were. Holden understood this. He understood me. It’s become a life-long pact this connection to the character and the author who fathered him. Enough of Holden rubbed off on me then to last a lifetime, and for that I’m grateful. But, oh, how I’d love to know what old J.D.’s been thinking about all these years.

A Different Take on Change

It’s time for a major change and probably half of our population isn’t going to like it. Here’s the change: It’s time that women take over leadership in the U.S. No, wait a minute, make that the whole world. Why, you ask – I’ll tell you why.

Women are probably smarter than men or at least intellectual equals. Everyone who’s been in our school system, which is just about everyone in the U.S., knows this. Historically they were excluded from the academic world and were therefore at a disadvantage, but when given the chance to compete with men at basic and higher education they’ve proven equal or better at such learning skills.

Women are by and large emotionally more mature and less aggressive than men. Look around, with some minor exceptions it’s plain to see. Women don’t usually start wars, fight in armies, join gangs bent on violence, and try to physically impose their will, intimidate, or coerce others. Women like to talk about things; men like to hit each other. Men’s aggressive and violent nature has led humanity to constantly wage war, exploit and subjugate the weaker, and generally has caused mayhem and misery wherever their path has led. Can there be any denial of this?

Yes, yes, there are some exceptions in both sexes one can always bring up: women warriors, women tyrants, psychopathic and sociopathic women throughout history, as well as men who don’t behave as aforementioned, but in aggregate this percentage in any society is so small as to be statistically insignificant. Women tend not to destroy and tear asunder, but to build and maintain. Men like blowing the crap out of things.

Maybe all this is biological – genetic, chemical and/or psychological, but the fact remains women are superior when it comes to valuing life and men are superior when it comes to destroying life forms. Women tend to cooperate, men tend to compete. Which attribute do you think is more conducive to a (reasonably) sane and harmonious world? Which attribute is likely to lead to conservation and which to annihilation? What has the history of men as leaders and the dominant sex shown us? Men have become so proficient at aggression and destruction that they’ve created the very weapons that can, in one afternoon, reduce almost all life on the planet to ashes and ruin; forever lethally polluted with radioactivity. We know this to be a fact.

So in light of everything we know to be true about men and women, played out over millennia, it’s time for a radical change. All leadership positions – government, industry, education, health care – you name it, has to be turned over to women. And here’s the kicker; even the head of household roll. Ooh, that must hurt, guy readers.

But freak out not, guys, there’s plenty for us to do. Most of it involves upper body strength, but not everything. Let’s look at this logically. What are we best at? Yes, drinking beer or wine or whatever and getting loaded; getting all juiced up on sports; arguing; showing off; having pissing contests for arc and distance, and screwing or imagining screwing every female on the planet. Oh yeah, and barbeque. I think that about covers it; the important stuff anyway.

So that still leaves us with what to do. What should guys be doing all day? How about housework? Upper body strength is very handy for this. Farm work? Yes, by all means, perfectly suited. There’s construction and environmental reclamation. There’s public safety work – police, fire, crossing guards, etc., – and men can still be doctors, lawyers, CPAs, teachers and the like; they just can’t run any hospitals or firms or organizations. That’s the lady’s; excuse me, the women’s domain.

Sports are still totally open to guys, but they can’t own any teams. The women owners and CEOs will make the trades for players, and in the long run it’ll probably be a more even playing field vis-à-vis team strength. Guys can still own small businesses and do their club things – Moose, Rotary, Lions, etc. – play softball, touch football or basketball on weekends and pretend they’re pros, and coach and talk about sports endlessly, as always.

There’s other stuff guys can do and are equipped for, but I’m afraid shopping is not one; for that we need robots, but when it comes to leading the country or making big decisions that affect populaces, uh unh. One small exception would be installing Sarah Palin in any leadership position; we’re talking qualified women here with reasonable intelligence. Guys, we’ve had our turn for tens of thousands of years, and we all know that slightly below the surface, or blatantly outright we’re still barbarians.

So suck it up, guys, it’s time the women took over. They can’t possibly do any worse than we have and odds are they’ll do a lot better and we’ll all be happier. If they screw it up in the coming millennia we’ll talk about a change then.