In search of a ghost

Salinger by David Shields

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I am a big fan of oral biographies and J.D. Salinger, so in a way this bio was conceived and created for me, and I'm biased. That said, I can't say it's the best oral biography I've ever read (boy, does that sound dirty) and I'm sure that's the way Salinger would've liked it, or intended it to be. The great author was famously anti-social and add to this most of his contemporaries were dead when the book was made (Salinger was born in 1919), so one does not get the feeling of the recent past being relived like I did in the great oral biography "Edie" about Warhol and the Factory written soon after her death, and the social characters of the Factory ready to talk. I didn't really recongnize the names of anyone retelling their thoughts on Salinger, and the insights probably weren't as great as they could've been, and yet it's a far-reaching sprawling attempt to put Salinger's life in perspective, and I think Shields did this. I certainly came out of the book knowing much more about Salinger than I ever did, and certain episodes that I'd read a sentence or two about, such as how he befriended the high school kids of Cornish, N.H., soon after the publication of "The Catcher In The Rye," were brought more vividly to life and fleshed out. My biggest criticism is the intrusion of David Shields into the oral biography because there are several sections where he just starts writing and opining, almost as if he's a psychological prose writer (Salinger's least favorite kind of guy) and I didn't appreciate this. I'll admit Shields' conceit that "Catcher" was really Salinger's response to PTSD was interesting, but I didn't need to hear so much about Jerry's one testicle, and how this shaped his writing.



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