Salinger

I confess that I’m rather touched by this piece of news concerning J.D. Salinger. As opposed to the image one may adopt of the reclusive author, feverishly scribbling and reading, the only treatment or distraction from a frantic and overactive mind, buried away in some writer’s hermitage with books lining the walls and papers stacked like stalagmites, it transpires that Salinger enjoyed coach trips around Niagra Falls and the Grand Canyon, among other small delights. Imagine that: regular chappies like you or I sat beside Salinger on a bus without the slightest knowledge. One supposes that after, say, twenty years of seclusion it would be quite possible to enjoy the theatre or the local pub unmolested. Unless you’re a female, of course. I feel it’s only appropriate to take this to its inevitable conclusion, and parade around declaring how I bumped into Harper Lee at the sushi place the other day, and how I saw Thomas Pynchon doing karaoke with a trumpet on Saturday night. Fact.