We lost one of the American literary greats this past week. Fringe celebrates J.D. Salinger’s ineffable legacy with posts from writers who have been affected by his work.

Today, Vernacular editor Alexis Hauk reminisces about the recluse:

I admit, I hadn’t cracked a Salinger novel since early college when, on a trip to Italy the summer after freshman year of college, I poured all that over-privileged “existential longing” of mine into Franny and Zooey. Those two months from Milan to Palermo in a bus were some of the sweatiest, most alcohol-drenched of my life. And I often wonder if, had we all had not been in such a perpetually hungover, dunder-headed, 19-year-old haze for so much of the trip: would we have admired and appreciated the Pantheon a little more?  Or Pirandello’s grave?  Or the head of St. Catherine?

Just as I wonder about that trip, I sometimes question if—by reading his first and seminal work, Catcher in the Rye, as an adolescent—Salinger’s skill as a writer was completely lost on me, unfairly relegated to a “juvenile” classification early on.  Eudora Welty, no slouch herself, called Salinger’s writing “original, first-rate, serious and beautiful.”  But all I really remember is how I could, like, totally relate. With sober reading glasses on, steady on my own two feet, I prepared this weekend to give Catcher another look.

As it turns out, the entirety of Boston had the same idea as me.  Because bookstore after bookstore—from Porter Square to Rodney’s in Central to the usually reliable “The Coop”—came up empty-handed.  There was no way to beat the invisible stampeding hordes snatching down copies from every shelf. Some people call this boost in sales after famous people die the “death surge.” According to Jeff Bercovici of Daily Finance, a mere 15 minutes after word of Salinger’s death had trickled into the public sphere, CITR had already shot up at 565 on Amazon. And as of this post, Catcher in the Rye is at number 5, beating out Nicholas Sparks and—not that it’s a competition—the late great Howard Zinn.

So, ever since Jerome David Salinger died at the age of 91 on Thursday, the only Salinger material I can lay my hands on is not actually by Salinger. These would be the literary critics—some of whom have derided Catcher as appealing to our most narcissistic, whiny selves, others of whom deem Holden a prodigy, or a symbol of the era he inhabited. Honestly, all I want is my own crack at Catcher in the Rye again.  Not to read about it, or about Salinger, but to read for myself: the adult version of an adolescent Salinger fan.

As Holden Caulfield himself said: “What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by […] I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it.  If you don’t, you feel even worse.”

{image via The Book Bench}