Other than a link to an obit, I haven’t offered anything on Salinger and his passing. He was, if you read last week’s essays and opinons, a most important author. What I remember is spending an entire summer looking for, finding, and reading anything he wrote that I could get my hands on. And not  because I was influenced by Catcher In The Rye – I didn’t enjoy the book when I first picked it up and it was only a bit of chance and circumstances that I ever came back to Salinger again.

My first job out of college was as a proofreader for a law book publisher.  If you think proofreading is a mind numbing business, try law. Although some comical things could happen such as when the typesetter, not having the Japanese idiograms for a trademark book, substituted Yiddish characters while he ordered the type. Unfortunately, the type was never placed in the text  and nobody caught it as the book went thru page proofs, repro, and mechanical stages . The final book was printed, bound, and shipped most likely wishing the legal experts a happy Shavuos.

One of my trenchmates was a former English major named Dennis who processed manuscript for release to the compositors (typesetters). I handled the next stages which were galley and page proofs. We sat next to each other in separate small offices, working quietly, until one or the other needed a break.

One afternoon, especially worn, I dragged myself into Dennis’ office and slumped down in his chair for a bit of philosophy and conversation. I was having a particularly hard time getting up the energy for another set of proofs and complained that I could find no good reason why I should spend as much time as I did since traffic was always pushing me for more and faster.

“Do it for that old lady,” Dennis said, “do it for the old lady in Kansas.”

What?”

“Ever hear of JD Salinger?” he asked.

Told him I read a brief bit of Catcher but really hadn’t read anything else by the author.

“Well,” he said, putting down his pen, straightening his tie, and leaning back in his chair, “Salinger wrote about the Glass family. They were featured on this radio program called It’s A Wise Child.”

Go on, I said.

“Anyway, one day Franny is complaining to her  brother Buddy that the older brother Seymour got on her case about shining her shoes before she went on the program. Franny thought it was a stupid request since they were on a radio show and that no one was going to see their shoes anyway.

“Seymour explained to her that somewhere out in the mid-west, in some dust-bowl, sat a dirt poor lonely old woman, in her rocking chair on the porch of her broken down house. Every day she looked forward to listening to that show and hearing the Glass family speak to her and it was the one true pleasure she had left in her life.

“So what?, said Franny.

So, Seymour said, if there is any one good reason you need to shine your shoes, do it for that old lady who sits alone all day waiting for us to come on the radio.”

As if there’s any other reason you need…

[Note – if you’re interested in the story, pick up and read Franny & Zooey… – J.]