JD Salinger Viewed As White Male Canon Fodder

With the white population of the U.S. declining toward minority status, the country's cultural traditions are episodically under attack and perhaps nowhere more forcefully than with respect to literature.

It's time to revise "the canon" -- the prevailing list of great books that are not just mostly euro-centric, but heavily the work of white male authors, reformers contend.  The canon, while unofficial, is nonetheless highly influential, particularly when it comes to deciding what books children should read in school or be taught in college.

The latest assault comes from Ron Charles, a white male himself, who reviews books for the Washington Post. He seized upon J.D. Salinger's 100th birthday (Jan. 1, 2019) to bash the relevance of "The Catcher in the Rye," an iconic coming-of-age novel that has sold over 65 million copies since it was first published in 1951.

"We live in a world overpopulated by privileged white guys who mistake their depression for existential wisdom, their narcissism for superior vision," Charles said.

"We have met the phonies and they are us," the critic declared, apparently feeling it expedient to  signal his own personal virtue. More accurately, he might have declared that "he" had met the enemy and it was "himself". Just who are the "we" and the "us," one wonders?

Noting that the U.S. is experiencing a renaissance in young-adult literature -- a topic I have addressed in several earlier posts (search on the label "young adult fiction") -- Charles said it is "no longer tenable to imagine that the anxieties of a white heterosexual young man [Holden Caulfield]  expelled from an expensive prep school capture the spirit of our era." Today's "snarky young anti-hero" is more likely to resemble the black French Canadian boy in a forthcoming book called "The Field Guide to the North American Teenager," by Ben Phillipe, a black male born in Haiti,  he said.

But, as Clark's article makes clear, Salinger and his small set of published works aren't dead yet.  The New York Public Library, he noted, is planning a special exhibition of manuscripts, letters, books and artifacts for October 2019.  And once Salinger dies, the trustees of his literary estate could seek to cash in on the theatrical, film and television demand for his stories estimated to be worth as much as $50 million.

"Don't think it won't happen," Charles said, implying demand for the white-male literary canon still has legs.

As for "The Field Guide to the North American Teenager," the public will in due course decide whether it needs 65 million copies or not.