Two authors and one critic (Feb. 2)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
Mom would have been rolling her eyes this past week because of all the praise that was raining down on things that she called “just dirty.”
First came the death last week of J.D. Salinger, the author of the best-selling book, “Catcher in the Rye.” When Mom saw I was reading it, once while I was in high school, she picked it up to have a look. “Where did you get this dirty trash?” she asked. I had borrowed it from a friend, who had bought it on a trip to Boise. “It’s just dirty.” She took it, and I had to wait to read it until I was in college.
And as I look back on it, the book’s principal attraction probably was the fact that it was dirty, but also considered literature by some of my English teachers (the same ones who downgraded any papers that dared to use profanity).
Salinger stopped publishing his writings in the 1960s, and basically became a recluse in New Hampshire. He died
at the age of 91.
Another person who left us last week was Howard Zinn, who wrote a book called “A People’s History of the United States,” which was published in the 1980s. It was basically Marxist apologetics applied to U.S. history, and I was surprised to learn Mom got hold of a copy, because history wasn’t her reading mainstay. She was more of a mystery and romance fan. But I happened to see a copy of it at her apartment once on a visit, and I asked her about it. Turns out she bought it for $1 at a library used-book sale.
“It’s just dirty,” she said. “It’s just like what they teach about America in East Germany, or in Russia. It’s like the Americans can never do anything right. Why doesn’t that Zinn move to Russia?”
He probably preferred Boston, his home. Howard Zinn was 87 when he died.
Both authors were praised posthumously by their many admirers. Mom would not have been among them.
