{"id":3062,"date":"2010-02-08T08:14:22","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T13:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=3062"},"modified":"2010-02-08T08:14:22","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T13:14:22","slug":"baldwin-on-salinger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/baldwin-on-salinger\/","title":{"rendered":"Baldwin on Salinger"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Haven\u2019t commented on JD Salinger\u2019s passing, essentially because I was never able to read any of his books; no matter how young I was, they just fell from my hands whenever I tried one of them. The yawn of that \u201cvision\u201d of \u201cinnocence!\u201d But just now was reading the forthcoming translation of the Algerian writer Nabile Far\u00e8s\u2019 novel The Passenger from the West<\/strong><\/a>, which reprints the author\u2019s interview with James Baldwin as published in Jeune Afrique<\/strong><\/em> in September 1970, and here is what Baldwin said about Salinger at that time \u2014 an evaluation that, in my eyes, remains accurate today (though I did read Cooper with much enthusiasm when I was Holden Caulfield\u2019s age, but happily in German \u2018lite\u2019 translations that, i.e. that had omitted all the religious and moralizing stuffing and left in only the bare-bones adventure tale):<\/p>\n

\n

Jeune Afrique<\/em>:\u00a0 Is there, in the United States, a difference between the new generation of white writers and the previous one?
\nJames Baldwin<\/em>:\u00a0 As far as I\u2019m concerned, I don\u2019t see a major difference between the two. Between James Fenimore Cooper and J.D. Salinger, there appears to me a very logical link. If you are capable of The Last of The Mohicans<\/em> you\u2019re certainly capable of writing Franny and Zooey<\/em>.\u00a0 Both works are situated equally far from reality. The story of The Last of The Mohicans<\/em> has never existed in any tribe. It only existed in the heads of people who were not yet Americans, but who were busy slaughtering in order \u201cto civilize.\u201d Mssrs. Cooper and Salinger don\u2019t interest me in the slightest. The latter gets off by bearing a sort of witness to American innocence. But this witness is out of whack with the facts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Haven\u2019t commented on JD Salinger\u2019s passing, essentially because I was never able to read any of his books; no matter how young I was, they just fell from my hands whenever I tried one...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,55,64,76,1],"tags":[415,420,546],"class_list":["post-3062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criticism","category-intellectuals","category-literature","category-obituaries","category-uncategorized","tag-james-baldwin","tag-jd-salinger","tag-nabile-fares"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}