Happy Birthday-Ish, Holden Caulfield

I had a piece in the Irish Times during the week, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the publication of JD Salinger’s CATCHER IN THE RYE, which featured contributions from authors Sarah Webb, Ed O’Loughlin, Eoin McNamee and Belinda McKeon. It opened up a lot like this:

“If you really want to know about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap …” - J.D. Salinger, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’

Routinely hailed as ‘the great American novel’, J.D. Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ offers a story that is on the face of it modest in ambition and scale. First published on July 16th, 1951, it follows the disaffected Holden Caulfield on his perambulations around New York city late in December, 1949, in the wake of his expulsion from an upmarket prep school. Intended by Salinger for an adult readership, Holden’s intensely first-person tale of his experiences amid the snobs and ‘phoneys’ of his social set has fired the imagination of generations of adolescents ever since.
  “God, I loved that book,” says Sarah Webb, herself an author of young adult novels, and who first read ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ at the age of 15. “I read it in one all-night sitting, gobbling up every page. The next night I turned back to Chapter 1 and started all over again. I remember slowing down towards the end, distraught to be coming to the end. I wanted the reading experience to last forever.”
  Holden Morrisey Caulfield first appeared in the short story ‘I’m Crazy’, which was published in Colliers in 1945 (a previous version had been accepted in 1941 by The New Yorker, but not published, as it was thought too bleak in tone). A reworked version of ‘I’m Crazy’ would eventually provide the material for the first chapter of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, establishing Caulfield’s expulsion from Pencey Prep, and also the unfussy, stream-of-consciousness first-person narrative that seems to bypass the critical faculties to speak directly to the teenage heart.
  The novel sells roughly 250,000 copies per year, with total sales topping 65 million …

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

The Curious Case Of The Non-Meme Meme

Memes being the interweb’s version of pesky chain-letters, I’m not going to tag anyone in particular for the meme-ish notion below. But feel free to run with it, and link back here if you like. For simplicity’s sake I’ve kept it to one book per author, and the idea is that the last book on your list is the book you’d most like to die reading, if you had to die reading. To wit:

A long, long time in the future, in a galaxy far away, the doctor says, “Sorry, but you’ve only got a month to live.” What ten books would you re-read in your last month?
  My choices runneth thusly:

THE MAGUS – John Fowles
THE LONG GOODBYE – Raymond Chandler
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (and ‘Teddy’ from NINE STORIES) – JD Salinger
SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
THE GREEK MYTHS – Robert Graves
PROSPERO’S CELL – Lawrence Durrell
THE DOUBLE TONGUE – William Golding
THE ODYSSEY – Homer
STARDUST – John and Mary Gribbin
PETER PAN – JM Barrie

  For anyone interested, I'd like the theme music from ‘Match of the Day’ played as they carry the coffin out. Cheers.

Git Along, Lil’ Dogie: Lawks, ’Tis The Friday Round-Up

It’s Friday, so we’ll have an end-of-week round-up thingy. Any objections? No? Then read on …
  I met the radiant Arlene Hunt (right) for a cwaffee during the week, to have a chat about this project here, during which Arlene came up with an idea for a terrific chapter. During the course of the chat, we talked about ‘Kennedy’ moments in Irish crime, such as the murder of investigative reporter Veronica Guerin in 1996, and the murder of Lord Mountbatten in 1979.
  Another of those moments that had seismic consequences for Ireland, the Omagh bombing, gets the Ruth Dudley-Edwards treatment in AFTERMATH, due this April from Harvill Secker. To wit:

The Omagh bomb was the worst massacre in Northern Ireland’s modern history - yet from it came a most extraordinary tale of human resilience, as families of murdered people channelled their grief into action. As the bombers congratulated themselves on escaping justice, the families determined on a civil case against them and their organisation. No one had ever done this before: many are likely to do it in the future. It was a very domestic atrocity. In Omagh, on Saturday, 15 August, 1998, a 500lb bomb placed by the Real IRA, murdered twenty-nine shoppers - five men, fourteen women and nine children, of whom two were Spanish and one English: the dead included Protestants, Catholics and a Mormon. Although the police believed they knew the identities of the killers, there was insufficient evidence to bring charges. Taking as their motto ‘For evil to triumph, all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing’, families of ten of the dead decided to go after these men through the civil courts, where the burden of proof is lower. These were ordinary people who knew little of the world - they included a factory worker, a mechanic and a cleaner; they had no money, no lawyers, and there was no legal precedent for such an action. This is the story of how - with the help of a small group of London sympathisers that included a viscount and two ex-terrorists - these Omagh families surmounted all the obstacles to launch a civil case against RIRA and five named individuals, developed with reference to recent European legislation by one of the world’s leading human rights lawyers. Along the way the families became formidable campaigners who won the backing of Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush as well as of Bob Geldof and Bono. How these relatives turned themselves into the scourge of RIRA is not just an astonishing story in itself. It is also a universal story of David challenging Goliath, as well as an inspiration to ordinary people anywhere devastated by terrorism. RIRA today: ETA tomorrow: the Mafia, perhaps, the day after.

  If there’s any justice, it’ll be a smash best-seller.
  Meanwhile, the boys from Norn Iron are coming on strong. Here’s Stuart Neville on ‘How I got Published’, while Sam Millar (right) has just declared himself open for business over at his shiny new interweb lair, MillarCrime. Drop on over and tell him a joke.
  Elsewhere, a Gallic-shaped birdie tells me that Tana French is working away on her third novel, which currently rejoices in the working title FAITHFUL PLACE, and which will continue the trend of IN THE WOODS and THE LIKENESS in that it features a character from the latter novel as its main protagonist. “Frank Mackey, Cassie Maddox’s old boss from THE LIKENESS, is the narrator this time,” says Tana. “He’s spent his whole adult life thinking that his first love Rosie dumped him and ran off to England, and he hasn’t spoken to his family since that night. Then Rosie’s suitcase shows up, hidden in the wall of a house on their old road ...”
  If we’re all very good, Tana will have it ready for us by the end of the year. Unfortunately, I’m not being at all good over at John McFetridge’s place, although I am becoming cooler by the day, and through no great effort of my own. Fetch’s metafiction Baltimore Bouchercon crime spree continues apace … while Peter Rozovsky, in a Tana French-like twist, has leaped from a minor character in McFetridge’s story to become the author of a parallel tale of murder and mayhem in ‘The Baltimore Drive-By’. I can’t keep up …
  Finally, can it be true that J.D. Salinger (right) has turned 90?

The Mighty Quinn: Just Got That Bit Mightier

Ain’t technology wonderful? Courtesy of the statcounting doohickey the CAP elves use to justify their criminal indolence, it’s possible for the Chief Google-Watching Elf to keep an eye on the names people are searching for in order to arrive at our humble blog. The first two names in the Top Three won’t surprise anyone, being John Connolly and Ken Bruen, but the third name might. Take a bow Seamus Smyth, author of the cult classic QUINN and long-suffering beneficiary of CAP’s ongoing campaign to have QUINN republished (scroll down, scan left). Who’d a thunk it, eh? Now comes the news that the reclusive Smyth – Irish crime fiction’s JD Salinger, basically, albeit with 97% less bananafish – has written a second tome, which is currently abroad amidst the unsuspecting publishers of Europe. Consider it a particularly bloody bucket of chum dumped into shark-infested waters, and brace yourself for the feeding frenzy. Meanwhile, even as you read this, a detachment of commando elves are scaling the walls of Smyth’s remote mansion, their mission to return with a m/s copy of said tome or die trying. Our money’s on the latter – yon Smyth, he takes no prisoners ...