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Article: J.D. Salinger, fashion victim.(Missing Persons)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- April 7, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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J. D. Salinger remains for the time being in Purgatory. This most famous of living American authors, who has dwelt in eremitical obscurity and cantankerous silence for the past thirty years, is dead to the literary world, at least, and has not yet been reborn. He is, not exactly dated, but intensely different from what our culture has become since he was last heard from. At the same time, those few decades have been too brief a span to integrate him into the living past, as it has happened with Fitzgerald and Dreiser.
Salinger's reputation has recently become an issue once again with his startling decision to bring out in book form his last published novella, ...