From: Brooklyn
Category: Amis
Date: 7/2/99
Time: 10:50:13 AM
Remote Name: 207.238.28.10
Recently someone on the DeLillo list serve mentioned a reference to Don in Kurt Anderson's *Turn of the Century*. The posting referred to DD as a "lesser-known". The obvious question came to mind so I checked it out last night. Talking about some finance guy who was gaining a ublishing monopoly by reeling in many top writers; it goes something like "... including A-list biggies Bellow, Updike, Roth, Salinger, brit bad boy Martin Amis, movie-legit scriptwriter Tom Stoppard, and Doonesbury creator Gary Trudeau." Then he names some of the "lesser-known" such as Foster Wallace, Gaddis, DeLillo, etc...
Marty should lose this tag soon. Not that I have a problem with it, it was the initial draw in fact. But the bad boy has grown up. Salinger doesn't seem able to catch a break these days either. Has Amis ever written anything on Salinger or have they met? The beginning of *The Rachel Papers* was majorly inspired by Holden Caulfield's opening:
"If you really want to hear 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, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them."
How's *Catcher in the Rye* go down outside the US? Hopefully you've all read it. The general consensus is that it's banned in many schools because Holden takes the frickin lords name in vain some 200 + times. And there's probably some merit to that explanation. But I think just as importantly the ban shows how right he was in capturing the way "grown-ups" talk shit to younger people. *Catcher in the Rye* exposes the older generation as frauds. This is what immortalizes the book in my opinion and results in its banishment by numbskulls.