I'm Gonna Take Me That South-Bound All the Way to Georgia Now
Congratulations to Mr. John Middleton for correctly naming "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden as the Monday Song of the Day. I've never been a huge Soundgarden/Audioslave/Chris Cornell fan, but I suppose that the fact that I was forced to listen to an entire Audioslave album during a pledging "visit" in the Fall of 2003 reinforced some sort of reverence for Chris Cornell's vocal abilities deep in the recesses of my mind.
Usually when people talk about the fickle nature of praise from the public, they will throw around the cliche that we live in a world where people ask "what have you done for me lately?" It's true that the modern news cycle moves so quickly, and we lose interest so easily, that we need constant peak performance or otherwise we will move on to the next big thing, but as I was reading a story today regarding litigation between J.D. Salinger and a Swedish author named Fredrik Colting (which you can read here), I was dumbfounded by the following sentence:
Mr. Salinger, who has not published any new work since 1965...
Think about that for a second. J.D. Salinger was born on New Year's Day 1919. He writes Catcher in the Rye and has it published at age 32. That's 1951. He continues writing for the next 14 years and has a piece published in The New Yorker in 1965.
Since then?
Nothing.
It seems amazing to think that someone who has lived to be 90 years old, and wrote arguably one of the most well known works of fiction in the 20th century, would publish a piece at 46 years of age and then go the rest of his life without having another word published in any form whatsoever.
Usually when people talk about the fickle nature of praise from the public, they will throw around the cliche that we live in a world where people ask "what have you done for me lately?" It's true that the modern news cycle moves so quickly, and we lose interest so easily, that we need constant peak performance or otherwise we will move on to the next big thing, but as I was reading a story today regarding litigation between J.D. Salinger and a Swedish author named Fredrik Colting (which you can read here), I was dumbfounded by the following sentence:
Mr. Salinger, who has not published any new work since 1965...
Think about that for a second. J.D. Salinger was born on New Year's Day 1919. He writes Catcher in the Rye and has it published at age 32. That's 1951. He continues writing for the next 14 years and has a piece published in The New Yorker in 1965.
Since then?
Nothing.
It seems amazing to think that someone who has lived to be 90 years old, and wrote arguably one of the most well known works of fiction in the 20th century, would publish a piece at 46 years of age and then go the rest of his life without having another word published in any form whatsoever.
Labels: Audioslave, Catcher in the Rye, Chris Cornell, J.D. Salinger, Soundgarden
posted by Justin @ 7/01/2009 08:42:00 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Maybe he ghost-wrote the petition. That would be "published," in a sense.
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where proper venue lies, and what my lousy damages are like, and how my future profits were harmed and all I earned before this, and all that Joe Jamail kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
-Middleton
Forced to listen to whole Audioslave album...that is the definition of hazing.
John,
Fantastic work there, my friend. If that were the first paragraph of a pleading, it would be fast-tracked towards Pantheon status.
Connor,
Perhaps you should turn in the perpetrator (coughChrisJacobscough). After extensive research, I can confidently tell you that there is no statute of limitations for such an offense.
If that's not Gladys Knight and the Pips's "Midnight Train to Georgia," it ought to be. Can you name a better 70s Motown classic? No. Don't talk to me about "Proud Mary" or "Respect." Great songs themselves, but they're sort of the Pearl Jam to Gladys Knight's Nirvana.
Jeremy,
Close, but no "proverbial" cigar, my friend. Also, I hate to disagree with you on the Motown classic point, but my vote goes to "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder.
I'll grant "Superstition" is good. But what does Stevie Wonder have that Gladys Knight doesn't? He sure doesn't have the Pips. Besides, I love the "woo woo." Who doesn't?
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