The Heavy Stuff Ain't Quite at Its Heaviest By the Time It Gets Out to Suburban Minneapolis

Part XII (My Response)

I've enjoyed an episode of "Lopez Tonight*." That's the first time in my whole life I've ever typed that. Thanks for sharing that moment with me.

It's pretty tough to argue with the idea that we each have our own community to isolation ratio. It's also pretty tough to argue with the idea that J.D. Salinger's was pretty heavy on the isolation and light on the community. The thing that fascinates me about Salinger is that "Catcher in the Rye" was published in 1951 when Salinger was 32. He goes on to release a few more items throughout the next twelve years, and his last published work appeared in the New Yorker in June 1965. That means that he lived almost 45 more years (almost half his life) without publishing anything else. That is what is amazing to me.

How many writers/musicians/actors/chemists/lawyers/architects/professors/doctors/etc. would receive critical acclaim in their profession 1/3rd of the way of their life, work until the 1/2 way point in their life in that same career, and then just remove themselves from that career and make no further contributions in that field?

Perhaps this ties in with our discussion about how each of us has our own isolation/community ratio, but I think that with the way that technology has changed our interactions with each other, that isolation/community shift in the world as a whole has gone towards the community side of the ledger. That's not to say, though, that the community shift I'm talking about is what people would have called "community" 30 or even 15 years ago. It's this kind of quasi-community where I'm interacting with people on a much greater frequency through avenues like Facebook, Twitter, email, text messages, or even phone calls, but all of those avenues may crowd out more conventional face to face community experiences.

*This is not even remotely true.

Remember the Promise as a Kid You Made

Part XI (Luke's Response)

Back to the isolation/community issue. I think we agree that a balance between the two is best. But I want to think longer on the subject. Especially in a post-J.D. Salinger world (as we've briefly discussed), I find the idea of hermits (hermititude?) fascinating. Although we know little of Salinger, do you imagine he achieved a balance? Or do you imagine he went off the isolation deep end?

Generally I'd claim that man exists on a level that is "natural" to him until there is impetus for change. That is to say, every man is at every moment in balance. When he encounters something causing dissonance with his held beliefs/values, he acts in accordance with what's required for him to retain balance. For example- Owen has value system ZYX. At some point in his life, he encounters W. Now it's decision time. W doesn't fit into his value system of ZYX. So he either must adopt W or disregard it. After that his balance is again achieved.

I say Salinger did in fact achieve balance, not according to you or me or this mysterious "Owen", but according to Salinger. I think his isolation/community ratio was something like 90/10, where a normal social human might be closer to 50/50, or probably more accurately 10/90.

I also think specifically one's isolation/community ratio varies with age/maturity/season-in-life, etc. We've both admitted to a felt propensity toward introversion as we age, so our I/C ratio is different now than, for example, freshmen year.

Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. That's the first time in my whole life I've ever typed that. Thank you for sharing that moment with me.

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.