{"id":176,"date":"2005-09-23T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-23T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=176"},"modified":"2005-09-23T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-23T08:05:00","slug":"the_catcher_in_the_vanguard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2005\/09\/the_catcher_in_the_vanguard\/","title":{"rendered":"The Catcher In The Vanguard"},"content":{"rendered":"

A number of musicians I have known felt a connection with J.D. Salinger’s character Holden Caulfield. This is from my biography of Paul Desmond<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Paul thanked his father for recommending The Catcher in the Rye<\/em>, J.D. Salinger\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s novel published a year or so earlier. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not only practically perfect,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he wrote Emil, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the closest thing I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve yet seen to the way you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d write, if you wrote, which you should, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m rapidly going broke buying copies of it for miscellaneous friends here and there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Salinger\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s half-comedy, half-tragedy about a young man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s self-destruction resonated with Desmond\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s view of the human condition, particularly his own. He gave me a copy of it shortly after we met. I was happy, years later, to respond with Walker Percy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Moviegoer<\/em>, that beautiful novel about loneliness and grace, in which Paul found a reflection of himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks to Terri Hinte of Fantasy Inc., for a link to the writer James Isaacs’ autobiographical reflections on Salinger and Bill Evans. Isaacs’ radio musings were inspired by the new CD box <\/a>of Evans’ 1961 Village Vanguard recordings. Holden Caulfield knew plenty of loneliness, and so did Issacs when he was a teenager. In his audio essay <\/a>for WBUR in Boston, Isaacs talks about the day he wandered into the Village Vanguard and found solace coming from Bill Evans’ piano.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A number of musicians I have known felt a connection with J.D. Salinger’s character Holden Caulfield. This is from my<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}