J.D Salinger is my favorite author, and why it’s a struggle.

J.D Salinger first entered my life when I was 17, for many many years I've always collected books and read primarily Only classics and collected primarily only classics, Salinger happened to be a very popular option so I read the catcher in the rye. I know that many people don't like this book, and I know a many lot of people who do not care for the kind of reading that I partake in, and that's ok, I understand that if you're not coming to a book to spend days reading into every little aspect of every line in a book and word choice, than Salinger isnt going to be for you but that's exactly what I found and exactly what I love so much about his work, and to me, he does it better than any other.

I want to address here, the main reason why I'm making this post, and it's about struggling with and wrestling with, enjoying media made by people who have done bad things. If you did not know, Salinger had on multiple occasions spoken to, and wrote letters to minors in both romantic and sexual manner, even having a young woman who was underaged live with him for some time, and although she had mentioned that he never made any advances at her, one day he up and got angry and told her to leave, never to speak to her again. Salinger had issues, probably sick urges and evil thoughts that can be found in his work, and for me, finding, looking in to, discussing, and especially understanding the way that he thought and the way his thoughts may have influenced his works, allowing for full transparency is the best way, at least for me, to still enjoy the media made by , in some cases a monster.

The peotection and preservation of innocence.

The most common theme present in salingers works is the idea of growing up, the idea of children being inherently innocent, and that this innocence is something to be shielded from adulthood for as long as possible, found in, I'd say nearly 95% of what Salinger has written that has been made publicly available, all at least including some form of this theme. Some more obvious than others-

As is in the case for the catcher in the rye, the entire concept of "the catcher in the rye" the physical job that holden wishes he could do, is the job of protecting children from growing up, throughout the story we witness holden struggle with accepting things that have happened to him, accept people, accept death, all because in some way, holden would need to face both his childhood and his future, which he fears in some sense, to lose or to retain either.
His hypocrisy, in that he hates all that "adults" do and yet does every one of them.

In a more devastating depiction though, one of salingers more popular short stories, "a perfect day for banana fish" shows to me the deepest look into salingers own mind, and in any case my conclusion is that this story paints a much clearer picture of the events that transpired between himself and the young girl who was living with him.
I will not recount every detail of this story to you here, but in the end, whether you want to take that Seymour(the main character in the story) is a predator is up to you, but I think in any case he is meant to be sympathetic, and perhaps to salingers own mind he wants to reconcile his own perversions or his own maybe idealistic view of "innocence" through depicting what is, a man playing with a child, in an innocent way, only to either by fault or by accident, destroying the innocence and the child is made uncomfortable and leaves, only for the man, Seymour, to go back to his hotel room and commit suicide.
The story of the banana fish though, (if you have not read it, the man in the short story tells the little girl a tale about a fish that swims into a hole and inside the hole are hundreds of bananas, and the fish eats and eats until it is too big to escape the hole and so it dies there.) and the story of the banana fish is the story of Seymour, devouring until he cant go back.

Maybe Salinger told the girl to leave before he destroyed the view of innocence he held in his mind.
I only hope that no victims are hurt by what I wrote here, and Im sorry if you disagree with my approach to dissecting or appreciatint media by less than amazing people.

Thank you for reading.