Another vacation buddy goes on his way

I can remember friends waiting with an impatience that bordered on mania for their next vacation.

Some would go to Hawaii over Christmas break while others would head to Mexico during spring breaks.

As for me, my family was always too busy with farm work to go on a trip that could be termed a real vacation. In lieu of jet-setting to other places (much to my relief since flying makes me sick), I have always preferred to take my vacations via literature.

So, imagine my dismay when one of my favorite traveling buddies, J.D. Salinger, died last Friday.

Now having never met Salinger, it was not a crushing moment. It was, however, the end of my sliver of hope that he would relent and publish more work.

As author of Catcher in the Rye - arguably his most famous work - Franny & Zoey, Nine Stories, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, Salinger took me to places I relished. Even if there was no possible chance of coming back with a tan.

A brief discussion of Salinger could be heard in the newsroom shortly after I discovered the news and my editor asked me why I liked Salinger so much.

I answered that I appreciated the care with which Salinger wrote his characters, particularly the fictional Glass family, but it’s more than that.

I have always envied Salinger’s ability to write like people speak and to capture a specific moment in a person’s life with the clarity of a photograph. That Salinger occasionally addressed his readers directly in the text only added to my enjoyment. It felt like a conversation with an old friend rather than a book I was reading.

And while I confess a general pleasure-taking in authors that have since passed, I find this particular passing saddens me a little more than most because along with Salinger’s passing, so passes the razor-slim chance that his works chronicling the Glass family ever seeing the light of day.

For a writer who grew to hate fame and ordered fan letters burned before being delivered to him, the lavish fame of his passing seems somehow all the more intrusive.

So, in parting, this bibliophile would suggest that if you haven’t gone on vacation with Salinger, you might give it a try next time you’ve only got an hour for traveling.

Pam Robel is the paginator for the Columbia Basin Herald. The rest of the time she is a collector and reader of books that transport her to places not seen and introduce her to people she would not otherwise have the fortune to meet.