Friday, January 29, 2010

J. D. Salinger died...

...at age 91. He was reclusive and had a reputation for eccentric behavior. Joyce Maynard, with whom he had a 10-month relationship, wrote:

Salinger was controlling and sexually manipulative and a health nut obsessed with homeopathic medicine and with his diet (frozen peas for breakfast, undercooked lamb burger for dinner).

Lamb burgers? Where can you buy ground lamb? Not at any grocery store I've ever been. It gets worse:

Margaret Salinger, the writer's daughter, said that her father was pathologically self-centered and abusive toward her mother, and to the homeopathy and food fads she added a long list of other enthusiasms: Zen Buddhism, Vedanta Hinduism, Christian Science, Scientology and acupuncture. Mr. Salinger drank his own urine, she wrote, and sat for hours in an orgone box.

Enough! We get it! He was nuts. (What's an orgone box, anyway?)

3 comments:

Joe Tracy said...

he lives in new hampshire and apparently people saw him getting food at one of our dining courts the day before he died.

Joe Tracy said...

also, he was 91.

mtracy said...

Thanks; I made the correction.

Also, do they serve good lamb burgers at Dartmouth?