"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

It's been a while since my last entry, in which I said I hoped to write a review of the latest Relient K album, and I'm sorry that I never got around to that, maybe I'll do it at some point.

I was going to start the new year with reviews of both the new You Me At Six and Motion City Soundtrack releases, but today something happened that I felt was more important to comment on. And in the end, these reviews, much like the Relient K one, will wait.

It's not so much music related, but when I started this blog I did say that I'd inevitably use it as an output for my various meditations.

Sadly, today (ok, yesterday if we're being overly pedantic) the world received the news that the novelist Jerome David, or J.D., Salinger passed away at the age of 91 (a BBC article about his death can be found here). He the was author of one of my favourite books of all time, from which the title of this whole blog owes its name. Of course I am talking about 'The Catcher in the Rye'.

I know that the 1951 novel has become kind of pigeon-holed as the emo Bible, documenting the all too familiar thoughts and feelings of the alienated and highly cynical Holden Caulfield as he travels back home after getting expelled from school( I'll even admit that the only reason I ever gave the book a chance was down to The Ataris' song "If You Really Want to Hear About It" from their album 'End Is Forever", which was loosely based on Salinger's text). However, like millions of others before me, reading it for the first time at 15 it was the first book that seemed to speak to me personally and said the things I was feeling at the time. Obviously, Holden is slightly unhinged, as he retells events from what we are to assume is some kind of institute, but his disillusion with the world and cynicism towards all of the 'phoney' people he meets are things that every teenager goes through at some point during this pivotal time in their life.

Don't get me wrong, I've read better novels since I first read 'Catcher', and certainly far more academic and socially aware texts (this is kind of part and parcel of doing an English Literature degree), but this book really represents a time in my life and re-reading it takes me right back there. In the same way that I discussed when writing about my top 50 albums of the past decade, I've canonised this novel not because of its technical or critical merit, but because of it what it means to me personally and the way it is part of my own history. That said, it IS a critically acclaimed novel, and still taught in high school literature classes all over the English-speaking world, but having never studied it myself, this is not why I feel the life and writing of Salinger should be celebrated.

In a slightly related note, my good friend Si sent me a link to this album earlier. It's a recording of an Ataris show from back in 2004 featuring all their hits, and it took me right back to a time when they were THE band among our friends, and for this reason they'll certainly remain one of my favourite bands of all time. 'Blue Skies, Broken Hearts ... Next 12 Exits', 'End Is Forever', and to a lesser extent 'So Long, Astoria' were the soundtrack to my early-to-mid teens, and I owe an incredible amount to these albums for both shaping my future musical tastes and inspiring my own brief dabbling in song-writing and playing in bands.

Unfortunately, unlike Salinger, who wrote his seminal work and soon after disappeared into a reclusive lifestyle for the remainder of his life, The Ataris insisted on making music when they were well past their musical 'sell-by-date'. Kris Roe kicked out all of the members that worked alongside him on his past albums and released the terribly boring and pretentious flop 'Welcome the Night'. Apparently a new album is due for a release this year, that will see them heading back toward their roots, but I'm not getting my hopes up too much. So for now, I'll enjoy this heavy dose of nostalgia and pretend it's 2004 for one night only.

Anyway, to go back to the main point of this post, I didn't know a whole lot about J.D. Salinger apart from the fact he wrote a great book that was enjoyed not only by me, but disaffected youths the world over, and for that, I think we should celebrate his memory. If you've not read 'Catcher' then give it a go, although if you're reading it at the age of 20+ I'm not sure it will be quite the same as it was reading it to the soundtrack of sentimental Southern Californian pop-punk when nothing was really important, yet the smallest things in life could seem like the end of the world.

J.D. Salinger

01.01.1919 - 27.01.2010