Newswise — Thomas Payne, associate professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, is available to discuss the death of J.D. Salinger and his literary legacy. Salinger, 91, died Wednesday at his home in New Hampshire.
"When I have gotten together with fellow novelists, and the talk turned to our literary influences, there is only one author we all agreed on: J.D. Salinger,” said Payne, assistant professor of English and author of the novel “The Pearl of Kuwait.”
"We say it sort of guiltily, like we had chocolate bars under our pillow. Maybe because he wrote about a disaffected teenager or maybe because we feel the love of our literary lives ought to be more of the species 'literarius rarus' in some way. But Salinger was greater than just about everyone in what he captured on the page with Holden Caulfield, who stood and stands always for all sensitive souls calling for a salve of meaning in a distracted modern world. We writers are all Holdens and are forever beholden to J.D. Salinger," Payne said.
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