February 5: Mr. Antolini, D.B.'s Stories, Saint Miguel Cordero

...They both read all D.B.'s stories--Mrs. Antolini, too--and when D.B. went to Hollywood, Mr. Antolini phoned him up and told him not to go.  He went anyway, though.  Mr. Antolini said that anybody that could write like D.B. had no business going out to Hollywood.  That's exactly what I said, practically.

Mr. Antolini is Holden's favorite English teacher.  When Holden doesn't know what to do at the end of the book, he phones Mr. Antolini.  Antolini is a little older than Holden's brother, D.B., and Holden trusts him.  That's why Holden calls him up in the middle of the night, desperate for an understanding adult.  Of course, things don't turn out well with this encounter, but, before things go sour, Holden makes this observation about Mr. Antolini:  he has good taste in literature.  Like Holden, Mr. Antolini thinks D.B. has real literary talent.


I'm sure a part of J. D. Salinger is present in the character of D.B.  In his lifetime, Salinger only published four books.  The Catcher in the Rye came out in 1951.  Nine Stories was published in 1953, and Franny and Zooey appeared in 1961.  Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour:  An Introduction (1963) was his last book.  And the last thing he published was the novella Hapworth 16, 1924.  That appeared in the pages of The New Yorker on June 19, 1965.  After that, J. D. Salinger fell silent.  He never published another word, spending the rest of his life as a recluse.

Salinger was in his early twenties when he began publishing his stories.  He was 32 when he introduced the world to Holden Caulfield.  He wasn't fond of being a celebrity and spent much of his life running from photographers and filing lawsuits.  For a writer, he really didn't like people very much.

February 9 is the feast day of Saint Miguel Cordero.  Miguel was born in 1854, and, of course, exhibited holiness at a very young age.  He had a vision of the Blessed Virgin at the age of five, and he was "miraculously preserved from a mauling by a wild bull" when he was eight.  I don't really care about all that.  The thing that interests me is that he published his first book at the age of 17.  In 1892, at the age of 38, Miguel was elected to the national Academy of Letters in Ecuador.  Besides school textbooks, he also wrote and published "odes, hymns, and occasional plays."  (I love the "occasional" in that sentence.  So offhand.  So ho-hum.  Imagine writing a biography of Ernest Hemingway and saying, "he wrote short stories, essays, and the occasional novel.")

I don't hold Salinger's or Miguel's success against them.  They deserved it.  Probably.  One of them turned into a famous misanthropic hermit, and the other became a saint.  I published my first (and only) book when I was 37.  I'm ancient, and I haven't even come out with a second collection yet.  I will never catch up with either of these guys.

Saint Marty isn't jealous.  Really, he isn't   He has a blog.  Salinger and Miguel didn't have blogs.  So there.

J. D. doesn't look very happy