Jerry Salinger

Jerome David Salinger (January 1, 1919 NYC – January 27, 2010 Cornish NH) died yesterday at 91. Everyone tells the same empty Salinger story: recluse for the last 50+ years in NH, published almost nothing new in the past 50 yrs. Famewise, he didn't have to after THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (1951) [which I've never read]; but eventually didn't want to, or so it appears.

Read his Wikipedia listing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger for his mid-life obsessions (mainly Hinduish) & his distressed relations with much younger women, some of whom he married.

All I can add is that a Roman Catholic friend of mine now in her 70s says she dated him while in college & always refers to him as "Jerry", but reveals nothing personal between them. One wife & his only daughter, however, wrote painful memoirs.

Literati are now speculating about whether there are any unpublished Salinger mss. stored in a vault somewhere, like Hemingway (whom he met in the US Army during WW2.) There are.

(28 JAN 2010, Santa Clara CA)v3

A roof over

(for Karl Kadie)


Stories of homeless people
expose our disordered society,
but not its golden chain dangling
from Greenspan’s aynrandian peak
to Howard Jarvis' flat-taxian plain
& the disagora of realtors & bankers
enticing money-fiction fractioneers.

Will adequate housing ever become reality,
vs a speculatable commodity? Not while
free-market capitalism cons all too many
into believing that people can take care
of themselves if only they try hard enuf.

Free-market capitalism's operative fiction is:
free-will & freedom of opportunity magically
distribute everything that everyone needs.

A roof over one's head is given to most dogs,
but not most people, proving dogs outrank
people as desirable. Should homeless people
learn to breed less, roll over, become servile?

(13 JAN 10, Santa Clara CA)v5

Going Nowhere

For every Republican Senator
bought by for-profit health-care,
another Democratic Senator
is soully-owned by R.C. bishops.

Obama’s progress slows down;
after a few more defections,
this country will surely regress.
Hurry up! Call 911-Emergency!


(09 JAN 10, Santa Clara CA)v2

VPOTUS CHENEY's (untitled)

VPOTUS CHENEY’s (untitled)
memoirs (due out in 2011)
of his fed.gov years under
POTUSes Ford & Bush2
contain “a lot of interesting
stories that ought to be told;

I want my grandkids,
20 or 30 years from now
to be able to read it &
understand what I did,
& why I did it.”

A duplicitous grandad,
CHENEY just wants
to double-damn Dubya
& the Democrats. [QED]

(28 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA)v3; (quotes verbatim.)

"Nine"

The day after Xmas, I went with Ginny Zeitman & Ivo Adam, an Italian friend of ours who was a teenager in Milano in 1965, to see the new film "Nine" based on a newish play based on Fellini's film "8 1/2" (1965): Daniel Day-Lewis plays an anguished, imaginatively burnt-out Fellini @ 50 wonderfully; semi-clown Fellini would have envied looking as craggily anguished as Day-Lewis does. Ivo noted there are none of the usual Fellini clowns in it (unless, of course, you insist on considering Day-Lewis as a tragic clown.)

Here's Ivo's Italo-historico take on the film:

Bill, I think the reason "pundits - experts" fail to appreciate NINE is that they are looking at it as a musical without considering its Italian character.. For a (non-Italian) critic, this movie is a musical which could be set in the South Pacific...or Chicago... (but) it's Italian Teatro Del'Arte. When one sees Fellini, one sees a modern Goldoni, Servitore di due Padroni...rather than a "West Side Story"...I am glad we went...

Ivo Adam
455E Charleston Road Apt A321 Palo Alto CA 94306 (408) 627-3333

Just Buckyballs

Clearing horny nails
of invisible microdots
with a nanodigital file,
our new cyberczar
claims it can be done
safely & securely. We’re
bemused when he says
it’s all just Buckyb@lls!

(22 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA)v6

GO-slow Party

No longer obfuscating
things done under Dubya,
radical Republicans play
GO-slow Party, saying:

“Let’s do...Nothing!”
about global warming,
about health-care
costing anything.

The less they do now,
the more they block;
the more they block,
the worse things get.


(10 DEC 09, Santa Clara CA)v4