We keep reading tributes to Salinger by famous authors or, more worth noting, written by adults.  But what about teenagers, the main readership of Catcher in the Rye?

Over at The New York Times’ Room for Debate a discussion panel recently focused on the role of Cather in the Rye with young audiences today. They asked writers and teachers: “Does Catcher in the Rye resonate with teenagers today? Does the Holden Caulfield version of alienation speak to a generation connected on Facebook?”

In what was not the smartest editorial move, the NYT didn’t have a young adult on the panel. Luckily, and true to form, teenagers showed up in full force in the comments section to weigh in on the discussion.

A lovely morsel from one young reader: “Well, I am sixteen and find it shocking how cynical all of you adults are about our generation. We just read this book a few months ago and each and everyone of us loved it and felt a deep connection between ourselves and Holden. Times have not changed as much as you think. We are not as shallow as you think. Salinger’s novel is as universal as it is timeless. But I’m beginning to think that maybe Holden was right about all of you.”

It might be new news or old news to you, but Amanda Palmer is engaged to Neil Gaiman, and because Coraline (based on Gaiman’s book) was nominated for best animated feature, Amanda Palmer ended up walking the red carpet at the Golden Globes.

Here’s her absurdly lengthy and hilarious account of her trip there, including photos of her in a “naked dress” (really just a little see-through) sporting pit hair, with a more conservative dress for the after parties tucked into her ukulele case, which she carried with her down the red carpet.  She even had Neil take a photo of her lying down on the red carpet as “dead amanda palmer on the carpet.”

Just one of the many priceless gems from her account: “There was a huge black dude at a table next to us and he had an awesome facial tattoo and I almost went up to compliment him.  He looked really familiar.  I found out a few days later it was fucking mike tyson.”

As we mentioned earlier this morning, Dave Eggers, arguably one of the most actively engaged and socially involved writers (almost the living antithesis of Salinger) paid tribute to Salinger for The New Yorker, probing the question of why Salinger retreated so deeply away from the public eye. But Eggers is not alone in his remembrance:

Lillian Ross on her long friendship with Salinger.

Adam Gopnik on how Salinger “remade American writing in the fifties and sixties in a way that no one had since Hemingway.”

John Seabrook on Salinger making him popcorn for movie night.

Our own Jason Roberts remembers J. D. Salinger.

Cuba’s progressing fast when it comes to recognizing the rights of transgendered peoples.  First the ban was lifted on sex-change operations in 2007, and now not only are the surgeries being performed in Cuba, they’re being paid for under the government’s universal health care plan.

It probably doesn’t hurt that the president’s daughter, Mariela Castro, runs the Center for Sex Education in Cuba, helping to prepare people for the procedures. And Mariela Castro’s plans to bring about change don’t stop there.

The first weeks of 2010 are inevitably flooded with top ten lists of 2009, because people apparently can’t live without them.

But maybe instead of reading the same top ten lists, we could have interesting lists of overlooked, underrated, left behind things.  Yeah, we know that Inglorious Basterds is probably on most top 10 film lists, but what about those films that we missed?  Here’s a list of the ten great movies of 2009 that may have passed you by.

Harper’s has a condensed, slightly humorous (not funny haha) and downright offputting review of 2009.  From “Scientists in San Diego made a robot head study itself in a mirror until it learned to smile” to learning that the actual Man in the Mirror died, 2009 was a rough go.

Some highlights?

- Newspaper circulation in the United States declined to its lowest level in 70 years.

-Sea levels continued to rise, and a 40-yard-wide asteroid just missed the earth.

-Thirty-nine million Americans were on food stamps, 54 percent of graduating U.S. business majors lacked job offers, and two gunmen robbed a man of one dollar in the parking lot of an Ohio Wendy’s.

Haven’t had your fill?  Read on here.

It seems that people will only grow to love David Foster Wallace more as the years go on.  It’s what usually happens when you can’t get someone anymore.

Here’s a great link to more DFW morsels from Lincoln Michel over at The Faster Times, from the anticipation of Wallace’s unfinished novel, Pale King (due to be released this year), to a great video of him drinking from an empty glass while talking about getting irritated with people who make him parse unnecessarily.

An excerpt:

…more

Ron Rosenbaum over at Slate, has been chronicling catchphrases for a while, and now at the dawn of 2010, he picks the catchphrase of the decade, and also does away with the awful ones by “throwing them under the bus.”

For example, who doesn’t hate “it is what it is”? …more

Laura Miller, staff writer at Salon as well as a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, has come out with a new feature called What to Read.

Salon’s not doing away with it’s exceptional book coverage, from reviews to interviews – rather it’s just adding to it.  How?  Well, in Miller’s words: …more

Rumpus contributor Zak Smith has made known his top three books of the year over at HTMLGIANT.

Smith’s picks are a delightfully eclectic mix:  The Original of Laura by Nabokov (a fragmented, not meant to be published, unfinished novel), Ugly Man by Dennis Cooper, and Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave.

Missing from Zak Smith’s list? Bolano. And we only mention this because Smith makes a point to. Following the suit of the Gene Simmons line, “Music critics like Elvis Costello because music critics look like Elvis Costello,” Zak Smith writes, “Book critics like Roberto Bolano because book critics look like Roberto Bolano.” And, in true Zak Smith style, he doesn’t stop there.

“Why should only famous people be famous? Fuck that! Fame for all! Even if it’s just the tiniest bit (which turns out to be the perfect amount).” …more

If you haven’t caught a whiff of the hubbub surrounding Werner Herzog’s latest film Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, that might be because you’re not much of a cinephile, which it turns out, neither is Herzog.

His latest movie starring Nicholas Cage  is essentially, maybe, sort-of, a very slight non-remake remake of Abel Ferrera’s 1992 movie Bad Lieutenant.

Why do I hem and haw and call it a non-remake remake? …more

Seriously.

Time Magazine originally started out selecting a “Man of the Year” as a way to sell magazines in the down holiday season, which then turned into “Person of the Year”.  Now they’re thinking of naming Twitter as 2009’s Person of the Year.  It seems we’ve thrown out the concept of words having meanings. …more

Rates of PTSD for Iraq war veterans have been estimated as up to 35% in a Stanford University study.   The Army has reached out to alternative therapies from yoga to reiki to holding and petting an animal, and now a South Carolina psychiatrist is trying to bring Ecstasy into the mix.

Michael Mithoefer has been testing MDMA’s effects on veterans with PTSD.  Ecstasy has long been used in therapy, particularly in the 1970’s as a way of getting patients to process things with less fear and inhibition.

“I heard about it and I decided to give it a try,” a former Army Ranger tells Military.com. “It’s an extremely positive thing. I feel so lucky that I got to take part in the project… It’s basically like years of therapy in two or three hours. You can’t understand it until you’ve experienced it.”

I’m not sure why Philip Roth seems so concerned about the future of the novel; perhaps because he’s about to die, he thinks the novel should go with him?  Or maybe he’s talking about it because he has a new book just out, The Humbling.

In this Guardian article, Roth, who at 76 has been more prolific than ever, showers pessimistic forecasts about the future of the novel.  He predicts that the form will “dwindle to a ‘cultic’ minority enthusiasm within 25 years.”

And the death of the novel will be because of “the screens.”  Roth says, “the book can’t compete with the screen. It couldn’t compete [in the] beginning with the movie screen. It couldn’t compete with the television screen, and it can’t compete with the computer screen.  Now we have all those screens, so against all those screens a book couldn’t measure up.”

My sentiments on this are in alignment with Jeff Jarvis’ quote: “I wish we could declare declaring things dead dead.”

I remember all the nights I spent tucked into bed with my other sisters and our mother perched on the end of the bed reading Goodnight Moon to us.  Those were the days; now I just stay up late at night reading to myself.  It doesn’t sound like anything now, just a quiet void.

To fill that void comes a project called Listen Here, profiled here, which offers free weekly readings of short stories across New Haven coffee shops.   Bringing life to the stories will be actors from the New Haven Theater Company.

“It’s first and foremost a community endeavor; it’s not, per se, a literary endeavor,” said Bennett Lovett-Graff who started the series with David Brensilver.  The two men are trying to bring back the tradition of being read to.   “In the end, Mr. Brensilver said, “It’s more about let’s just sort of unplug, take your iPod ear buds out, shut down the laptop and let’s just appreciate some great writing. Pretty simple.”

You saw it coming.

Your grandma has a blog and your friend’s tweets are invading whatever small sliver of silent privacy you had left.  We’re all becoming authors.  Is this trend inevitable? …more

This week in the New York Times, Google co-founder Sergey Brin wrote an op-ed about Google’s efforts in the realm of digitizing so-called orphan books.  Despite ongoing legal drama, Brin insists that their efforts are for the good of everyone, and for all important texts that would otherwise be lost.  

Erick Schonfeld, co-editor of TechCrunch writes in his piece covering the latest press meeting, “The main objection to the settlement is that it will give Google a monopoly on out-of-print, or orphan books.” Brin provides a retort to that argument in his op-ed : “The agreement limits consumer choice in out-of-print books about as much as it limits consumer choice in unicorns.”  The unicorn defense!

Jonathan Ames has a great blog about his HBO TV series Bored to Death.  In this post he talks about the irony of engaging in an S&M session with his former student and then the very next evening being part of a presentation on torture put on by the  PEN American Center and the ACLU.  Then he goes on to give sweet and interesting behind the scene details on each of the show’s episodes.  It’s like being able to travel alongside Ames’ writerly life, from his love of Russian spas to his affinity for the Brooklyn coast, all with a little flogging along the way.

The popular software Pl@giarism used to detect cheating students by comparing their papers against published texts was recently used by Sir Brian Vickers, an authority on Shakespeare, to determine whether or not Shakespeare collaborated with Thomas Kyd on The Reign of King Edward III.

The debate on whether or not Shakespeare contributed to the play has been raging for over 150 years, and now some scholars feel that Vickers’ work puts the question to rest.  Apparently authors have literary fingerprints that can be used to compare and contrast texts to determine if they have collaborated or plagiarized other works.

Others disagree with the idea that Shakespeare collaborated; but it’s nice to think otherwise, as Jonathan Bate, Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick, puts it: “I think it creates a more realistic image of Shakespeare than perhaps the romantic view some have of him as a solitary genius.”

If you thought having sex was complicated, try defining it.

Lexicographer and language expert Jesse Sheidlower, author of the famed F-Word, and currently serving as Editor at Large (North America) of the Oxford English Dictionary, writes about the challenges of defining sex in all its various manifestations in the dictionary.  Sure, we all know what fuck means, but articulating that is a whole different ball game.  Even though the word fuck is first found in a dictionary in 1598, it still sends editors into a headspin. …more

Sherman Alexie, whose novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was banned in some school districts, is no stranger to controversy.

He’s recently come out with a new collection of stories and poetry called War Dances.   In this latest Mother Jones interview, he talks about the weight of being American’s most famous Native American Indian author: ”I’m going to get grief from certain people about not having likable characters,” he says. “As an Indian writer I’m supposed to be showing us in our best light.”

In the interview he also responds to his having called the Amazon Kindle elitist:  ”If I had been talking about drowning polar bears, people would have been weeping with me.  But nobody recognizes that a bookstore or library can also be a drowning polar bear.  And right now in this country, magazines, newspapers, and bookstores are drowning polar bears.  And if people can’t see that or don’t want to talk about it, I don’t understand them at all.”

You can read the title story of his new collection here.

The Atlantic covers Leak & Sons Funeral Home in Chicago’s South Side.  Business is up, and that’s not a good thing, especially when the average age of the deceased is getting younger and younger, and they’re not dying of natural causes.

In related news, here’s a story about the activist priest Rev. Michael Pfleger who started flying the American flag upside down outside of his church to protest the unceasing violence, particularly amongst Chicago’s youth.  Since then people have cut down and removed his flags (which he just keeps putting back up), as well as sent him death threats.

His response:  ”What I don’t understand about this (criticism) , is when people dial 9-1-1, nobody asks why they’re dialing, they ask how they can help.  When people on a boat raise a (upside down) flag, nobody asks why they are raising it, they just go help.”

If you look up the New Deal on Wikipedia you’ll hardly see Frances Perkins‘ name mentioned.  Yet, as the first female cabinet member, serving as FDR’s Secretary of Labor, she was the major force behind such revolutionary acts like minimum wage,  unemployment, pensions, welfare, and also crafted laws to ban child labor.

She’s also the one to thank for the forty hour work week. On Saturday mornings you should wake up and say, “Thank you Mrs. Perkins.” …more

The Jonathan Ames you may love and know is not only out with a new book but also a new series on HBO which is a spin-off from his real life, featuring Jason Schwartzman as Jonathan Ames (how’s that for awesome casting), a writer who has just been dumped by his girlfriend and is unable to crack into his second novel.

Instead of getting down to business, he instead forges ahead with his fantasy of becoming a private detective, emulating the novels he reads.

In addition to writing the show, Ames has a blog where he goes into each episode and adds lovely behind the scene commentary (alright lovely might be the wrong word choice here) like the time he ran out of toilet paper and didn’t even have free napkins, but did end up finding some coffee filters…..you get the idea.

As you may already know, Google has been spending the last seven years scanning their hearts out, digitizing more than two million books that are old enough to be part of the public domain.  They turn them into searchable documents, making many rare and hard to find books accessible for anyone with access to the Internet.

And now they’ve just outdone themselves. …more

Writers are always lamenting the lonely journey of being in a room by oneself armed with just words and coffee. Other artists seem to enjoy the benefits of collaboration, why not us?

Enter The Owls, a self-described “site for collaborative writing projects.”  One such project was created by the poet Sean Hill.  He’s asked writers to respond to the prompt :  “A Natural History of My _______.” Posted every Wednesday, here’re a few samples from the site:  Brian Barker with “A Natural History of My Curiousity” and Danielle Evans with “A Natural History of My Earlobes.”

Other cool stuff includes a project called Stamps where writers are asked: “What place do you write about or think about, and why? Is there a location – in space or time, real or imaginary, past, present, or future – that draws you back again and again? What happened there?”

Beautiful internet collaborative wonder.

I remember when my dog Rusty disappeared, and we spent a day looking for him.  When I went to bed that night, I imagined he was at the park smoking cigars and playing poker, because that’s what dogs do when you’re sleeping; the next day, of course he came home, without any indication on his face that he had even been gone.  It was very easy for Rusty to disappear.  However, that was the 80’s, and he was a dog.

It’s 2009 and harder than ever for a human being to disappear and start a new life under a false identity. …more

The authorities at Cushing Academy, a New England prep school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts have decided to do away with their traditional library. Meaning, nothing between two covers. …more

A little snapshot of love stories from around the web.

One of my all-time favorite love stories told at the Moth podcast: Mike Destefano recalling his love for Franny in Franny’s Last Ride.

Calvin Trillin, who always wrote about his wife, remembers her life in this incredible essay “Alice Off the Page” which you can read here (if you have a subscription to the New Yorker) or here.

A Modern Love essay about a husband telling his wife, “I don’t love you anymore” and her responding with “I don’t buy it.”  On sticking it out.

And if all those have you feeling too good, here’s a This American Life episode about break-ups.