Today the news went public that Jerome David (J.D.) Salinger finally died in his New Hampshire home at the age of 91.  I wanted to give a shoutout to a man who's writing was extremely influential in my passion for literature and my pursuit of a degree in Comparative Literature.  His short story "A Perfect Day For Bananafish" was a topic in my first highly complex analysis and writing assignment in the University of Illinois Comparative Literature curriculum.  This by choice, of course.  The assignment (in short) was to analyze a piece of literature through the perspective of one of history's great thinkers (choices were Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Rousseau, Marx, and Freud).  I chose to revisit "Bananafish" in light of Freud's writings in "The Interpretation of Dreams" - 1899.  Piece of cake, right?  How hard could it be?  So there I was, a college freshman having already been advised by the department head to enroll in this class at a later time due to its intellectual intensity, literally walled off from the rest of the students in the Graduate Library by the imposing stacks of Freud's volumes encircling me.  It's a moment and a project I will never forget.  And for that I express tremendous gratitude to you, Mr. Salinger.  May you now rest in peace.

The US News and World Report, considered by many as the authoritative source of analysis on academic excellence in the United States, recently issued its “Best Colleges 2010” report.  The editors consider a number of factors when computing the rankings, and many readers may take exception to the variables and weights involved.  Many may also take exception to the “broad brush” methodology of these rankings which don’t delve into program by program comparisons at this level.  These are indeed fair points, but I challenge you to find a more comprehensive and balanced approach to the national university ranking process.  And for the record, I don’t consider Princeton Review’s list of schools with the “best access to hallucinogens” as part of the conversation.  Interesting to some, but not relevant to the masses.

Those closest to me might roll their eyes (or maybe even gag) that I write about this, largely because my interest in all things University of Illinois (academics and athletics) is borderline lunatic.  But I’m extremely proud of graduating from a school with such an outstanding academic reputation as Illinois, and I am thrilled the school cracked the top 40 universities in the country (public or private).  Harvard or Northwestern they are not, but ranking as the 9th best public school in the nation is quite an achievement.

Click the link above to see the full (free version) list.  Summarized below are the Big 10 (11) schools, listed in order, where the letter “t” indicates a tie:

• #12 - Northwestern
• #27 - Michigan
• #39t - Illinois
• #39t - Wisconsin
• #47 - Penn State
• #53 - Ohio State
• #61t - Minnesota
• #61t - Purdue
• #71t - Indiana
• #71t - Iowa
• #71t - Michigan State