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.
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