I guess you want to hear all about JD Salinger dying and what a great literary figure he was, and all that crap. But I gotta say I don’t feel like telling ya, mainly because all that stuff is so phoney, but also because I only ever got to page 23 in that damn book, and Salinger the phoney never let anyone make a movie about it, like that would take the gloss off or something. I remember something about this kid Holden Caulfield or whatever his name was, leaving the team’s fencing equipment on the train, Steger suggested I rent a Wes Anderson movie or something if it was too much trouble to actually read the damn book. Which one I said. It’s Wes Anderson, he said, it doesn’t matter.

Ah he’s a good guy my editor, but I’m pretty sure I’m gonna get the sack. This is the fourth newspaper I’ve been at, and I kinda know the score by now. There’ll be a brief scene and then my parents will have to come and get me and take me to another newspaper. Who cares, anyway. The paper is full of phoneys. The only guy who’s any good is Steger, he’s my only friend there, and everyone else thinks he’s kinda weird. Always surrounded by piles of books, and he’s got food in his orthodontic retainer. Makes a weird clicking sound when he’s thinking. No-one else would share a room with him.

Anyway so I’m called into the editor’s office, and he looks me up and down. He’s a good guy, I guess. You can see that he tried for the longest time to stop becoming a phoney.

“Your parents are very worried”, he said finally. “You know this is your fourth newspaper”.

Then:

“Why do you think you do what you do?”

I’m an Australian journalist I tell him, I do what I’m told. But he’d just tell me that was a smart response. He really spits that word out, mu editor. He hates anything smart. Then he gets out the article. OK let me explain about the article. I didn’t think it was that good either. This Salinger guy he died three hours before deadline what the hell could I do?

He got out the article.

“Why don’t you read from the top”, he said.

So I read: “Author JD Salinger has died at the age of 91. Famous for his sole novel, Catcher in the Rye a classic of teen angst and alienation which has more than 60 million copies, Salinger also published three volumes of finely observed novellas and short stories, many of them about the fictional Glass family, a troupe of siblings who had all appeared on a radio quiz show ‘It’s a Wise Child’, their lives overshadowed by the suicide of eldest brother Seymour, constructed by Salinger as an impossibly brilliant genius.

“Drawing in the influences of great American writers such as Steinbeck and Fitzgerald, and adding in the growing interest in eastern religions and spiritual systems, Salinger fashioned a unique style, at its best moving without being sentimental as seen in stories such as ‘For Esme with love and squalor’ and ‘Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters’. Scientists would still like to know how he did this…

“Stop, stop,” said my editor. Then he looked at me. “What did you think you were doing?”

“OK, I got it from Google.”

“Who cares about that? Half this paper is out of Google. You’re missing the question: was he good or bad?

“Sorry?”

“Look I don’t care about all these books and plays Salinger wrote”

“Um…”

“Give me two thousand words on ‘Salinger – the ultimate baby-boomer ego trip'”

“What?”

“Or you can come from the other angle: ‘Salinger – a career killed by political correctness'”

“But”-

“Actually, skip that. Peter Coleman will do that one. And Albrechtsen will do something about how reading Salinger re-wired teenagers’ brains. Maybe you could do three thousand words on how there wouldn’t even have been a Salinger if fifty years ago, they’d had the Kindle.”

“iPad”

“So do I. We all do. We’re features journalists for Chrissake. Let’s dig out some recent photos of Salinger with Bono and Lady Gaga.”

“There are no recent photos. He was a recluse.”

“Ah! So when did he start?”

“Start?”

“Kiddie-fiddling”

“He didn’t. He may have kept writing for decades. There could be thousands of pages still to come out.”

“Jesus. Will any of it feature kiddie-fiddling?”

“How the hell would I know? I got this from Google!”

“OK carry on. That’s Steger outside, I can hear him gurgling. Why did this Salinger guy lock himself away anyway?”

“He was tired of the cheap and gossipy nature of media literary culture. He said they were all phoneys.”

“What’s a phoney?”

“Means wanker.”

“What a wanker.”