of course

[toastykitten]

It would turn out that the person who dubbed Joyce Maynard, who became notorious for her relationship with JD Salinger at 18, "the queen of oversharing", was Caitlin Flanagan at the Atlantic. But even Flanagan, apparently, can't seem to deny her talent: It’s not the prose they dislike; Maynard’s writing is clean and engaging. She’s written more than a dozen popular books and a very good true-crime novel. What drives the critics wild is her personal writing and its nonstop examination of self, one damn hair ball at a time.

When I was 13, one of my teachers gave me A Catcher In the Rye and I read it in 2 days. In high school, an English teacher gave us Salinger's short stories, and basically broke down for us his writing, and how it worked, and how to explicate it. And now, looking back at all the men I thought were great and amazing writers, from Salinger to Hitchens to Diaz, I wonder what I would find.