Feb 4, 2010
The endless surprises
A while ago my Dad sent me a text message:
Anak, patay na yung idol mo, si J.D. Salinger. (Son, your idol J.D. Salinger passed away.)
I’ve known about it last Monday, or Tuesday–I really forgot but I knew about it six minutes after The New York Times published the news online (sadly, after knowing about it I was really sad for the next thirty minutes and sent a message to my closest writer friends about it; they kind of comforted me, which felt good). I received the text message while hosting a popular fiction quiz contest my organization spearheaded, and it made me smile. Dad knows I really like J.D. Salinger; I’ve probably told it a million times, but I didn’t expect him to text me about it. Hell, he didn’t really like the book (or he must have read it when he was twenty-something, in between his Vietnam war novels, and must have treated it with the same disgust he had with Murakami and Kafka). I showed the text message to my friends and they were happy for me to have such a Dad who at least knows his son’s favorite author.
Before I die I really wish I could to go to his grave and tell him everything I liked about his writing and his novels, most especially Catcher in the Rye. And I’ll probably whisper that his death made me realize that my Dad knows me, because my admiration for him is something deeply private.
My condolences, man. It sucks when idols die. Especially if you haven’t met them in person.
I’m not much of a Salinger fan though. But that’s because I’ve only read Catcher in the Rye, which was easy enough to like because of its non-conformist stance. I need to read his work sometime in the future.
I think dads are like that. They pretend that they don’t care but they actually do. I was surprised when my uncle from Manila, whom I’ve never met before, got me a Pink Floyd and King Crimson CD. I found out later that my dad told him that I love those bands.
Oh, when you happen to visit Salinger’s grave. Tell him I said thanks for being the catalyst to John Lennon’s death.
wow. that’ll be a good memory you can recall about your dad when you’ve grown older yourself. how sweet of him to think of you when he heard salinger died.
what a sweet dad! apir!
there was a time when i felt he was writing about me when he wrote catcher. but then again, most everyone in their teens to twenties feels that way. i was sad when i learned about his death. it would be nice to visit his grave and pay our final respects.
and as for murakami, i love him to bits. strangely, my dad kinda likes him too.