The literary blogosphere has been buzzing all morning about John David California’s sequel to J.D. Salinger’s famous novel, “The Catcher in the Rye.” While the author’s Guardian interview seemed earnest, GalleyCat thinks the whole thing might be more like “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and less like “Wide Sargasso Sea.”
The Wikipedia entry for J.D. California lists his birthday as April 1st, 1976. Secondly, his Amazon bio includes some fantastical elements: “The former gravedigger and Ironman triathlete has been captivated by the story of Holden Caulfield for years. After finding a well-travelled copy of The Catcher in the Rye in an abandoned cabin in rural Cambodia, the iconic characters within saw John through the most maniacal of tropical fevers and chronic isolation.”
Finally, the Amazon entry for “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye” lists the publisher as Nicotext. GalleyCat uncovered a mission statement from a publisher with that name with a fairly satirical mission statement: “Hi! We are Nicotext. We make books. More specifically, we make books whose sole purpose it is to make you giggle. While thumbing our collective nose at the literati, we have found our niche amongst the useless, the trivial and the potentially offensive.”