Leave it to the dining critic to find a food angle on the death of J.D. Salinger. Sam Sifton led us to “This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise,” a story in the October 1945 Esquire that has nothing to do with sandwiches or mayo. It’s about a soldier waiting to go to a dance and thinking of his brother, Holden Caulfield, who is missing in action.
There’s more food imagery in ‘Franny and Zooey, as when Franny’s date orders a sophisticated French meal and she has a chicken sandwich that she doesn’t touch.
Of course, Eric Asimov’s recollections of “Catcher in the Rye” are more bibulous.
“I remember somebody drinking a Tom Collins,” he said, “only because it inspired me at an impressionable age to try to make one.”
Salinger’s father, Sol, was a successful food importer, who took him to Austria and Poland in 1937, “where the father’s plan was for him to learn the ham business,” Charles McGrath writes in his wonderful obituary of Salinger.
And in 1961, James E. Bryan wrote an essay called, “J. D. Salinger: The Fat Lady and the Chicken Sandwich,” although I can’t find the full text online.
Can you think of any other Salinger food references?
Article From : http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/the-catcher-in-the-rye-bread/
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