I was surprised to read that J.D. Salinger died today. He was 91 years old, so he certainly lived a long time. I think that the main reason I was surprised was because he is never in the press… he gave his last interview in 1980 (three years before I was even born) and was almost as famous for being reclusive as he was for writing The Catcher in the Rye. I said almost.
My seventeen year old self, like many other adolescents, was able to identify deeply with Salinger’s characters; their humanity, their yearning for a more authentic way of being in the world, the passions and recklessness of being very young. I haven’t re-read Salinger’s work in years, and look forward to revisiting it as an adult. I loved Holden Caulfield’s voice, but identified even more profoundly with Franny Glass of Franny and Zooey. The fact that Salinger’s characters inspired such devotion in fans was a source of pain for him, he who most wanted to be left alone, but it has also insured that the genius of his singular talent will continue to live on. That’s the beauty of the written word.
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I’m relatively new to the world of banh mi. Growing up in a small town in Nova Scotia meant that I had little exposure to all the exotic cuisines of the world. As a chubby eleven year old I liked to watch non-cable (we had no need of frivolities like cable, we had the great outdoors. Right?) cooking shows such as ‘Wok with Yen’ and James Barber’s classic ‘Urban Peasant’, so I did know that foods aside from the ubiquitous meat n’ potatoes or fish n’ chips did exist, I just hadn’t had much experience with them. The inaccessibility of these wondrous and delectable-sounding foods made them that much more appealing, of course. I began trying to cook some things on my own, but was usually over-zealous with seasonings (due to an inability to follow recipes that haunts me to this day), so had varying degrees of success. 
