J.D. Salinger monument erected in Lithuania
22 June 2020
Text:
Paula Erizanu
A sculpture celebrating American author J.D. Salinger has been unveiled in Lithuania.
The monument shows a cut-out of a human silhouette rising from a field. It’s placed on top of a concrete block bearing both the author’s name and an image of rye grass, a reference to Salinger’s iconic 1951 novel, The Catcher in the Rye. The monument also features the famous quote “What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff,” written on the steel base of the human figure.
Salinger’s family lived in the small Jewish settlement Sudargas on the Lithuanian-Polish border from 1831 to 1881, when the writer’s great-grandfather migrated to the United States to escape famine. JD Salinger was born in New York in 1919.
Last year, Lithuania became home to a monument to singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, another Jewish cultural figure with Lithuanian roots.
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