Two fiercely independent American writers died Wednesday: Howard Zinn and J. D. Salinger (above-taking a swing at a photographer).

I won’t try to compose an obituary for either of these men. The New York Times has fine obituaries posted here (for Zinn) and here (for Salinger).

What I like to think about both of these men is that throughout their careers, they could have taken the easy way out. They were both smart enough that they could have followed conventional wisdom or prostituted their gifts to the highest bidders. But neither men ever sold out.

Zinn, who called his life story You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train, faced conflicts both inside and outside of the world of academia. His boss at Boston University said that Zinn was an example of those who would “poison the well of academe”. And it was interesting to listen to conservative commentators on the radio decry Zinn as evil, yet failing to mention anything substantive about what he had written.

Salinger got a lot of grief for withdrawing from public life and publishing, but I never had a problem with it, despite my desire to read more of his writings. Imagine that you’ve written a novel that neatly sums up your alienation with life and personal expectations surrounding it. Then you suddenly see a bunch of kids with Johnny Unitas haircuts telling you how your book changed their lives.

To Salinger, this must have seemed like the phonies thought he could identify with them and nothing could be further from the truth. Suddenly his cynical view of humanity is validated and all he could do was flee.

It reminds me of another apostle of youth, who transformed the pain of alienation into mega-success: Kurt Cobain, the frontman for Nirvana. Here was a case of the outcast making it big, and suddenly, the people who were the cause of his misery were embracing his music. It had to have driven him nuts to see frat boys moshing in the pits of Nirvana concerts, wear Nirvan shirts, and declare that Nirvana ’speaks to them’.

Sadly Cobain’s withdraw was a lot more dramatic and lot more permanent.

While Salinger, for literary intents and purposes, died over forty years ago, the world is nonetheless poorer for the loss of these iconoclasts.

(photo via MobyLives)