Sean Nelson nails down exactly what's so awful about the new documentary on J.D. Salinger:

Under the guise of questing intrepidity, filmmaker Shane Salerno proceeds to penetrate the corpse of Salinger’s storied privacy with all the delicacy of TMZ. But the problem is less to do with the information revealed (a lot of which is undeniably of interest to devotees, and journalistically hard-won), than with the salacious presumptuousness of the film’s tone. It’s not that Salerno is investigating a private man’s private contradictions, it’s that he seems to resent his subject’s temerity in having cultivated the persona of a recluse while still having human desires, human traits, human flaws. It comes not to praise Caesar but to dig him up, defile his corpse. The film shames Salinger for being irreconcilably imperfect while striving for perfection in his work, for not being a “true recluse” (a recurring phrase) because he sometimes gave in to the ego he was attempting to eradicate, and for having unorthodox courtly relationships with young girls and women.

Read the whole thing here. (Salinger opens in Seattle cinemas today.)