Unnecessary Pipe Trench Excavation

Posts Tagged ‘Salinger’

I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.

And so you die, and the world is left just a little more wanting than it was before, or so I feel — even though you were in this world but not really of it, I suspect. Strange that I should be so saddened by the death of someone that I never met, who wrote a handful of books and short stories before I was born. But like so many youths, you spoke to me through Holden — here was someone who wasn’t phony (to use Holden’s term); here was someone who actually understood. In a world overwhelmed with bullshit, here was a sliver of truth. And unlike so many youths who go on to acquiesce to or otherwise be absorbed by the seemingly inherent phoniness of adulthood and maturity, you carried the banner until your death at 91. You retreated in the face of overwhelming odds to your “cabin in the west” much like Holden yearned to do, choosing solitude over surrender. You fought the good fight in your own way until the end; for this, I salute you.

It was a very stupid thing to do, I’ll admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it.

You never sold the movie rights to Catcher in the Rye; never let it be raped and ransacked by Hollywood. You never let it be cheapened for the quick, easy money. You never sold it out — cliché, I know, but nevertheless for this I am ever thankful (unlike myself and so many others, you learned from your mistakes). So I shudder to think what might happen to your creation now that you are gone. Who will protect Holden from the phonies now? Who will pick up your banner now that you have dropped it?

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Ah, now this is the stuff of blogs: navel gazing and self-righteousness at it’s best. …

I never really stopped to think about this; perhaps that’s the problem — why, that as I close in on age 40, I still feel like Holden Caufield. I reread Catcher in the Rye for the umpteenth time last week. I remember reading it as a youth, and having one of those epiphanies that only someone filled with the self righteousness of youth can experience: here is someone who “understands,” I thought; here is someone who “gets it.” The who being J.D. Salinger, of course. I thought the same thing when I read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. I suppose I should be embarrassed to admit that now, but I’m not — I’m also astonished to have found it among my mother’s books shortly after her death, but that’s another topic for another time.

I guess I had some vague notion or expectation that by now I wouldn’t still feel alienated from the world around me. I’m not really surprised that I’m not, I suppose; but I think if anything I’m even more restless and mystified by the world today — even pissed off — then I was as a youth. I guess the upcoming election coupled with the current financial debacle have exacerbated these feelings. Or maybe I’m just not as self absorbed as I was as a youth.

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