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Goodbye Holden |
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J. D. Salinger died yesterday. He was one of my favourite writers and the author about whose work I've written most (during the studies as well as in secondary school). The Catcher in the Rye holds a special place in my heart although I'm not a teenager. I say that because this is the greatest insult that thousands have hurled upon it: it's a book for adolescents. And not even for adolescents of today - they find it dated and boring.
This may very well be true. Come to think about it, how could it not be true. Holden Caulfield was a teenager with principles; principles that were opposed to the ideals of the materialism, social prestige and the general "phoniness" that used to be considered embarrassing in the fifties but has been moved to a pedestal in the world we live in. The very things he despised most are the epitome of cool to the 21th century adolescent. It is quite understandable that Salinger shunned fame and stopped publishing more than forty years ago - everything he stood for was becoming "dated"; just like Holden who was toying with the idea of spending the rest of his life working on a gas station in the middle of nowhere, pretending to be a deaf-mute so that people wouldn't bother him, Salinger spent the rest of his life in rural New Hampshire with almost no contact to the public. And unlike Holden who goes back home at the end of his wonderful novel, Salinger saw no reason for optimism in times that were coming. His death marks the irrevocable end to the long-dying hope for the world we would have preferred to live in.
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