When I was a teenager, J.D. Salinger was essential to my survival. I suspect there are millions of others out there who could tell you the same thing.At a time in my life when very little made sense and I didn’t particularly care for the parts that were clear to me, Salinger’s writings provided an essential service; they helped put things so that, even if they didn’t make the bad parts any better, they at least made me feel like I wasn’t the only sane person in a world gone mad.
Reading Salinger, specifically "The Catcher in the Rye," I felt it in my bones that there were other people out there who thought, felt, raged and sulked like I did, and if they made it through, well then there was a chance I could, too.
As a result, in my early high school years, knowledge of "Catcher" became a kind of test that made it easy for me to get my bearings on people in a setting where most relationships feel like they're constantly on testy ground -- if you read Salinger (the more times the better), we could proceed from there. If not, you were probably one of Holden Caulfield's reviled phonies, and we probably didn't have much to say to each other from then on.
Looking back now, I can see how that perspective can seem, well, snobbish, self-righteous, self-absorbed and elitist. Well, that's true. However, it's also true that most suburban teenagers -- even the shy, confused, angry ones -- feel that the universe revolves around them. Holden Caulfield felt this way too, and maybe that's one of the reasons so many disillusioned and frustrated teens embraced him as one of us, even if the man who created him may have been in his 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s when we were reading his words for the first time.
Growing up, I drifted away from Salinger's writings. I tried "Nine Stories," but, I don't know, it just didn't click with me, and I never made it beyond that. A few years after Salinger and Holden helped bring my world into focus, I was on to Kurt Vonnegut, another great author and great man whose loss a few years ago still hangs heavy in my mind and in my heart.
While I may have stopped reading Salinger, and honestly haven't cracked open one of his works in years, I will never forget the impact the man and his writings had on me and my life -- it's an impact I still feel, and I'm sure it's one that will be felt by others for generations.
Holden Caulfield was my entry into a long line of protagonists -- Dream of the Endless, Hamlet and Donnie Darko are but a few -- who are moody and occasionally self-centered to the detriment of others, but it is those qualities combined with their rebellious, even heroic ones that help their like-minded readers/viewers acknowledge and accept both our own emotional lows and our vast potential.
Maybe. Or maybe this is a fumbling, wrong-headed tribute to a great author. I'm not entirely sure. I do know that, even though I haven't read his work in years or thought about him in months, news of Salinger's death today has shaken me greatly.
There's something comforting when thinking about the iconoclasts and rebels who are still refusing to go gently into that goodnight, kicking and screaming against societal conventions, the status quo, passing trends, age and illness, and when one of them goes, you have to wonder how much of a chance us mortals have. Or maybe that's just me. Oh, there I go again. If Salinger taught me anything, it's that it's never "just me." Thank you, J.D. Salinger. May you rest in peace.
