Where did you go JD?

JD Salinger, he changed the world of literature in one fatal sweep and then he went away, from it all. He wrote "the manifesto for disenchanted youth" according to Time Magazine. People are, understandably, obsessed with Catcher in the Rye and with JD Salinger. As his book became more popular Salinger was cast into the limelight, and immediately withdrew from it. This, however, made Salinger more enticing to his fans than ever. Salinger became a myth, rather than a man. Salinger's decision to go into seclusion stemmed from his recognition of his need to uphold his principles (theme of the year, anyone?). He says "Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.", it sounds eerily like Holden. Salinger recognized things that he hated, even if he saw it in himself (something Holden does not do). So he went about trying to correct that, to make sure that he would never become the very thing he detested. 


A time when a book like Catcher in the Rye was a banned and highly controversial seems  like a world away, and in some ways, it was. The 1950s were just a different time. Their principles (I did it again) were different, and more strongly upheld. If someone had different principles than you did you weren't going to accept them and be buddies, if they're not quiet about it that is... So there was a basic societal consensus, and if you went against it, you were shunned. Then this book comes along, and its published and people are talking about it. They must have thought it was madness. We can't have people going out and stating there opinion. So lets ban it. And they did. But they can't ban every book, can they? And people start thinking and speaking out and the consensus changes. That brings us to today, where EVERYONE can speak their mind (this blog for example, a 15 year old girl in the 1950s would never be posting her opinion, if she even had one, for anyone to read). And people just keep speaking their mind and pushing the envelope so much so that things that were once controversial are now standard and commonplace. 

Catcher in the Rye is everywhere, I kid you not. Even before I'd read it I must have heard about it at least one hundred times. In one of the plays Company did this year, Women and Wallace, there is a mention of Catcher in the Rye. Recently I watched the movie Six Degrees of Separation ( with Will Smith), Catcher in the Rye is one of the major themes in the book. Will Smith's character, Paul, is this sort of disillusioned Harvard student imposter, and he goes on and on about his fake (phony) thesis paper all about Catcher in the Rye. And that movie makes so much more sense now that I actually know what Catcher is about. By the way we should definitely watch that scene from Six Degrees of Separation where Paul rants about Catcher in the Rye. 


Great, thanks for reading.
Gianna.