As I writer there are at least a dozen authors that I consider my heroes. More importantly they’re my teachers and helped me become who I am as an author. For me I always like the rebellious egomaniacs – the authors that snubbed their nose at society and were never afraid to be themselves. And especially when these authors were looked upon as crackpots or perhaps too controversial, that too, is something I always liked bout these kinds of authors. They showed me, as young aspiring writer, years ago that the truth can be controversial at times. Nobody showed this more to me than J.D. Salinger and today I am saddened.
“Holden Caulfield” is quiet today, but he will not stay that way forever. His rebellious voice will live on forever.” I am truly saddened today because J.D. Salinger died, he passed at 91. As a writer one of my heroes is gone…he had a unique voice in this so-called phony world and it will be missed dearly. Today I felt like it was time I pull “The Catcher in the Rye” off the shelf and I can remember the first time I ever read it. I was teenager and someone told me that it was controversial and had been banned. So of course I had to read it because the curiosity of something being bad for me was too tempting not to partake of. And for this great novel, it was worth it because like most awkward and disenchanted teenagers I found a common voice in the book.
To this day I remember feeling after reading it that I was not alone, somebody else was angry and saw the world as this jaded place where truth and fiction collide, and where nothing seemed real. Salinger spoke to us in this kind of rebellious reverent tone through his antagonist Holden Caulfield telling us that it was okay to be mad at the way things were and perhaps there was a solution. The solution was in the inherent adventure that we call life and the road of life could take us anywhere even to underbelly of society. But Salinger also wrote that it is in those places that we can find a true sense of ourself.
J. D. Salinger may have been eccentric, he may have shunned the fame that goes with being one of the great voices of our time, and his peaceful hub in the universe may have been away from a society that considered him godlike, but nobody can deny what he gave us through literature. Holden Caulfield is one of the great anti establishment protagonists and for me what I liked best about this character is that he knew who he was when so many around him didn’t have a clue. That is a rare quality and one of the marks of a great write is creating a character that becomes the mirror for everything we should be as individuals.
For me as a write I’ve always said that “The Catcher in the Rye” is one of the most influential pieces of literature and it spoke to me in my youth with great conviction. And today that is still true. Its something that I think everybody should read at least once in their life. But even though J.D. Salinger is gone now the greatest compliment that a writer can ever have is knowing that our words will live forever and still resonate with later generations. I think Salinger would have liked that part because it’s your words that are famous and not necessarily the author and the words we write can be so much bigger than us. But the great authors never escape the level of iconoclast and Salinger is certainly in that category.
Now the great rebellious voice of Caulfield is gone, but the truth is it will always live on. That’s the one thing Salinger cannot escape from even in death, but just as fame disgusted him the artistic influence he had should bring a smile to his face. And maybe nothing is more evident in that statement than the great anticipation we all have to hopefully read one day the unpublished novels he had locked away in his safe. From one writer to another, thank you for showing me how magical words can be and that the great art of writing is best seen in the truth that we write about the world around us. And I challenge readers who are looking for some of the best words that tell the real story of the world around us to stroll by the fiction section in a bookstore and pick up a J. D. Salinger novel for your world will never be the same and that’s a good thing. Salinger, you will mourned and you will be missed.
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