Goodbye, JD Salinger

"I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody"

JD Salinger, the writer of the famed and cult classic Catcher in the Rye as well as other short stories, died Wednesday, January 27, 2010.  He was 91 years old.

I adore Catcher in the Rye and when I first read it, I saw something in Holden Caulfield that I unknowingly thought worth saving. The manifesto of disenchanted youth and sometimes an unsavory explanation for violence. While it's hard to talk about the book without mentioning Mark David Chapman - the assassin of John Lennon - or John Hinckley Jr - who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan - it is easier to identify with the lost boy who couldn't see past growing up, the last and the best of the Peter Pans.


~Ferdinando