nothing at all to do with this, but i once met pete best and shook his hand

I first heard of J.D. Salinger much like I first got into guitar—all because of Green Day. On their second album the band wrote a song, “Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?” Their singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, said he wrote the song after reading Catcher in the Rye, a book he read only after dropping out of high school. Naturally, in an effort to do everything I possibly could to emulate my hero, I read Catcher, slowly wading my way through a well-torn copy from the library. I still remember book, how the laminated dust jacket and bulletproof hardcover was almost too much protection for the yellowed and tattered pages it ironically failed to protect from disrespectful readers. I checked that damn thing out twice before I finally finished it, falling down both times because my prepubescent self couldn’t relate to 1950’s teenage angst.
The irony of having to read Catcher again in high school was not lost on me. The state-mandated curriculum required students to read a book about a protagonist, not unlike the students themselves, railing against the phonies who didn’t care or want to understand. I used to pretend that schools assigned the book because it’s a classic and that’s what you do with the classics in high school—you read them. Because they’re classics. Personally, I thought Catcher was thrown in the curriculum blindly because it was successful and stood the test of time rather than for its content. No matter how many papers about symbolism I was forced to write, to me Catcher was about figuring out the world on your own terms, seeing and accepting the ugly but still wanting to hold on to something you still thought true.
Of course, high school is the perfect time to read Catcher in the Rye. The themes of innocence lost and growing up are paramount to high school students as they face reality/college/the last years of mandated school. I always associated Catcher with Green Day and the notion of facing reality on your own terms, of taking on whatever may come with that strip of innocence or whatever you wanted to call it bolted firm over your heart. That idea of holding on to innocence was apparently something Salinger never let go. Being literature’s most famous recluse (held up in a secluded rural cabin in the middle of nowhere) gets people talking. Salinger denied interviews, damned any and all press and sued family members’ who wrote autobiographies about their childhood. It’s one thing to be an enigma, but Salinger’s extent made it obvious he had something he didn’t want to give up, that he didn’t want to give anything more of himself away than he already had with his fiction.
I just read an article that hinted at Salinger’s obsession with young girls, but it clearly stated that it wasn’t sexual but actually more about the innocence they had. Less Lolita and more Marsha (Marsha Marsha!) Brady. The thing is you reach a point where you can’t afford to be innocent anymore. Salinger was, I think it’s safe to say, loony tunes style, bat shit crazy (but that’s ok). Still, I can’t help but think that his nature was part of his desire for innocence. He wanted what was his to be his alone, never to be tainted by leering public eyes. It’s almost as if he fell victim to one of his greatest ideas.
When I was in Los Angeles last week I saw an exhibition of a photographer’s portraits of famous people. He did a photo of Hemmingway, looking far more like a rugged, world-weary seaman than an author. This, the same man who put a gun in his mouth because he couldn’t take the critics.
I don’t know…I guess we’ve all got our secrets.