When I was 13 years old, I knew everything. I was magnificently sure of my superiority in mind and spirit, my unknowable genius, my unprecedented individuality, my intimidating arsenal of literary brilliance. My magic was the roughest, not to be challenged or ignored. I was bigger than everything that came before me, and all that jazz. I was deeply, luminously dark, a beacon of existential certitude, loudly and proudly oxymoronic. Rooted in my stunning misery, I declared myself pedagogically unapproachable and resigned myself to having learned all there was to learn. I was as small as the world, but as large as alone. I was a self-aggrandizing pain in the neck.
And then came Holden Caulfield. He taught me that I was neither unteachable nor solitary. This was the book that I wanted to write! And someone had beaten me to it. I was humbled by, and completely enamored of, J.D. Salinger. I gobbled up all his work. I was certain that no one else in the whole wide world understood him the way that I did. I was Franny. I was Teddy. I was desperately searching for a lost something that I had never possessed in the first place. And I was suddenly aware that I was not the only one to feel this way. An astounding number of people read the words "don't ever tell anybody anything" and become possessed of the need to tell somebody something immediately. I am one of them. Many of us are quietly embarrassed to admit it, but Holden makes us frantic of speak before we're silenced, to rage against the dying of the light. To holler, if you will.
I'm still annoying and narcissistic. That, apparently, will never change. My love for Salinger has also remained constant - so many stories I adored as an adolescent have become nearly unpalatable in adulthood that I cherish his endurance all the more. Rare is the book that can act not only as a keystone but as a social barometer. The Catcher in the Rye is particularly unique in this regard, being one of the few modern classics never to have been forced into the spectacle of film. J.D. Salinger ensured that Catcher would stand alone, demanding to be read, to be touched. The tactile informs the cerebral and emotional. We love it all the more for having held it each time we've experienced it. We recognize this in each other, we respect it. Kim Coleman's declaration at an Indigo dinner last month that Catcher is the book she most wishes she had written elicited deep nods all around the table. Proof positive that I work with good folks.
I've written three letters to Mr. Salinger over the last fifteen years. I really wish that I had sent one of them. Barreling down the winter highway last Thursday afternoon, spewing snow and spewing tears, listening to NPR's early tributes to this departed stranger, I regretted this most epic fail over and over. About all I know is, I sort of miss this guy I didn't even know. I sort of miss that something that I never had.
Well.
It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
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