SPIRIT OF THE TIMES: Seventy-Five Years of Salinger's Holden Caulfield (3)
Seventy-five years ago DŽ. D. Salinger, emerging from the war with post-traumatic stress disorder, rose to fame with a bestseller The Catcher in the Rye, and his literary hero Holden Caulfield became the alter ego of the "rebel without a cause" from the "baby boomer" generation. Then, avoiding publicity as the "Greta Garbo of literature," he secluded himself in a house near Cornish, New Hampshire, which ignited sensationalist curiosity, gossip, and the vengeful memory of those close to him; he loved women much younger than himself and abruptly broke off those relationships; for more than 50 years he wrote as if he were searching for enlightenment, and he did not publish any of it because he considered it a violation of privacy. He died at 91. His Holden Caulfield is holding up well at 75, they say, thanks to Zoomers, natives of the Internet, among whom Salinger's language resonates strongly
