Apparently Caulfield was still alive to write Salinger’s obit:
“There will never be another voice like his.” Which is exactly the lousy kind of goddamn thing that people say, because really it could mean lots of things, or nothing at all even, and it’s just a perfect example of why you should never tell anybody anything.
Goddamn if The Onion didn’t nail it exactly, even if, I”m sure, a million crumby people thought of it with them.
As always, the Onion nails it. So did Colbert. Ordinarily I wouldn’t care so much about puff opinion pieces and vanity masquerading as depth, but this is JDS, and he and Catcher were a big part of my teenaged years. I’m still surprised when someone confesses to hating the book, which is really odd, because I’m not surprised about most other differences in taste. My daughter couldn’t stand the book, and one of my best friends in high school wanted to hunt down Holden and punch him in the face. Gah!
Anyway. There’s been a stampede of pretentious twits trying to out-Caulfield Salinger in the days after his death, especially recently. I can’t think of anything more directly the polar opposite of the damn point of a work like Catcher than self-indulgent pap disguised as Deep Thoughts.
He’s probably rolling (his eyes) in his grave.