What literate male of my age wasn't affected by J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye? The acerbic Holden Caufield, short on patience and long on insight, insinuated himself into the culture as a wit and a wonder. He couldn't abide rules, but he also couldn't abide phonies. Holden, his sister Phoebe, and his acquaintances from Pency Prep established Salinger as the conscience of rebellion from the 1950s on. Holden was a thinking man's malcontent, an intellectual rogue who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, as the world had turned to mush all around him.
Salinger, like his pint sized protagonist, turned away from the larger world as well, settling in tiny Cornish, New Hampshire. The story is well established, though the truth will never be out.
Salinger insulated his life with more than 50 years off the literary map. His passing is a mark that will go little marked after a brief run up of publicity about his most famous character. Salinger could have embraced the world, but in the end his legacy would have been determined the same way, as a result of his work. This is what resonates when the voice has fallen silent.
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