Salinger, Who Gave Up Being On Stage
Holden Caulfield was such a brilliant expression of cranky adolescence that the persona persists, an icon, since the character was first created by Salinger. Figures from folklore are honed over the ages into group memory, but Salinger by himself created a figure that has the resonance of myth. Who didn’t as an adolescent, (and doesn’t still?), see the world as phony?
Salinger’s fame, from that singular creation in Catcher In The Rye, was enhanced over the years by his self-exile. “I vant to be alone,” wasn’t a tactic, it was revulsion at the pop culture’s sleazy stare.
In this post a writer for the NYR says,
In The Catcher in the Rye, a virtuosic jazz pianist has stooped to “dumb show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass.” The people in the club listening to the pianist roar their approval, “the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn’t funny.” Attending a Broadway play starring the universally worshiped actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Holden remarks “…they were good, but they were too good.” … Holden is instinctively postmodern, too knowing to suspend disbelief, and hyper-aware of the motif or trope that is behind every formal performance. At Radio City Music Hall “a guy came out in a tuxedo and roller skates on, and started skating under a bunch of little tables, and telling jokes while he did it. He was a very good skater and all, but I couldn’t enjoy it much because I kept picturing him practicing to be a guy that roller-skates on the stage.” To be a true artist, the performer must give up being on stage… [Salinger] seemed to regard his literary success as a moral stain.
