Euclid-lis blog

Posts Tagged ‘vercilo’

My oldest son was surprised to hear that J.D. Salinger fought in World War II. He thinks of Holden Caulfield as a contemporary, a peer, anachronistically making his way through a few days of life. The period references in the novel are like props on a movie set, no more real than the phonies Holden encounters. It’s perplexing that so many of my son’s classmates felt no connection to Holden after reading The Catcher in the Rye this past year. We are told on TV, on the internet and in movies that our teenagers and young adults are increasingly savvy, mature and perceptive. When it comes to technology, they certainly are. But most of students in the class considered Holden a whiny freak without realizing that often, it’s the whiny freaks who walk through life with the clarity of sight and earnestness needed to leave this existence a little better than it was when we entered it. The story itself is a masterpiece. Salinger was firing on all cylinders and tapping into the strange other-worldly literary omnipotence we usually attribute to Shakespeare when he wrote Catcher. It’s interesting to wonder whether he was even aware of everything he was doing in the book or if he was like a pro athelete who enters “the zone” and emerges at the end of the game a puzzled hero. Every time one of Holden’s apologists dies, as his creator did this past week, a piece of Holden dies with them. Fortunately, he is as viral as one of my son’s favorite You Tube videos. When we follow his exploits, Holden’s DNA intertwines with our own and is propagated in everything we say and do. Fortunately, he will never completely die, but will continue to confound those who think him merely a whiny freak. RIP Holden Caulfield. Only Shot At A Good Tombstone
Jorge Vercilo Jorge Vercilo