adolescence comes of age

The creator of Holden Caulfield is no more. True to the character he created, he was convinced that the world around him was ‘phoney’ and hence shunned attention, becoming a recluse. Without belaboring the point of how ‘Catcher in the rye’ has been a rite of passage for thousands into adolescence, I’ll dwell for a moment on the simplicity of his prose. It was essential for the kind of book that he set out to write to be cognizant of the impatience of youth. J.D.Salinger’s matter-of-fact style of writing captured the angst of the precocious Caulfield like no other. As a feature writer puts it, it was as if an adolescent discovered that his autobiography had already been written: by J.D.Salinger.