I'm probably better off that JD Salinger went into seclusion

[The following was also published on Crab Town.]

As I'm sure you've read by now, J.D. Salinger died yesterday at age 91.

Like anyone who received an honest education, I read The Catcher In The Rye as a teenager having a fairly standard high school experience — that is, not exactly hating it, not exactly loving it. But, I should admit, I was a lot closer to hating than loving.

As I'm sure it did to almost everyone in my position, the book heightened my scorn for each person that I didn't like and didn't like me. (Strange how those two groups seemed to overlap.) It made me feel as though I wasn't alone, there wasn't just a few people in my school who were bound for something greater than an institution that encouraged hard work but was supported by a social hierarchy that never rewarded such a thing.

In Catcher, Salinger summed up this kind of world as "phony," which at the time was about as perfect a definition as I could hope for. I was authentic, I was original, I was misunderstood — except, that is, by Salinger. I bought all of his other books in search of more sympathy, more reasons why I should accept my situation as the blunt reality of life and just wallow in my bitterness of it all.

At the age of 16 or 17, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction was a little over my head. I told myself that I got it, but I didn't. Franny and Zooey was more my speed, and it offered more in the disenchanted protagonist department. Reading of Franny's discontentment with the world around her even in college made me think that no matter what I did in my life, I'd always be surrounded by fake people — I'd always be the only one true original.

But then, high school started getting a bit better. I made more friends and transferred to a school with an environment that better suited me. I put away Salinger books for a while — though I still absolutely swore by his work as definitive. And of course, Franny and Zooey was the better book because fewer people had read it. I started being more interested in interacting with people rather than just resenting them. (To be clear, I still resented a lot of people.)

As opposed to embracing my misery and constantly wondering why no one was realizing that I was brilliant, I was doing constructive things with my time. I probably never put greater effort into my photography work as I did in my last two years of high school and first year of university. I think I was at peace with the idea that though there were many people that I didn't like, I could still do whatever I wanted to do without worrying about them.

During this time I managed to read Salinger's Nine Stories, which, compared to his other novels, is a slightly more optimistic and brighter work. The closing story, "Teddy," probably struck me the hardest, with its ruminations on existence and the idea that you could die pretty much at any instant. I think that this concept became a little more important to me than cursing the world in all its unfairness and bullshit.

I re-read Catcher after that and though I could (and still can) relate to a lot of Holden Caufield's feelings, they didn't seem quite as relevant. All that bitterness seemed like a wasted effort when there were so many great things to experience, like moving far away from home for the first time and meeting people I had never seen before. And sure, I definitely did not like all of the new people that I met, but at least I was discovering that rather than assuming.

I'm not saying reading Catcher In The Rye or Nine Stories changed me, but I did change after reading them. I'd like to think that was a result of the natural process of maturing; Salinger's work only served to remind me to keep a slightly-skeptical, watchful eye through which to filter my experiences.