Salinger

A couple nights ago, I watched the Salinger documentary that came out a couple months ago and was recently released on Netflix. Now, I read The Catcher in the Rye a few months ago, and just rewatched Finding Forrester a week or two ago, so I was definitely in the right place to watch it. But I wasn’t expecting to learn as much as I did about him.

First of all, I can’t believe that I hadn’t at least read his Wikipedia page before going into it. I look everything up on there. I know way too much about Elizabeth Bathory and Delphine LaLaurie and some of the colleges I’m looking into. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s my system.

I didn’t know that he was in the army. I didn’t know that he was attracted to teenage girls. That definitely changed my opinion of him a bit to say the least. Now I was never one of the people in the documentary who identified heavily with Holden. I just wasn’t. I felt like I knew him, because he reminded me of one of my friends, but that was it. I understand how irritated he was by the fame and the christening of having written THE coming-of-age novel. I don’t understand why people were so personally offended that he pulled himself out of the spotlight, because I know I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

My personal favorite young adult fiction writer, John Green, is having his latest book made into a movie. While it isn’t my favorite of his books, it is for a lot of other people. While this isn’t the main plot, one of the things that happens to the main character is that she gets to meet her idol, a famous reclusive writer who wrote a cult favorite book. And he was not what she expected at all. That happens a lot with famous people or those in the spotlight. People put them on a pedestal, and I don’t agree with that. I don’t think it’s right. I’m going to make another blog post on this, but when Luke asked us who our role models or people we aspire to be in our daily lives are, around ten people came to mind. The one that I’d probably get most ridiculed for is probably Harry Styles.

It isn’t because he’s a musician or because he’s famous, it’s because he honestly seems like a good person. Don’t believe in the hype. I honestly don’t believe the hype that he’s a womanizer or is going to leave the band etc. Because you have to look at what he does when no one’s watching. I’ve seen post upon post of things he’s done when no one was looking, and he honestly seems like a good kid. I’d want to be friends with him. Also, he dresses really well. But I digress.

I don’t think I could handle being friends with him, let alone meeting him. I’m a wimp, I know, but I know my limits and I know that if I wasn’t in a perfect state of mind I would regret everything said or done looking back.

Salinger was a person, not a statue, not an idol. And when people forget that, what can you expect?