Holden Caulfield? He's, Like, So Lame ...
Robert McCrum: JD Salinger's lawsuit against alleged 'rip off' gives Catcher in the Rye a blast of fresh publicity
JD Salinger's lawsuit against an eccentric Swedish-American writer named Fredrik Colting for allegedly ripping off Catcher in the Rye (first published in 1951) in an unauthorized sequel has given the original a blast of fresh publicity, though not all of it helpful or flattering. According to the New York Times, there are signs that Holden Caulfield "may be losing his grip on the kids". The famously alienated teenager who once seemed fiercely truth-telling in his war on "phonies", writes the paper, now strikes many of them as "weird", "whiny" and "immature". One breezy 15-year-old from Long Island reportedly told a Salinger scholar: "Oh, we all hated Holden in my class. We just wanted to tell him, 'Shut up and take your Prozac'."
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