In the new year, we will finally get a chance to see a major film event based on the life of J.D. Salinger. Salinger was a fine writer, but his legacy is based in no small part of the legendary character he created: Holden Caulfield. I suppose students in high school (middle school perhaps as well) still read Catcher in the Rye and might still identify with Holden’s searing dismissal of “phony” people. We might consider if Holden’s signature intellectual position of alienation might describe present day Tea Partiers or, even, young men who become jihadis. But one thing we Read more