I just hope they buried him with that goddamn red hat.

“It’s as solid as a rock rolling down the hill. The fact is that it probably will hit something on the hazardous terrain. And we’re just following the flock ’round and in between, before we smash to smithereens like they were, and we scrambled from the blame.”

 At the beginning of each of my posts I will have a random song lyric. Your challenge is to find the source and listen to the song in its entirety. I promise, I would not recommend any song which is a waste of one’s time. 

I’m sorry, but the inaugural post will have to be on a dour subject: the recent passing of J.D. Salinger. Jerome David, as he was legally known, was born in 1919 in New York, NY. He published four books, The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, Nine Stories, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.  These four books were enough to support him throughout his life of seclusion in New Hampshire, living the life he always wanted, undisturbed. He is, for lack of a better word, a role model, for those who do not trust role models.

Something puzzling to me is that he graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy in 1936, and later served in World War II.  I guess this must have been the turning point for him. I can’t bet that the following years were happy ones. Every one of stories centers around a protagonist who is searching for something, be it solitude, reassurance, affection, and sometimes the sweet liberation only death can bring. If anything, his books were written not by him but rather by post traumatic stress syndrome. Numerous novelists have employed this ghost writer: Hemingway, Mailer, Vonnegut, and every one has been an inspiration for generations of misfits and terminally frustrated.

I was never a true admirer of Catcher. I thought it was exceptionally overrated and over analyzed. The bitter disillusioned crybaby known as Holden Caufield was no more meaningful to me than a bowl of soggy Fruit Loops dumped into the sink after breakfast. I prefered everyone he came in contact with, except his unhygienic roommate, over him. But, everyone knows a Holden, the only person unsure of what he or she wants.

I’m not like Holden. I’m like Salinger. I’m not afraid of growing older. I’m excited because I’ll finally live how I want to. I have  consistent personality and try to keep my promises that I will work only to please me. So with a melancholy heart I bid farewell to Jerome David. Wherever he resides eternally, I pray there are no “phonies” to gum up the works.