I've been coming across about five million hatchet jobs on J.D. Salinger by hateful phonies—I mean, they've got to make sure everybody knows they're real hotshots, so what they do, they try to tear down what they liked themselves when they were Holden Caulfield's age. But they're older and wiser now. Very big deal. Those older-and-wiser lit-crit bastards give me a pain in the ass. They all think they're iconoclasts. And God, I hate that word. Don't even mention it to me. I mean iconoclast. The thing about it, it was probably a good word and all before the phonies and wannabes got hold of it. Now they just throw it around to let you know they know a big word. Only, you can tell they don't really. And these lit-crit hotshots I'm talking about—they don't even use it any more. Not to describe themselves, anyway. They're subtle bastards. I'll give them that.

Anyway, I'm re-reading The Catcher in the Rye. It holds up. It really does. Terrific late-forties story. (And some of these “critics” don't even know it's set in the forties. People like that really get up my nose. They can't even add.) You take a guy like old Holden, he's sophisticated for sixteen. I'm wondering if Salinger was. I guess it's possible he gave Holden something like the sophistication he himself had when he was a little older, say in his twenties. Still, I like the idea that old Holden really is the way he is, that he came by his sophistication honestly, you might say. What the hell do I know? I'm from Cleveland. Maybe brightish New Yorkers do acquire some savoir-faire (God, I'm sounding like a phony) or whatever the right goddam word is—a little younger than other people. I was reading the part where sixteen-year-old Holden is hanging out with three thirtyish, not-terrifically-bright women visiting New York City from Seattle. And what Holden's doing is, he's holding his own with them. (This non-New Yorker barely knew what to do with a girl my own age and all when I was sixteen, let alone three thirty-year-olds. Although there was one on my paper route when I was thirteen who caused a quickening in my nether regions, but let me get back to what I was telling you.)

You take a guy like Holden, the other thing is he really likes women. And girls. Females kill him. They really do. Both the blonde among those women from Seattle and Sally Hayes have pretty butts. A man after my own heart is old Holden. Another thing about him—those two callypygian ones being a case in point—he can feel at least half in love with a pretty woman when he sees her. Even if his brain is telling him that, looks aside, he and she probably wouldn't, or don't, have much to say to each other. A bit like a lot of men, probably, including that George guy in Shampoo, Warren Beatty's very-busy gynephilic hairdresser. You take a guy like old George—he sure had a way with women, even if they could figure out he was not exactly a winner. At least not by L.A. standards. Only a second or third cousin to Holden, though. I think. I mean he had a certain confidence and all that Holden lacked. He really did. A helluva confident guy, that George. Did I say they were both gynephilic? Odd that there isn't a better-known adjective for a guy who likes women and all. But I can't think of one. Interesting, too, and very odd, that nowadays some people mistake gynephilia for misogyny. Or slander it as such. But what the hell, Holden would be about ninety by now. Don't ever think about this stuff too long. You'll end up writing your memoirs in a loony bin, I swear you will.

One thing about The Catcher in the Rye is that it's not on board with this legalistic notion, prevalent nowadays if not in the late forties, that adolescents are still children. A notion that would be foreign to the entire story, perhaps especially in reference to Holden's relation to his sister Phoebe, and his part-realistic, part-fantastical vision of himself as a protector of children.