|
I set off to write here about a subject which unceasingly attracts both raw fervor and scholarly undertakings: Its about Holden Caulfield, the super cool American disaffected youth, who has come to exemplify the almost Hamlet-like revulsion for the "rank and base things" of the world; Only, unlike the prince of Denmark, Caulfield was all of 16 years, flunking his way out of yet another elite prep school, all the while articulating a profound distaste for all things phony. He also differed from Hamlet in another crucial aspect: his manner of articulation: breezy, impudent and endearing; none of the exalted but pedantic bemoans of Hamlet.
My
enterprise here is not to heap another richly deserved eulogy
on the catcher in the rye, not even to once again commend
its brilliant and famously reclusive writer JD Salinger. I
want to put forth here a conjecture which struck my fancy;
I want to promulgate the idea of Thomas Dequincy, that infamous
and luminous writer of "confessions of the English opium
eater" as one who embodies the traits that Holden Caulfield
is loved and revered for.
Like
Caulfield, Dequincy was both derelict and disillusioned. He
too played the truant from his own academic pursuits, to the
point of seceding from both family and school. Like Caulfield,
Dequincy displays an unfailing reverence for the classics,
and an inveterate reader. |
