“Salinger ontkwam aan de ruïne die de tegencultuur zou worden doordat hij zich er nooit mee had vereenzelvigd. Hij wendde zich van vrijwel alles af, ook van de literaire wereld die hem inmiddels had omarmd. Toch komt het me nu voor alsof Salinger de lezer met The Catcher in the Rye niet helemaal zonder conventionele hoop achter wilde laten.”

Voor NRC schreef Arnon Grunberg een stuk over J.D. Salingers roman The Catcher in the Rye, de tradities, de puberteit en Salingers verhaal Voor Esmé – veel liefs en morsigheid. Het stuk stond in de NRC van vrijdag 10 juli en is hier online te lezen.

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“Salinger escaped the ruin that the counterculture would become because he had never identified with it. He turned his back on nearly everything, including the literary world that had by then embraced him. Yet it now seems to me that, with The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger did not want to leave the reader entirely without conventional hope.”

For NRC, Arnon Grunberg wrote an article about J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye, the traditions Salinger may or may not have belonged to, and his short story “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor”. The article appeared in NRC on Friday, July 10, and can be read online here (in Dutch).