If students want to review parts of my Keynote presentation titled “J.D. Salinger and the Cult of Catcher,” this is a nice time to point out that I post a lot of my presentations online and they are accessible (minus videos) here under “Files.” My slides and presentations are always changing, and therefore the online versions might not be exactly what we did in class, but it is a start. Furthermore, my philosophy with multimedia presentations is simply that good ones are the ones that necessitate a presenter, and not just slides, so I do not expect any of my online Keynotes to take the place of what we did in class.
But in other news I’ve heard that Ms. Steigmann has been compiling songs related to The Catcher in the Rye with her class, and this post seems to be trying to do the same. I wonder if my students can think of any additions to this list? Some of my students were also wondering about what Salinger is up to these days. Last summer, he was in the news a bit for preventing the publication of a novel that he felt was too close to his own. 
The New York Times documented a lot of this, and the most recent article, “Get a Life, Holden Caulfield,” explains the situation and examines the cultural relevancy of Salinger and the novel that made him famous.
Last but not least: Recently Matt Zoller Seitz wrote and edited an extensive and insightful analysis of Wes Anderson films titled “The Substance of Style.” The analysis is divided into six parts, and part four– Examining the Wes Anderson–J.D. Salinger connection–compares Anderson films specifically to Salinger’s prose. These comparisons are something I’ve been attempting to do in my classes for years, but Seitz does it much better and much more thoroughly than I ever could. I don’t think you have to love Anderson films as much as I do to get something out of it, especially with the video that Seitz provides as evidence, which I’ve embedded below.
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Well I think think its a very good article that explains what today’s cultuer thinks of Holden. I’d have to agree. Holden, in my opinion, IS way too whiny and WAY too immature. But that, I think, is a good thing because the kids in the 60’s didnt have the opportunity to think of holden in that way. And that opportunity, is what gives us a chance to look at the book from a different perspective, and that might help us understand it a bit better.