I know this is like refuting the bible to some people
and probably as alien to others as my distaste for the Beatles
but I only read JD Salinger in school because we had to
and although I enjoyed the story well enough
(and you know which one it was)
I never really got what the uproar was about
or why it was controversial
or what it had to do with me
It didn't change my life
or inspire me to become a bitter old recluse
or fight the system
or reject authority
or whatever it was meant to do
and I never re-read the story
or picked up anything else he had written(did he actually write much?)
and since he was an old man
whose name never entered my head more than once or twice
since those school days
I can’t carry on about his death
or try to intellectualize his impact on me
or write a morose Facebook status
like all those people
half at least of which I bet rarely even pick up a book
let alone read enough to care
about an old, dead author
whose only influence on their life was forced
and who probably only read the Coles Notes version
(which he didn’t write by the way)
and the great bandwagon of celebrity death
rolls on and on
and if you don’t jump on guess what,
it doesn’t run you over


(yes, yes I know SOME people really DO care about this. But NO WAY do ALL the people who are babbling about it care as much as they want to seem to. I believe they truly do just see this as a way to have his witty quotes as their Facebook status, for sure).