Honestly. I’m not kidding you. I know I say that a lot, but this time it’s true. Do the math. He was 16 or so in 1951 when the book came out–50 years ago! See, I’ve known him since we were at Pencey Prep together. He was cool back then. But now–boy!–what a miserable SOB he turned out to be. I’m saying it and I’m his friend. His only friend just about. Really. He’s like the grumpiest, crumbiest guy you could ever meet. It’s hard to believe that such a terrific kid could end up like that.

Like you, I have a hard time separating Holden from old J.D. Salinger sometimes. Really, I do. ’Cause, y’know, Catcher in the Rye was like J.D.’s story, right? I mean Holden hated phonies and J.D. hates phonies–to this day–he really does. People who are sincere with him are okay, otherwise…. And being a phony was to Holden Caulfield, like, the worst thing in the world, so it’s really so ironic that people should now be calling him a phony. Holden Caulfield, a phony–imagine that!

Like that George Will in the New York Post the other day, saying Holden was a whiner, which, when you think about it, is pretty much the same as a phony. I’d like to kill that George Will if killing people weren’t illegal. George Will says–get this!–that Holden is to blame for just about everything bad that’s happened: Leonard Bernstein, the sixties, James Dean, punks, crack, Dr. Spock, Oprah Winfrey, Marlon Brando (as if the poor guy doesn’t have enough problems), and Huckleberry Finn–or was he before? I sometimes get mixed up with what was before and what was after in history. And, George, don’t you go blaming Holden for the bad grammar and stuff those hippies used, ’cause he has a real respect for the English language–even if he is kinda illiterate.

One of the worst things that happened to Holden in my opinion was that he got old. Honestly. That’s a bitch right there. Along the way, see, he forgot how much he hated phonies and then–you guessed it–he became one. Stuff happens like that all the time. But it happens so slow you don’t even notice.

Holden never wants them to ever, ever make a movie of Catcher in the Rye, but if you ask me that’s the only movie they make these days–all about young people being mad at all the phoniness around them. See, I figured, like, who could be more sincere than James Dean in Rebel without a Cause, y’know? For one thing, here was some guy who was inspired by Holden as I see it, and the guy even being dead when the movie came out, well, I thought Holden would’ve loved that–he’s always been real morbid, y’know? So I dragged him to see it He hated it! Holden hates movies, he really does, and it’s not just because movies are phony (after all, being phony is what movies are). It’s just that they’re not real. Can you beat that?

Of course, Holden doesn’t see that many people these days. Actually, hardly anybody on account of all the things that happened to him. He hasn’t been out of the house in like 20 years. I’m not kidding. Okay, I said it again. I say stuff a lot, but that doesn’t mean I don’t mean it.

I don’t think he’d mind me telling you all this stuff–although he is pretty big on suing people now that I come to think of it–but I doubt he’s ever gonna read this. The Internet isn’t his kinda thing. You don’t know who you’re talking to on the Internet and he’d hate that, not being able to see the person and all….

Holden’s shy, he really is. I can’t tell you where he lives. He’d kill me if I did. See, the thing is, when he did feel he wanted to come out and meet people and have experiences and write about them and all, nobody would believe him. He didn’t leave the house for 30 years after the book came out. Then he got on a bus one day and came down to the Port Authority terminal in New York City. He tried to make friends. But whenever he got really close to someone, like believing that they were truly his friend, he’d confide to them who he really was, y’know? Well, I bet you can guess what happened. They thought he was a fruitcake. "Holden Caulfield? Like fun you are! Holden Caulfield is a character in a book, and, anyway, he’s like 16 and you’re old, real old." Even though he was only around 36 at the time.

You felt sorry for him, waiting all those years to go out and all that stuff happening to him. Wanna know the worst thing that happened, though? When he told this one girl who he really was–she had this big nose and falsies–she called him a phony. Boy, did that hurt.

He’d sit up in that big house in C----- and write stories and lure virginal young English majors up there, which he could do, being so famous and all. But, like, if you haven’t done it in about 20 years–well, he began to believe that the girl’s thing, y’know, had teeth in it. Look, I really shouldn’t be telling you this stuff.

I’m just about the only person who sees him regular these days. I know what you’re thinking, it’s a pretty neat deal, but see, like, there are drawbacks in that I have to tell him stuff sometimes I’d rather not. But, like, if I don’t tell him, y’know, someone he hardly knows might, and that would really wig him out.

Like just about the hardest thing I ever had to tell him about was about this guy who was such a big fan of his book and really, really hated phonies, and gosh darnit, if he didn’t go and kill John Lennon. I thought he was gonna vomit when he heard that. I really did. He was real wigged out for a while after that, like make believing he was talking to his dead brother Allie all the time about how he thought he was disappearing and all. "Allie, don’t let me disappear," he’d say, "Please Allie!" And then when he reached the other side of the street without disappearing, he’d thank him.

I tried to tell him that this Mark David Chapman guy maybe wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe underneath everything he was a nice guy who just got confused and so angry at all the phonies that he just couldn’t help himself, y’know? I mean a guy who really, really liked his book, how bad could he be?

And, when you think about it, it’s not all that crazy, is it, when you think about it, wanting to live your whole life in a book? ’Cause, y’know, it’s like every day is a different page and when you get to the end you can just start all over again, and every time I read those words right at the beginning I get a shiver down my spine: "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like. . . ."

I’d tell you more stuff about Holden but they just rang the bell for dinner, and it’s potato pockets and peach cobbler for dessert. All on one tray!

I hope you won’t get mad at me–people are plenty mad at me already–but I played a little trick on you. Can you keep a secret? It’s my birthday today–although I’m not telling anyone.