A suggestion that the literary hero of the
Younger Set — the Great Phony-slayer — may, just
possibly, be a bit of a phony himself.
WHO is to inherit the mantle of Papa Hemingway? Who if not J. D. Salinger? Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye has a brother in Hollywood who thinks A Farewell to Arms is terrific. Holden does not see how his brother, who is his favorite writer, can like a phony book like that. But the very image of the hero as pitiless phony-detector comes from Hemingway. In Across the River and Into…
