The Republic of Letters lost one of its most illustrious minds: J. D. Salinger.

Much ink has been spilled over Salinger’s reclusive lifestyle, his eccentricities and his mountain of unpublished works, such as “The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls,” whose only copy can be found in an isolated reading room at Princeton University’s library (two forms of ID are needed to enter, and a librarian must supervise you).

However, I prefer to focus on Salinger’s 1951 literary masterpiece, “The Catcher in the Rye,” and particularly its protagonist, Holden Caulfield – possibly the greatest icon of adolescent rebellion in the history of literature.

Media coverage of Salinger’s death made me look at one of my favorite books, which, admittedly, I last read when I was 16, just as we all did as teenagers. And I have realized that I read “The Catcher in the Rye” incorrectly.

The standard interpretation is that Holden, who refuses to grow up and enter the adult world of “phoniness,” is a hero. We all identify with Holden and share his misery. We all join Salinger in his scathing critique of modernity.

Yet, arguably, Holden himself is as much a denunciation of modern society as the “phony” world that surrounds him. Ultimately, the mature reader of “Catcher” will deplore Holden.

Holden comes from a wealthy family and is sent to New York’s finest prep schools. Yet he squanders these resources and, despite his unquestionable intelligence, is expelled from academy after academy due to his apathy and poor grades.

Holden’s refusal to grow up, summarized by his irrational dream job of catching dancing children in a rye field, perfectly predicted the Peter Pan syndrome that has accompanied modernity.

We live in a world where 70 percent of Italian men age 34 live with their parents. Young people fear marriage, starting a family and entering the job market. They want to be “catchers in the rye” forever.

While Holden’s evocation of his first love Jane is among the few instances when Holden authentically cares for another person, he almost exclusively views women as sex objects.

This is another tragedy of our times. We view human sexuality as merely a means to immediate gratification without any moral implications.

At the beginning of the novel, we learn that Holden has been institutionalized and is seeking psychotherapy. Clinical depression does exist and many people authentically need psychiatric help.

However, homo postmodernicus seeks escape from even the most banal life problems by plying himself with anti-depressants, which are grotesquely overprescribed.

Unquestionably, much of what Holden deplored is deplorable. His observation that the only “non-phony” adults he ever met were two nuns at a train station reveals the great spiritual hunger of modernization.

Yet rather than seeking to satisfy that thirst by seeking meaning in his own life, Holden alienates himself from the world in his narcissistic shell of nihilism which is no better than what disgusts him.

“The Catcher in the Rye” is my favorite post-war American novel, alongside Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” Yet, several years after my first reading of the novel, I appreciate it in an entirely different way.

While “The Catcher in the Rye” is often called a coming of age story, this is untrue. Holden never comes of age and does everything to evade adulthood.

We shouldn’t be catchers in the rye, but we should rather, confront the idiocy of the world, and perhaps attempt to change it.