Thank you for the kind words and the comment.

It's fascinating to hear how it was received at the time--and at a school that was similar. Was it a boarding school for you too? Reading it here in the rural Midwest--it was so far from my world and there were so many things I couldn't understand, like a bunch of high-school boys all living together at school. I personally was always very glad to go home from school at the end of the day so I can't imagine.

I am glad (if that's the right word) that at least there was an educational payoff, although I'm deeply sorry there was an emotional hit. A lot of times now I think middle and high schools inflict the emotional hits without providing the educational background!

Incidentally, I don't know that Holden rejected everything; I think he might have felt rejected himself. I think he wanted something better to belong to, and that is a different kind of problem.

Huh. Finding in talking about it that I still love the book, the way I love all books that give so many different people so many different things in the same reading experience. Back to the conundrum.

p.s. do write something for "About Me"! You can write lots of articles on lots of different aspects of your experience. I've found that part of learning here on Medium has been learning how to break my stories up. I tried hard to make this one shorter, actually, because 7 minutes is too long. Still working on better self-editing!