Fame and the Recluse

An interesting article by Charles McGrath about the reclusiveness of JD Salinger, which includes an assessment of the contemporary relevance of his work. I'm finding it quite hard, though, to get my head around its concluding suggestions, ie that Salinger's main theme of 'phoniness v authenticity' has become outdated, and that this is intimately linked to his self-imposed silence in that, like his fictional character Seymour, Salinger may have felt that his work was too subtle for a crass audience.

Maybe I'm just too distracted by the thought that such reclusiveness would be pretty impossible to establish nowadays...