Almost everyone who reads J.D. Salinger as a teenager takes his work personally, either because the sagas of Holden Caulfield and the Glass family connect with the concerns of adolescence, or because English teachers occasionally rave so fervently about his qualities that some young readers angrily shrug him off. Salinger's merits have also been the subject of debate among his contemporaries, a few of whom (John Updike and Joan Didion among them) contributed to a 1962 book of essays about the man and his inflated reputation. Kip Kotzen references the prior volume in his introduction to With Love And Squalor, a new book of essays about Salinger, edited by Kotzen and Thomas Beller. With Love And Squalor was compiled in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Catcher In The Rye—an event which prompted a column by George Will earlier this year, wherein the conservative pundit characterized Holden Caulfield as one of the first postmodern "whiners." The 14 essayists in Kotzen and Beller's book aren't quite as harsh, or as intensely critical as the writers in 1962's Salinger: A Critical And Personal Portrait. Most of the contributors to With Love And Squalor are under 40, having encountered their subject when they were young, so their essays tend toward the personal. They examine Salinger's impact on their narrative voices, on their views of the world, and on their tendency to romanticize New York/New England sophisticates. In Walter Kirn's piece "Goodbye, Holden Caulfield. I Mean It. Go! Good-bye!," the author recalls a teacher's attempt to convince his class that Catcher contained a strong critique of a repressive era, while Kirn read the book and daydreamed about skating dates, natural-history museums, and the ducks in Central Park. John McNally's brilliant essay "The Boy That Had Created The Disturbance" pays tribute to Salinger's minor characters, noting that everyone knows "an Ackley" but no one will admit to being one. Co-editor Beller's own contribution, "The Salinger Weather," describes the subject's writing as "an atmosphere which, once encountered, permeates everything else." All the essayists attempt to explain the feeling of Salinger. With Love And Squalor is honest about the writer's flaws—particularly his heroes' sense of smug superiority, which some have mistaken for the way smart folks are supposed to behave—but most of the contributors can't help but be awestruck by the intensity of feeling and heightened awareness in Salinger's prose. His words still duck around the smothering press of high-school curricula, and whisper directly in the ear of any reader who wants to listen.