I guess a thousand page, single spaced, 10 point type apology for ever unleashing Holden on the rest of us would be too much to hope for.
No, I bet we get - was it Marcel Proust - who wanted everything burned when he died, only to have it published and having decades of English Majors curse his relatives for not carrying out his wishes?
OK, if were going to play Bullwinkle's Poetry Corner here, I'll give my totally objective analysis of CitR.
There were two super selling, must read anti-hero stories written in the 50s, CitR, and On the Road. Both were written about the same time, and about the same subject (life in the late 1940s, Post-War America - from the standpoints of people who had not been in 'the war'), though OtR was published about 6/9 years later.* Though both would gain great (and almost totally undeserved popularity) in the 60s and 70s as portrayals of the Great American Anti-Hero, they could not be more different.
One, was written by a gifted rule follower, who dotted every 'i' crossed every 't' and couldn't tell a story if his life depended on it. The other a long, rambling disjointed tale that is perhaps the most awesome massacre of the formal English language ever, but one hell of a story with people (most of them real) that you really want to believe in. One, CitR, is written in the first person, and comes across as a whiny and sniveling screed, the other, written with pseudonyms and in a more literary style created a character (Dean Moriarty) a the holy con-man with the shining mind who in real life, as Neil Cassidy, was even more awesome than the book paints him as being.
Both deal with 'alienation' but the effects of that alienation is so totally different that its hard to believe that the results have the same roots. Where HC is born and bred into society that he feels does not 'accept him' DM is none of that. Both reject societies conventions, but DM takes that bull by the horns and says 'well, screw them,' and then goes on to screw everything that moved, including Sal if I remember right. Poor HC, buys a hooker and only bores her into charging him twice as much NOT to have sex with him as she would have had he just got his rocks off. Talk about pathetic. Yeesh.
Where one group, OtR, sees opportunity in that rejection of social norms, the other person, HC, sees belonging as critical. DM understands what the norms are, and how exactly he is rejecting them, and what the price and payoff for that is, the other wants the freedom to reject, but would deny that same freedom to others who might reject him for making those choices. In so doing, HC has neither.
And he never will.
Because HC is the very definition of a solipsistic inner life lived by and only for the self. Oh I'm so lonely, Oh I'm so rejected, Oh I'm so miserable - no one will ever understand me. Boo Hoo.
DM creates community as he goes. Sometimes for a night, sometimes for a week or two, sometimes for beyond his life. DM, in real life as Cassidy, is a pretty central force in the creation of the counter-culture as we know it, HC can't create anything beyond himself, because to HC there is nothing beyond himself.
One is a kind of Holy Grail for losers, the other is manifesto and how-to book for rebels. Given that, it's an easy choice.
* - depends on which time line as to the writing of OtR you want to take, there are several.
