I enjoyed your article about Salinger very much. Like many people, I was forced to read The Catcher in the Rye in high school English class and (also like many people) I thought it was pretty terrible writing.. But at the age of 40, eight years after finishing my PhD in literature, I decided to give it a good honest second try. Nope, sorry, it really IS just as bad and just as pretentious as its detractors say it is (and quite possibly worse). YET it does have a certain charm to it, and Salinger's life story is actually quite fascinating,

I didn't think your article was in any way arrogant. As for the accusation of being "self-referential", I don't think posting a reply to your own article is "self-referential", do you?

Wow, sorry. I really should have read through all the letters first. I honestly thought the accusation that Ron Rosenbaum was 'self-referential" referred to his decision to post a reply to his own article on the Slate website.

However, I just read through all the replies before Ron's last post yesterday and compared the dates and I see that there's a different accusation there, namely that he quotes his own work in his reviews. Please accept my apologies for the confusion.