I think, in fact, if one were to describe how Salinger’s work participates in the tragic, one would have to mention how, in their quests for holiness, his protagonists discover, in the world in which they come of age and live, no corresponding holiness, or models of authenticity, in whom they might find encouragement and validation, but only a phoniness and insincerity, even in those people and places that purport to locate themselves outside the American mainstream.