Events on January 01, 2007:

Author Birthdays: Forster & Salinger

Today is the birthday of E. M. Forster (1879). Forster chronicled the world of the British—at home and abroad—at end of the British Empire and before the Great War. His novels include Howard's End and A Room with a View.

Today is also the birthday of J.D. Salinger (1919). The character he created in The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, is arguably the first alienated teen in literature. One of his other works, Franny and Zooey,  features equally precocious narrators who are unabashedly against phoniness.