On "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

Goethe was one of the first literary figures to become an overnight success. Though he had already gained notoriety with previous work, “The Sorrows of Young Werther” made him a celebrity. ‘Werther Fieber’ culminated in one of the first recorded examples of copycat suicide. This book, written by Goethe at 24, would haunt him for the rest of his life.
In the foreword, W.H. Auden describes a paradox in Goethe’s feelings toward his hero:

The novel seems to me to be one of those works of art in which the conscious and unconscious motives of the creator are at odds.

On a certain level, he sympathized with Werther, but he also used Werther’s character as an exercise in excessive, narcissistic egoism. Auden posits that in conceiving a piece that used all of the themes of urge, longing and impulse that defined Sturm und Drang, Goethe was able to find his true poetic self, one which diverged from that movement. He went on, of course, to write his famed closet drama, "Faust".
This book and the story of its publication remind me of that illustrious coming of age novel that sits on almost every American 9th grader’s bookshelf: Catcher in the Rye. You can hear the unmistakable rhythm of Holden Caulfield’s speech flowing from the mouths of protagonists in the many indie films about teen alienation that have graced the screen in the past decade.
Salinger is a famous Refuser. He denied Sam Goldwyn, Billy Wilder, Harvey Weinstein and Jerry Lewis the film rights to this book. The specter of that teenage misfit seemed to chase Salinger doggedly, forcing him finally into a hermetical existence. Holden wouldn’t let Salinger share him, and the burden that he’d become, with anyone else. Like a ghost of his boyhood-a Peter Pan refusing to have his shadow sewn back on.
When thinking about both authors and the characters that defined them, I am tempted to alter a famous Chinese proverb, and curse, adapting it for fledgling writers: may your first novel be a success.