Holden Caulfield says it best — he always says it best.

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it,” Caulfield, the legendary protagonist of J.D. Salinger’s most famous novel, “The Catcher in the Rye,” explains.

I wish I had J.D. Salinger’s number programmed into my cell, to call him whenever I finish one of his novels to say, “Gee, that really knocked me out.”

Salinger died last week, so now the phone would probably just go to voice mail over and over. A famous recluse, it’s unlikely he ever would have picked up the phone anyway.

CARPENTER

Sometimes an author leads such an extraordinary life that his celebrity — and in Salinger’s case, an unwanted celebrity — overshadows the beauty of his works. I find myself constantly defending Salinger.

After John Lennon’s killer was found to have been carrying a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye,” with certain pages dog-eared and particular passages underlined, Salinger and his works faced an unfair onslaught of hatred and vindictive book-burning from both Beatles fans and parents’ groups.

His book didn’t kill John Lennon. Mark David Chapman did. A wave of speculative biographies similarly damaged Salinger’s reputation.

Young fans of the author were infamous for their many failed attempts to meet the reclusive Salinger by knocking on the door of his Connecticut cabin.

Reports of curiously bizarre behavior turned many away and intrigued even more. J.D. may have drunk his own urine, according to accounts from his own daughter as well as those of a former lover — so what?

My grandmother continued to watch Joan Crawford movies long after the book “Mommie Dearest” told about Crawford’s abusive behavor toward her children.

Salinger’s books continue to resonate with readers around the world decades after they were first published. They were shoved onto hate lists and banned in schools, but these novels have always crackled to life a spark of understanding with so many younger readers.

You can really only read them once to full effect; there’s a point in life when these words truly seem to connect on a supersonic level, and then that point is past. You really only re-read them to reminisce about what it felt like the first time.

Salinger knew how to write in a voice that was universal, one that so perfectly matched the American teenage experience.

Part of being an American teenager is trying to find something enduringly genuine. You’re mad at your parents, at school and at life, because each separate situation, or the whole conglomeration, seems so riddled with hypocrisy.

I first read “A Catcher in the Rye” at age 14, feeling alienated and misunderstood, and I automatically felt I had found a friend in Salinger’s characters. When I read a Salinger story, I don’t read the works of a deranged recluse who harbored delusions of Zen and ultimate truth.

I read about Holden, and the Glass family, and what Buddy has to say about life, death and the whole shebang. “Do it for the fat lady.”

On tough, bleary days, in times like this when the winter blues weigh down my every thought and step, I remember I’m doing it for the fat lady.

In the emotional climax of “Franny and Zooey,” big brother reminds little sister that she has to power through the tough times and go through everything in life with a sense of doing it for some higher purpose.

Salinger may have died, but his books live on. So here’s to Bananafish, “It’s a Wise Child,” ducks and a frozen pond.

We don’t need to miss you. You’re still here.

— Julia Carpenter is a staff writer for The Red & Black and a freshman majoring in English