Holden's aesthetics are entertaining, but they also tell us a good deal about his worldview. He sees much of life as a conflict between the authentic and the artificial, which is directly related to his attitude toward children and his resistance to the adult world. When Holden sees the 6-year-old child marching down the street singing, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye," he is uplifted because of the authenticity of the scene. The boy is not trying to please anyone; he is merely expressing his passion of the moment. D.B.'s short stories fall into the same category. They are quiet, private, an author's expression of his own truth without concern for reward. Estelle Fletcher, the black artist who sings "Little Shirley Beans" on the recording that Holden buys for Phoebe, is another adult who gets it right. Holden likes her jazz style, saying she "sings it very Dixieland and whorehouse, and it doesn't sound at all mushy." He appreciates the fact that she avoids sentimentality and doesn't cater to the audience by making the song "sound cute as hell."
On the other hand, when Ernie plays his piano at his nightclub in Greenwich Village, or when D.B. writes screenplays for Hollywood, or when various actors compromise their talents to please an audience, Holden can't stand it. These adult manipulations are, for him, the same as prostitution. The artists have sold out — for money or fame or just for applause. Nor can he tolerate what he sees as emotional manipulations in literature. Romance magazines with "lean-jawed guys named David" and "a lot of phony girls named Linda or Marcia" usually set Holden to "puking," although he does sometimes read them on the train. Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, which has a great reputation as an antiwar novel, also strikes him as manipulative and artificial. So do most films, especially sentimental war films. In the end, he seems to distrust the corrupting potential of the relationship between artist and audience, especially among adults.
