will the real holden caulfield please stand up?

my bud taylor finished a recent blog with a throwaway comment that i latched onto. i'm not really sure the reason why i can't go into the barnes and nobles (or your un-chain bookstore of choice) and pick out a book copyrighted 2006 and be touched, be moved, be swimming amidst a new world and feeling that i know that world, that it maybe even knows me. taylor thought it might be that "they don't write books like they used to." i don't know...but here's what i thought:

sometimes it feels like something even bigger than "they don't write books like they used to." sometimes it feels like they don't have writers like they used to...or even worse, that there aren't subjects like there used to be. are we just missing the Holdens, the Howards and the Konstantins? or are they really absent from this world, too cluttered by cash and trapped by time? or is it just me...cluttered by cash and trapped by time...too blinded by it all to see them just down the street, or in the booth next to mine sipping cider, or at the pump across from me, putting sixty bucks into their civic. maybe they are still out there, just waiting to be written about and the writer just hasn't opened his eyes. i guess i've just run around in circles, but you're right in the end. they don't write books like they used to, no matter what the reason may be.