Written by J.D. Salinger
“Besides, I’m not going to tell you my whole goddamn autobiography or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.”
I always meant to read The Catcher in the Rye. I seem to be the only one who didn’t read this book in high school. It wasn’t a specific avoidance…the curriculum for this novel never quite matched up with what I studied. It wasn’t for lack of superb books in English class: The Hobbit, The Stone Angel, The Handmaid’s Tale…and many more.
When Salinger died recently, I finally decided to buy the novel and read it for myself. However, Salinger-mania hit the bookstores and I couldn’t find a single copy…until now. This past Saturday, I stat down with a few coffees and read it in three straight hours…and I came to a few conclusion:
(1) The Catcher in the Rye is such a dated piece of fiction, that it has become an astonishing historical artifact in its own right. It’s the literary equivalent of TV’s Mad Men: a snap shot of a remarkable time in pop culture that isn’t showcased and highlighted very often in this day and age. The late-1940s slang, the attitudes & social mores, the rural prep school & swish New York settings…all of it represents a time & place I couldn’t relate to…yet I couldn’t get enough of it. It’s sheer alienness was gripping.
(2) The Catcher in the Rye isn’t about rebellion and teenage angst. Though it would have been racy for the time, this isn’t a book about an unrepentent, sullen youngster on the cusp of manhood. The story of Holden Caulfield is one of hypocrisy…primarily his own. He is full of bitterness towards the phony world around him — he sees nothing but a life filled with fake emotions, films where fakery is glorified, surrounded by acquaintances trapped behind their practiced, brittle facades. He railes against all of it, and all of them…
…yet he ignores his own hypocrisy. He doesn’t want to face his own upbringing, his own snobbish attitudes & pampered lifestyle, his own disastrous attempts to appear grown up, suave and in control…and his own misery & self-hate. When he confronts these feelings, he nearly falls apart…and as a result, this novel is a suprisingly powerful look at depression. So much aching sadness and loneliness…where will it lead him? To a near-total breakdown, it would seem…
In some respects, I appreciate this as a story of epic emotions and dark explorations of the human psyche. But I also believe time has rendered much of this material somewhat muted. In the years since Catcher in the Rye was published, fiction has evolved in quantum leaps, and no subject seems to be taboo in this day & age. Time has pickled this novel into something fascinating…but it has also superceeded its achievements by some distance.
I enjoyed it, and I honour the foundations that it built for the future…but I also recognize that the modern age has come a long way in its exploration of similar themes. The Catcher in the Rye occupies a unique niche…and it should be cherished. But I believe the novels that could claim to be its direct decendants are where true appreciation and satisfaction with Salinger’s work will ultimately be found.
