A Catcher in the Rye - J.D Salinger

"The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, second-hand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvellously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep. "

I do apologise about the pretentious blurb I had to use. It was on the back of the cover I had and I always try to stay faithful to the copy I read. 

I get this book. I get that Holden is supposed to be loathsome. I get that he is the hypocrite he hates. I get that almost all teenagers go through the kind of thinking he experiences. I get it. I do. I just don't like it.

We, however, have to consider it in the context of the era in which this book was released. The era is post-WWII America. America had just helped defeat two evil empires, and soldiers were coming Home Sweet Home to their happy-to-be-housewives and their 2.5 kids who were to be seen and not heard.

Many readers who were born and brought up after the 1960s don't realize what a revolution occurred in the 1950s and 1960s. Today being a free spirit and expressing your individuality is celebrated and encouraged. In those days you were expected to  "Do as I say, not as I do." 

And here we have 1) a main character who curses constantly, and unashamedly rejects the values of his parents and society in general and 2) a narrative style that is casual and conversational. These two factors were shocking and dismaying to some, refreshing and delightful to others.

So Holden became a hero to some. Not in the conventional sense of the word, but because people related to him and they sympathized with the disillusioned way he felt. He personified all that was wrong with society. If you don't go along, if you don't play the game, then the vast machine that is society will knock you down and even lock you away. Holden is not intended to be a hero in the conventional sense of the word. He is a tragic victim of the crappy world in which he has no control and where no one understands him.

I imagine that in 1951, when this was published, there were those who said "Yes! It's about time someone was honest!" and there were those who exclaimed "What is this world coming to?". 

My theory as to this book's unusually polarizing nature: either you identify with Holden Caulfield or you don't. His "annoying", "pseudo rebellious" and "just don't care" exterior were so obviously manufactured and so patently hiding a seriously sad and lost boy that I was interested in finding the real Holden Caulfield. But we never really seem to find him. He is obviously desperately lonely as he is constantly trying to get his taxi drivers to have a drink with him, and he craves emotional intimacy seen in his constant search of prostitutes/ women. 

But Caulfied is lazy. He is stubborn. He is immature. He is unfocused. He is untruthful. He is dangerously short-sighted and he is lost in his own world or unrealistic expectations. Sounds like that could certainly be a not unsubstantial portion of the disenfranchised male 16 year old population.

Those who see themselves (either as they were or, God help them, as they are) in Holden see a misunderstood warrior-poet, fighting the good fight against a hypocritical and unfeeling world; they see in Salinger a genius because he gets it, and he gets them.

Those of us who don't relate to Holden see in him a self-absorbed, pretentious whiner, and in Salinger, a one-trick-pony who lucked into performing his trick at a time when some large fraction of America happened to be in the right collective frame of mind to perceive this boring twaddle as subversive and meaningful.

Age Rating 15+. Prostitutes, the occasional beatings and a whole lot of cursing.