Revisiting Books Long Since Read 2 - J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye

A Novel on Adolescence

The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by the reclusive and highly eccentric American novelist J.D. Salinger. This novel was published in the USA in 1951. It was voted by Time magazine in 2005 as one of the top 100 novels written in English since 1923. J.D. Salinger was born in Manhattan, New York in 1919 and died in 2010.  He was a recluse and gave very few interviews in his life, the last interview took place in 1980.  If one reads anything about J.D. Salinger — what little there is to read about — one will find him a highly eccentric individual and probably as tormented and angst-ridden as his partially autobiographical hero Holden Caulfield. The minute I started to read this novel, I was captivated by the narrator’s voice which essentially means that the style is conversational and direct and is that of a friendly confused adolescent.  The first line grabs attention: “Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

Always keep the reader guessing:

I love the technique of keeping the reader guessing. Immediately we open The Catcher we are listening to Holden’s captivating voice and to his story. This boy is 17 years old when he tells the story, but was 16 when the events narrated took place. This protagonist is named in full as Holden Morrissey Caulfield, a tall, lanky, overly critical and depressed sixteen-year-old who academically flunked out of Pencey Prep boarding school. It is not clear whether he was kicked out of school or left it at his own volition. Neither is it clear where Holden is now as a narrator. Is he is in another school, or what the Americans call Juvenile Hall or even in a mental institution? I remember annotating my original copy of the book with the words: “Where is Holden now?” This is a brilliant ploy on the part of Jerome David Salinger. We are left in suspense and in mystery. At the end of the book, the reader is given more clues that Holden is narrating the book from a mental hospital. He explains that he will be going to another school in the fall again but doesn't know for sure if he will start applying himself. He finishes talking with these sad, untrusting, cynical and life-sapping words, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody".  Exactly the same lines as those which open the novel.

Is Redemption Possible?

This is another deep question asked by this gem of a book. Can all those “phonies” out there in society be redeemed? Everywhere Holden looks he sees these “phonies”, these two-faced adults in a phoney two-faced world. From Holden’s cynical and depressive perspective, it would seem that the world cannot be redeemed at all. All its adults are flawed and tainted and show worrying motivations. Sincerity and truth, or if you like to state it in modern psychotherapeutic terminology, authenticity and congruence are severely lacking.

The Innocence-Experience Tension

I am always struck by the age-old tension in literature between Innocence and Experience. William Blake deals with this topic in a more all-rounded, deeper and less emotionally fraught way. For him, Innocence was a huge value in his life and in living out in fullness of that life. However, William Blake realised that children have to grow up; they have to come of age and slough off the clothes of childhood for more adult ones. Hence Blake wrote his Songs of Experience to counterbalance, and essentially to magnify the deep truth of his Songs of Innocence. It’s not either/or for Blake – it’s both/and. Jerome David Salinger in his protagonist (who is after all only 17 years old) only has time for the Songs of Innocence as it were. However, given his young age, and given that Salinger is writing in a 17-year-old’s voice anything more would not have been possible. Consequently, we are in Salinger’s debt for captivating this one-sided experience of a much-troubled and tormented adolescent. That’s why this novel makes good reading for secondary school angst-ridden boys.

A Note About the Title

The title is strange indeed, and it is not explained to us until at least halfway through the novel. During a short conversation with Phoebe, his much-beloved younger sister, Holden reveals the meaning of the novel's title. The idea is based on Salinger’s or Holden’s misreading of a line in the song "Comin' Thro' the Rye", by the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, which Holden heard a young boy singing once. Holden mistakenly substituted "When a body catch a body, comin' thro' the rye" for "When a body meet a body, comin' thro' the rye." Holden interpreted the line literally, imagining a field of rye at the edge of a cliff, in which children constantly wandered about — as children do — and that someone had the job of catching any who might fall. Thus, he says that he wants to be the catcher because it serves a real purpose in a world that is otherwise so often phoney or trivial or superficial. Here are his own words to his little sister Phoebe, 10 years old: "I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy . . ."

Holden is a young romantic and this very much appeals to me, and indeed to most readers. For him, the world of experience and of adulthood is disappointing, in fact, more than disappointing, it’s phoney, inauthentic and superficial. It’s a two-faced, hypocritical, besmirched, impure and evil one. Children, childhood and innocence need to be protected. Holden imagines himself being the “saviour” or as he calls it the “catcher” for all the innocent children. As a child, I often remember my father, my bigger brother, or even another adult saying to me: “Jump, it’s easy, I’ll catch you!” Yes, indeed, we all need to be caught. In Time magazine, 1951, we read the following from J.D. Salinger: “‘Some of my best friends are children,’ says Jerome David Salinger, 32.'In fact, all of my best friends are children.’” Is this a sad comment on life or not, from a 32-year-old man? I suppose, in my own life as a teacher and an adult I have often seen myself as a “catcher.” Indeed, I hear many teachers at school saying, “We saved (caught) Joe X” etc.

Phoniness

A major theme undoubtedly is that of what Holden terms “phoniness.” Many adolescents, and indeed adults, feel affronted by the dishonesty and false pretences, and the superficiality of the real world. However, every attentive reader will notice that there is much evidence in this novel that Holden himself exhibits much of the same "phoniness" he denounces in others. He also lies and pretends to be other than he actually is. However, Holden believes that he is honest with himself, and the reader, throughout the book. In this sense, we could say that Holden is an unreliable narrator, criticizing others for faults which he later exhibits so abundantly. So, the question remains in our mind: “How far can we trust Holden?” Maybe that is the question, indeed, that J.D. Salinger puts to us the reader: “How far can we trust anybody?” Salinger’s life would seem to show that he trusted few and certainly suspected as sham and forbidding the real world out there. Hence, the insecurity, eccentricity and reclusiveness of our author.

This is a brilliant book and a brilliant read. Ten out of ten on any scale for a modern novel. However, as a reader, I am left a little disturbed and not a little disappointed that life cannot be better for this troubled and tormented young man.