FA+
Shop
Aim Low, Sweet Chariot
a year ago
Let me state for the record: I've never read THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (1951). I haven't gone out of my way to avoid it, I've simply never felt like picking it up. So while I won't write about books I haven't read, I'll gladly share what critic Jonathan Yardley has to say about it in his delightful essay collection SECOND READING: NOTABLE AND NEGLECTED BOOKS REVISITED (2011):
"THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is now, just about anywhere you ask, an 'American classic,' right up there with the book that was published the following year, Ernest Hemingway's THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. They are two of the most durable and beloved books in American literature and, by any reasonable critical standard, two of the worst...The combination of Salinger's execrable prose and Caulfield's jejune narcissism produced effects comparable to mainlining castor oil.
"[T]he novel raises more questions than it answers. Why is a book about a spoiled rich kid kicked out of a fancy prep school so widely read by ordinary Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom have limited means and attend, or attended, public schools? Why is Holden Caulfield nearly universally seen as 'a symbol of purity and sensitivity' (as The Oxford Companion to American Literature puts it) when he's merely self-regarding and callow? Why do English teachers, whose responsibility is to teach good writing, repeatedly and reflexively require students to read a book as badly written as this one?
"It is required reading as therapy, a way to encourage young people to bathe in the warm, soothing waters of resentment...and self-pity without having to think a lucid thought. [It] touches adolescents' emotional buttons without putting their minds to work.
"From first page to last, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an exercise in button-pushing, and the biggest button it pushes is the adolescent's uncertainty and insecurity as he or she perches precariously between childhood...and adulthood, which is the great phony unknown. Indeed a case can be made that THE CATCHER IN THE RYE created adolescence as we now know it, a condition that barely existed until Salinger defined it. He established whining rebellion as essential to adolescence and it has remained such ever since."
Wow. I'll only mention that one of the best and darkest jokes in Tom Carson's GILLIGAN'S WAKE (2003) imagines Holden Caulfield growing up to become John Lennon's assassin.
(Any attempt at political finger pointing in replies to this journal will be taken as proof that you have utterly failed to recognize yourself.)
"THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is now, just about anywhere you ask, an 'American classic,' right up there with the book that was published the following year, Ernest Hemingway's THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. They are two of the most durable and beloved books in American literature and, by any reasonable critical standard, two of the worst...The combination of Salinger's execrable prose and Caulfield's jejune narcissism produced effects comparable to mainlining castor oil.
"[T]he novel raises more questions than it answers. Why is a book about a spoiled rich kid kicked out of a fancy prep school so widely read by ordinary Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom have limited means and attend, or attended, public schools? Why is Holden Caulfield nearly universally seen as 'a symbol of purity and sensitivity' (as The Oxford Companion to American Literature puts it) when he's merely self-regarding and callow? Why do English teachers, whose responsibility is to teach good writing, repeatedly and reflexively require students to read a book as badly written as this one?
"It is required reading as therapy, a way to encourage young people to bathe in the warm, soothing waters of resentment...and self-pity without having to think a lucid thought. [It] touches adolescents' emotional buttons without putting their minds to work.
"From first page to last, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an exercise in button-pushing, and the biggest button it pushes is the adolescent's uncertainty and insecurity as he or she perches precariously between childhood...and adulthood, which is the great phony unknown. Indeed a case can be made that THE CATCHER IN THE RYE created adolescence as we now know it, a condition that barely existed until Salinger defined it. He established whining rebellion as essential to adolescence and it has remained such ever since."
Wow. I'll only mention that one of the best and darkest jokes in Tom Carson's GILLIGAN'S WAKE (2003) imagines Holden Caulfield growing up to become John Lennon's assassin.
(Any attempt at political finger pointing in replies to this journal will be taken as proof that you have utterly failed to recognize yourself.)
Please keep in mind that growing up I was considered a voracious reader who could finish a pocketbook inside of a day if left undisturbed, but this... thing... Well... The teacher seemed genuinely baffled when I told him why I was only halfway through when everyone else was done and doing book reports on it. Every page felt like I was wading through waist-deep mud. I just coudnl't 'get' why this book had been such a big deal.
Then my dad found out what I was reading and explained a thing or two to me. It turns out my father was a young man when the book was a big deal and he told me that the only reason it was considered an "American Classic" was that 1: it was written by an American citizen and 2: It sold very, very well.
Then he explained that the reason it sold so well was that the rumor got out that the main character was secretly homosexual. So EVERYONE just HAD to buy the book to see if they could find some manner of insight into this and whether they should be offended or not. (This sort of thing still happens today. Remember the huge rush of people who hearing Dumbledore was gay rushed to buy the Harry Potter books a second time to see if that context changed anything?) Now, keeping in mind the exceedingly negative attitude towards gay people in that era this was a very big deal, but in the end people couldn't find anything, the controversy was forgotten and the book sold so many copies it gave the illusion of popularity on paper.
And so... an "American Classic" was born.
Thanks, Ryusukanku. You've given me some much-needed context for this book.
(That said, I don't know that we can fault Salinger for inventing rebellious adolescence, that feels like it happened on its own with the new cultural pressures of the time, if it hadn't existed before.)
Edit: for ref, the review was originally published in WaPo, and is available here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-d.....033101161.html
You're right: some version of Holden Caulfield would've been born in that decade. Salinger was ahead of the curve.
But as someone else said, it's a distinction destined to be created. The hormone stew of puberty combined with the development of the frontal lobe would create this chaotic time notable as we moved into a technological condition of greater ease, such that we'd really see that kids weren't still kids but were clearly not adults. Couldn't marry them off at 12 anymore. It feels weird to say, but Tim Allen got it right. In his book "Never stand too close to a naked man" was an extended musing on childhood and friendship, and how it all went to hell at puberty. If even that guy could see it, it's clear that it was an inevitable distinction to be made.
I don't think I could really tell you many details about it.
You were supposed to pity him and hope he got the help he needed.