SJ Classic Novel Club: "The Catcher in the Rye"

Maybe we can make this a thing. We did it a few years ago with "Gatsby" and a couple others.

I picked this up this week to read for the first time since I was a teen-ager perhaps. It's a cliche to say that you relate to Holden Caulfield, but I remember reading it and almost having to put it down every page because it left me breathless. Almost everything I find talks about how it captures "teen-age alienation," and I guess that's kind of true. But, fuck, the guy makes me tear up on almost every page, still, at age 40. Not because he's alienated. But because he feels so deeply, I think. (But pretends not to.) I didn't relate to alienation, necessarily, though I did and still do find it a revelation to hear someone raging about "phonies."

Anyway, I'll post some passages I come across as time goes on, but here is one in particular, along with some background. My dad was kind of a hard dad, demanding. Worked his ass off. But anyway, one night he came home from work and, out of the blue, gave me a "Star Wars" Ewok action figure. That was definitely not his style. Thing was, I already had it. I never told him that. To this day, I get choked up thinking about it, this $1.99, moot act of kindness. I really do. Anyway, I don't know exactly what Holden meant here, but I feel the same way he does a lot of times, for various reasons. I mean it.

One thing about packing depressed me a little. I had to pack these brand-new ice skates my mother had practically just sent me a couple of days before. That depressed me. I could see my mother going in Spaulding's and asking the salesman a million dopy [sic] questions—and here I was getting the ax again. It made me feel pretty sad. She bought me the wrong kind of skates—I wanted racing skates and she bought hockey—but it made me sad anyway. Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.

So ... let's keep talking about it. (The book, not that particular passage.)

 

I recall how his luggage stacked up to his roommates (not very well.) I may just pick this up again.

 

I re-read it two years ago and realized just how much of an asshole Holden Caulfield was. That didn't register in my mind when I read it at 13 years old. At 31, I just wanted to punt that mopey kid with a steel-toed boot.

No, I haven't had a child yet. THIS IS GONNA BE GREAT, ISN'T IT?

 

It is remarkable that Salinger maintained consistency of voice throughout it. There was one passage where Caulfield was name-checking all these books he read, and that took me out of it, because it felt that Salinger was name-dropping his buddies.

But there are so many paragraphs where Caulfield starts by saying one thing, and then by the end says something completely the opposite. Usually it starts with him boasting or trying to play it cool, then being vulnerable by the end.

In one example I recall, he begins by announcing that he's a "sex maniac." By the end, he is talking about how sex disturbs him or something like that or how he doesn't really think about it.

Another time, he starts by talking about how ugly three women at a table at a hotel bar are. Then, by the end of the paragraph, he's smitten with one of the three who agrees to dance with him.

 

I suppose I should read it. Along with The Great Gatsby (finally read it a couple years ago), To Kill A Mockingbird, and the movie Blade Runner (will fix that with the sequel coming out in a couple weeks), it's one of the books/movies I am embarrassed to have not read or seen.

 

I definitely think he wants people to think he's an asshole.

 

I think Caulfield is rich, too, though. He attends a bunch of prep schools notes that his teacher answered his own door.

 

I re-read this in the winter. I absolutely love it. Not so much for his character, because I think he's a spoiled asshole. But because I just love how he spends those days after he gets kicked out of school. Going to the museum, going to bars, trying to sneak drinks. Calling chicks for dates, bouncing around New York City. I guess I love it for its atmosphere. Holden himself? Kind of a dick.

My mother used to be a high school English teacher, and this book was usually required as part of the curriculum. She hated it and she hated teaching it.

 

She's not a boy.

 

Thanks, I'll be sure to tell her.

 

I'm interested to see how Mrs. Whitman reacts. I told her it should be required reading for mothers of boys.