the CATCHER in the RYE

J.D. Salinger published this reputed American classic in 1951, which was probably the most censored book in high schools and libraries until the mid 1980s. I’m unsure why it’s considered a classic other than the fact that professors and publishers like looking for hidden meanings in each chapter. I’m not saying that I didn’t like the novel because I did enjoy it, but mainly because, I think, Salinger’s descriptions and language usage of the late 1940s was terrific. I forgot about the word “crumby”, meaning inadequate, or “phony”, meaning pretentious. The narrator and protagonist of the novel, Holden Caulfield (a seventeen year old boy) uses those words a lot. And how about “flitty” or referring to people as “old” this or that? The writing is very strong, but the story is moderate at best to this reviewer. I don’t see myself debating hidden meanings with anybody. I’m assuming it was censored in schools because of sexual allusions, the morality codes of the 1940s and 50s, family values, and some coarse language (very mild compared to today’s language). I'm very puzzled by the title of the book. What’s up with the title of the book? Shmoop states: “What's up indeed. The first mention we get of this mysterious catcher in this mysterious rye is when Holden overhears a little kid singing, 'If a body catch a body coming through the rye.' Momentarily, it makes him feel not so depressed, in part because Holden is a fan of little children, and the only things better than little children are little children who are singing.” Apparently misconstruing Robert Burns’s 1796 poem, Holden sees himself as the catcher in the rye catching the children as they fall off a cliff. Who knows? Salinger was a kind of recluse and didn’t give many interviews.

The book starts with Holden Caulfield in a hospital in Southern California narrating the story of his previous December’s adventures in Pennsylvania and N.Y.C. The reader doesn’t know whether it’s a mental or physical hospital. Maybe that is one of the debatable points of this book. Anyway, he is being expelled from Pencey Prep in Pennsylvania. The reader gets the feeling that this isn’t the first school that he’s been thrown out of. He doesn’t seem to see why learning is important, doesn’t get along with his teachers or roommates, and doesn’t seem to respect his very successful parents. And what does his "red hunting hat" symbolize? He heads to N.Y.C. several days before his parents will receive the expulsion letter from Pencey Prep. There, he books a cheap hotel and pines about his life. He likes to drink, smoke, and make an ass of himself. He contacts a previous girlfriend, Sally, and makes a mess of things. He constantly thinks about calling Jane, another old flame, but never does. He contacts his sister Phoebe and an old teacher Mr. Antolini. The crux of the story is what happens on his adventures in N.Y.C, and the big debate with literary scrappers is: What’s up with his mental health, and what does his movements mean? As far as this reader is concerned - who cares, just read and enjoy!

I wonder after reading this book if this Holden Caulfield character is really J.D. Salinger as a young man. I had the same feeling when reading John Irving’s In One Person . Anyway, you literary debaters, I think if you re-read page 170 you will find out how Holden Caulfield really feels about school and life: “You ought to go to a boy’s school sometime. Try it sometime,” I said. “It’s full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques”. Metaphorically speaking, I think Holden was drowning in boredom. Anyway, enough thoughts about Holden Caulfield’s mental state that is being puppeteered by the cloistered J.D. Salinger! Just grab a copy and form your own opinions.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: After Salinger’s death, The New Yorker magazine said on 2/8/10: Salinger was an expansive romantic, an observer of the details of the world, and of New York in particular; no book has ever captured a city better than “The Catcher in the Rye” captured New York in the forties. Has any writer ever had a better ear for American talk? (One thinks of the man occupying the seat behind Holden Caulfield at Radio City Music Hall, who, watching the Rockettes, keeps saying to his wife, “You know what that is? That’s precision.”) A self-enclosed writer doesn’t listen, and Salinger was a peerless listener: page after page of pure talk flowed out of him, moving and true and, above all, funny. He was a humorist with a heart before he was a mystic with a vision, or, rather, the vision flowed from the humor. That was the final almost-moral of “Zooey,” the almost-final Salinger story to appear in these pages: Seymour’s Fat Lady, who gives art its audience, is all of us."

On 1/16/12, two years after Salinger’s death, Salon.com’s Kenneth Slawenski wrote: “When it came to his work, J.D. Salinger was the ultimate control freak. He strove for absolute perfection in his writing and sought complete power over its presentation. He ordered his photo be removed from the dust jacket of “The Catcher in the Rye,” fought with numerous publishers over his book’s content and presentation, and his disdain for editing was legendary. When a copy editor at the New Yorker dared to remove a single comma from one of his stories, Salinger snapped. “There was hell to pay,” recalled William Maxwell, and the comma was quickly reinstated. Recently uncovered letters demonstrate how the author repeatedly refused any film adaptation of his classic novel. He felt no actor could properly fill the role of Holden Caulfield, although he quipped to Ernest Hemingway that he might be persuaded to play the part himself.” Readers, J.D. Salinger was and still is a legendary writer.