Book Review: The Catcher in the Rye

Title: The Catcher in the Rye
Author: J.D. Salinger
Format: Trade Paper
Publisher: Penguin Books
Pub Date: 1951; this edition: 2010
Read: re-read: Feb 2011; first read: Spring 1999
Purchased: amazon.co.uk
Why: Shortly after Salinger’s death, Penguin rushed these new editions to print. When I saw these gorgeous editions were coming out, I patiently waited for them to arrive in stores so I could purchase them. It finally dawned on me that in the United States, Little, Brown and Company publishes Salinger’s books, not Penguin. So I just went ahead and ordered The Catcher in the Rye from the UK Amazon site (along with Franny and Zooey). Would have ordered Nine Stories as well but it’s called For Esme — With Love and Squalor in the UK (and in most parts of the world) which oddly enough kind of offends me. There’s something ridiculous and charming about the collection being known as Nine Stories I think.
Fulfills Challenge? Technically it fulfills the Classics Challenge but since I read this one before, I’m not going to count it. I almost don’t even want to count it as part of my overall challenge, but since I am reading cover to cover, it’s been over 10 years, and I don’t remember any of it, I’m going to let this one slide.

Notes: I first read The Catcher in the Rye while I was in junior high, eighth grade to be exact. My eighth grade teacher, Mr Greene, hyped it up quite a bit. I remember four things from my original reading of The Catcher in the Rye. 1) that Holden Caulfield is in a psychiatric hospital (this is something people always seem to forget) 2) the phrase “terrific silence” because that’s the first time I learned that terrific had two, basically opposite meanings 3) the scene with the prostitute (specifically that he doesn’t go through with it) 4) the catcher in the rye scene. I pretty much forgot / misremembered everything else (I remembered he had a sister for example, but I thought she was older. I remembered his remarks about inferiority complexes but I remembered them wrong, etc).

Last year, a customer asked me what the book was about and I just kind of looked at her. The question confused me … “Who cares what it’s about?!” I almost exclaimed. Instead I mumbled something about it being a coming of age story of sorts because that seemed like a better response than “how the fuck should I know?” I’m sure my lovely readers would agree I made the right decision.

Review/Thoughts:
If I have ever in the past remarked that this novel is overrated (I probably did at some point, mostly because my teacher hyped it to the point where one was bound to be disappointed and think, so that’s it?) I take it back. I take it all back.

I know when many people read (or re-read) The Catcher in the Rye as an adult they find Holden Caulfield to be absolutely insufferable, even if they sympathized with him as a young adult. And nowadays it seems fewer and fewer young adults relate to him. What’s interesting to me is that it seems my getting older has had the opposite effect. I find him more relatable now than I did when I was 14.

And yes, in many ways Holden Caulfield is phony, though despite his harsh criticisms of phonies, I don’t recall his denying it about himself. He openly admits to being a liar as early as Chapter 3. Are people then surprised by his lying and contradictory information later on? I also think Holden’s phoniness is fairly typical of your average teen. It is often the case that when emotions run high, something can be true one moment, and false the next. I can be best friends with this person one day and want to gouge her eyes out the next and then a week later be the best of friends again.

But oddly enough, there is a genuineness underneath the layer of phoniness. And the truth always comes out sooner or later, often by his own admission. It is clear that he cares –despite everything he might say to the contrary — he cares very deeply. Even with things as simple as his concern over where the Central Park ducks go when the pond freezes over you can see that he does care about things. His loneliness and feelings of isolation are palpable even before he says he’s lonely. His love for his sister and his deceased brother (and children in general) is also apparent. He may not like anything else but Phoebe and Allie are important to him (as is Jane Gallagher, whom he is entirely too afraid to speak to). His description of Allie’s death is probably one of the most heartbreaking passages in the novel, the utter hollowness of the phrase “He’s dead now” was crushing to me.

I felt genuine discomfort more times than I can count (jeez, I don’t recall being this uncomfortable when I first read it) due to some secondhand embarrassment — moments when you just want to say, Oh, please don’t do that, you’re making a fool out of yourself. I also found myself chuckling at certain scenes, yet I also found the book to be incredibly sad. Throughout I felt myself getting emotional and then I just started crying when he drops Phoebe’s record and it shatters into pieces but he picks up the pieces anyway and pockets them. That he thought of his little sister in the first place is touching, to then have that thoughtfulness shatter in an instant, was just a little too much for me. I also don’t remember being this upset the first time around, but I’m older now somehow even more prone to crying than I was when I was younger.

Well, in the awkward words of Holden Caulfield, “[t]hat’s all I’m going to tell about.”

Final Verdict: