• I own another edition of Franny and Zooey (not pictured), that is designed like my copy of The Catcher in the Rye.

• I broke the spine of my copy of The Catcher in the Rye. I might have to replace my copy because um, no. Broken spines are a no-no.

• There seems to be the belief that Holden Caulfield’s voice isn’t really all that unique, that all Salinger’s characters sound like that. I would have to basically disagree with this sentiment. While Salinger does have a very particular style that is present throughout all of his work¹, Holden’s voice is very different from the Glass children for example. And seeing as how the Glasses occupy two full books as well as a couple of stories in Nine Stories, the comparison is relevant and covers almost all of Salinger’s published work that is still in print and readily available to the average audience. The Glasses are a very intelligent, precocious lot, with a vocabulary to match. Holden’s vocabulary is decidedly limited (and he says as much early on). He repeats himself a lot, sometimes within the span of just a few pages, and sometimes even within the same sentence. For example, when he meets up with one of his former teachers he says, “…I sort of missed them. I mean I sort of missed them.” This sort of repetition is peppered throughout the entire novel (and that doesn’t even address the fact that Holden constantly repeats the word really and phony). He also uses certain words incorrectly, and I don’t think it’s simply a reflection of words being used differently back in the late 40s and 50s. It’s a matter of Holden being a fairly typical teenager using who uses imprecise means of expressing himself. The Glasses don’t speak that way. They’re almost too smart for that nonsense, and while they’re trademark Salinger one can’t really accuse them of ever sounding unintelligent.

• Sometime last year I spoke (somewhat angrily) about the very idea of adapting The Catcher in the Rye into a film. My feelings on the matter have not changed, but I would like to quote from a letter Salinger wrote in 1957 about the matter

I keep saying this and nobody seems to agree, but The Catcher in the Rye is a very novelistic novel. There are readymade scenes – only a fool would deny that – but, for me, the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice, the non-stop peculiarities of it, his personal, extremely discriminating attitude to his reader-listener, his asides about gasoline rainbows in street puddles, his philosophy or way of looking at cowhide suitcases and empty toothpaste cartons – in a word, his thoughts. He can’t legitimately be separated from his own first-person technique. True, if separation is forcibly made, there is enough material left over for something called an Exciting (or maybe just Interesting) Evening in the Theater. But I find that idea if not odious, at least odious enough to keep me from selling the rights. There are many of his thoughts, of course, that could be labored into dialogue – or into some stream-of-consciousness loudspeaker device – but labored is exactly the right word….

• This is exactly how I feel. It’s one of these novels that is so reliant on the narrative, the idiosyncrasies of the character’s speech and more importantly thoughts, that I can’t see a reasonable way for this to be done without botching it completely. The letter in question can be read in its entirety here.

• I think The Catcher in the Rye should have been one chapter shorter, ending with Holden watching his sister Phoebe on the carousel. Mind you the last chapter is less than a page but I think it’s unnecessary. Then again, when did Holden ever know when to shut up? I suppose it’s perfect the way it is.

• I didn’t make a separate post on the 22 uncollected short stories I read because in general, I don’t review short stories, and I don’t consider it a collection…due to the fact that, it’s not. That said, I really enjoyed them, even “Hapworth 16, 1924,” which most people seem to find objectionable. But I actually found a lot of the lines to be amusing including “a revolting fork is a revolting fork” and “Do not trample too quickly on stupid books!” It was, however, entirely too long. It ends three times essentially — the first time, Seymour finds more paper (I became dismayed at this point), then again when Buddy walks in, then finally it ends for real after what’s essentially a post script. I had a moment of IS THIS A JOKE?! after the second ending failed to actually bring the letter to a close.

• On February 18, I made the pilgrimage to Princeton University and took a look at the five unpublished works they house at the Firestone Library. I managed to read “The Children’s Echelon” and “The Last and Best of the Peter Pans.” I left the remaining stories, (“The Magic Foxhole,” “Two Lonely Men,” and the most famous of the unpublished works, “The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls”) for another visit.

• I think this photograph taken by Antony Di Gesu is cute.

• I both enjoy and mourn the fact that I have now read every Salinger work in print. But at least I still have a few more stories to look forward to.

1. Are there authors, particularly good ones, who don’t have a unique style and voice? An author’s voice is always present. The voice of a character is always distilled through the voice of the author, which is why two authors can accurately capture the voice of a child yet still sound completely different.