The Atlantic recently featured two articles about this book. One of the article mentions that pop culture has “flattened” Holden Caufield into an “irritatingly male, misanthropic whiner.” The author thinks this is unfair, and I agree, but I wondered if I would feel this way if I read the book now. This has been one of my favorite novels, and I’ve read it once or twice since the first time I read it in my twenties. It’s always held up well. I thought it was a good time to re-read the novel to see if I would feel the same.
After finishing the novel again, here are some random thoughts:
- A part of felt like this would be a novel that would not age well. I mean, the main character is a 16 year old. As I aged, I think there’s a good chance a novel like this would no longer resonate with me. Indeed, when I re-watched a film like Before Sunrise, sadly, I didn’t enjoy it as much, primarily because of my age and where I’m at in life. Catcher in the Rye is different. I think I enjoyed it as much as I did the first time I read it.
- Interestingly, I feel like the novel resonated with me because I was socially isolated, and I was not much older than Holden. While reading the novel, Phoebe also made me think of my sister. And yet even at a much older age, and different circumstance, I still enjoyed the novel, and still like Holden quite a bit.
- In the previous readings, the idea of phoniness was a prominent theme. This time I paid more attention to the things that made Holden happy or sad. By the way, he’s constantly mentioning things that make him depressed in a way that people talk now, and I wonder if use of the word “depressed” in this way came from the novel. (I didn’t realize the novel was written in 1945. For some reason, I thought it was written in the 60s.) Anyway, if I had the motivation, I would want to examine all the things that make him sad or happy. Off the top of my head, I would say that I’m mostly in agreement with his reactions, or at least I often sympathize with many of them.
- More than one or two times, the book made me laugh out loud. I didn’t remember it being as funny, and maybe I didn’t appreciate some of the humor. I don’t really favor adapting the novel into a film, but I admit I wouldn’t mind seeing some of these funnier moments.
- The scene with Mr. Antolini was creepy and dark in the previous readings. Now that homosexuality is more accepted, I wondered if I’d feel the same. I think it is still pretty disturbing, but ultimately I think the point captures the struggle and confusion that Holden is going through in his life. Specifically, he has doubts about the real intentions of Mr. Antolini. Did Holden misread the situation? Even if he felt like he didn’t, there was still enough uncertainty to cause some doubt. That can be confusing and destabilizing, especially since Mr. Antolini was the only adult he could turn to at that moment.
- Another item I’d like to explore is the notion of phoniness in the novel. What does Holden actually mean by this? I felt more confident I understand what he meant in previous readings, but I’m less sure in this one. Also, is Holden a phony, at least in some moments, to some degree as well? On a related note, why does Holden dislike movies, while respecting books?
More later.
There’s been a lot of press about this novel this month, as it celebrates its 75th year since publication. A big deal. 80 million print copies sold, never out of print.
This piece in the NY Times I had in an open tab for nearly a week before finally getting to it now. The comments section is especially enjoyable, as people seem compelled to share when they first read it, a kind of autobiographical approach to responding to Holden’s anniversary.
This has always been my approach, too — thinking and talking about the book against the backdrop of when I read it and what I thought then.
I read it first in seventh grade, so 12 or 13. I saw it on the shelf in our school library while browsing. I had heard of it, and I knew it was a controversial book, but I didn’t know anything else about it.
So yeah. The first impression was from all the swearing. And then Holden’s disillusionment with everything, although I didn’t know that word or even that concept then. Neither did I know antihero, but it was Holden’s being so unlike the main characters of every book I’d read before that really resonated.
I also had this feeling I didn’t understand the book, that it was meant for someone older than me. But as a dedicated noncomformist since my elementary school days, I latched onto him for a while, and even started using the word “phony” about things.
This is also the year I read Of Mice and Men for the first time, a novel that resonated more deeply and has endured much, much more powerfully in my reading life.
I read it again in ninth grade. I can’t remember why, but I remember having conversations about it with our ninth-grade English teacher, outside of class. She seemed fond of it, not to mention amused by my liking it. I felt like I was finally the right age to understand it, although I still wasn’t there with the unreliable narrator concept.
I read it again for fun sometime in my undergrad years and didn’t like it nearly as much. I didn’t (and I don’t) like the way Holden treats people. You can be an antihero and still be decent to human beings who care about you, and I saw Holden then (as I see him now) as enormously self-absorbed. The death of his brother softens this a lot for me now, now that I’ve thought much, much more about the way people grieve. I find myself today forgiving Holden for a lot of things I held against him when I read this in college. I find a lot less to admire, though.
The moment that saves the novel for me is when Holden rubs the F word off a wall. I understand the saving children fantasy the novel takes its title from is part of this same trait, so maybe I am seeing the novel the way Salinger intended, more than I might have acknowledged. If Holden had said his aspiration was instead to wipe the F word off every wall at every school, I’d find him a bit more heroic. 🙂
The last time I read it was about 20 years ago, I think, when I gave it to a friend for her birthday. I still find Holden’s first-person narrative voice the most compelling aspect of the whole thing. Yet after all those years of teaching people his age, I see him much more as a character to be pitied than admired, and I’d hope even the teens who read it today see him as pitiful, rather than heroic.
Wait, is Holden considered an unreliable narrator? Are there specific scenes that suggest this, or is it just the fact that he has a mental breakdown? While reading the novel again, the thought never occurred to me. He may be unreliable in the sense that every person may misread situations, be biased, but I take “unreliable narrator” to mean a character’s views are suspect because they’re delusion or devious. I don’t think Holden falls into either category.
Can you remember what he did that you didn’t like? I ask because I don’t recall feeling that way on this recent reading, but maybe I just forgot about objectionable behavior. Then again, I could be excusing some of his behavior, not just because of grief, but loneliness and social isolation. But even then, I can’t really recall anything that I strongly disapproved of.
Then again, I understood Holden as someone who is not only suffering from the death of his brother, but I think he’s suffering from being socially isolated
More later.