J.D. Salinger: The Catcher In The Rye

J.D. Salinger: The Catcher In The Rye

There are a number of novels out there that people are expected to have read at some point in their youth. Not to have done so is, in a word, shameful. This is the position that I’ve found myself in with J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye (1951), a copy of which I bought many years ago, perhaps even twelve, when I was the same age as its infamous narrator, Holden Caulfield. That copy has sat unread on my shelves all that time, its pages yellowing.

Part of the reason I’ve not read it is that I thought I knew it already.  What with its famous opening, the defiant nature of Holden Caulfiend, and a slim understanding that the novel concerned, to some degree, Caulfield’s younger sister, what more was there to know? Loads, apparently, especially on realising the book wasn’t about baseball. What forced me to finally take the book off the shelves is that it’s a universal reference point for so much fiction employing a youthful narrator shaking his fist at the world.

Having mentioned the opening to the novel, it seems only fair to show it, acknowledging the immediate strength and attitude to Caulfield’s voice:

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

Although novels had long moved from the verbiage of the serial novel, Salinger is quick to show that this is no payment-by-the-word affair, but that of a person with their own ideas of what the story should be. Salinger maintains the consistency of the voice through almost two hundred pages, but what’s most interesting is who Caulfield is addressing. At first it appears he is speaking to us, the reader, but as the opening paragraph rolls on there are references that suggest this isn’t just any old tête à tête between book and reader. References to his brother visiting him once a week in “this crumby place” and going home, but not for a while yet, hint at what’s going on, but as the novel progresses the truth becomes clear.

The Catcher In The Rye sees Caulfield reflecting on an event that happened to him the year before. He begins at Pencey, his preparatory school, in the lead up to Christmas. He won’t be coming back after the holiday, having flunked all his subjects save English, and a letter has been dispatched to his parents back home in New York. After a few altercations with fellow students, a plan forms in his head:

I’d decided what I’d really do, I’d get the hell out of Pencey – right that same night and all. I mean not wait till Wednesday or anything. I just didn’t want to hang around any more. It made me sad and lonesome. So what I’d decided to do, I decided I’d take a room in a hotel in New York – some very inexpensive hotel and all – and just take it easy till Wednesday. Then, on Wednesday, I’d go home all rested up and feeling swell…I sort of needed a little vacation. My nerves were shot. They really were.

Even though Caulfield is a year older, and seems more calm and collected than the younger self he describes, there is a sense that he’s never being fully honest with us. It’s to be expected from someone who says he’s “the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.” At one point, early in the story, he discusses the way he acts, and although the lies he tells us about telling to others at times sound absurd, the down to earth believability of this are deliberately ambiguous. Truth or not, the sad thing is that while he thinks he’s deceiving others, he’s deceiving himself about why he does it: for attention.

I was sixteen then, and I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen. It’s really ironical, because I’m six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. I really do. The one side of my head – the right side – is full of millions of gray hairs. I’ve had them ever since I was a kid. And yet I still act sometimes like I was only about twelve. Everybody says that, especially my father. It’s partly true, too, but it isn’t all true. People always think something’s all true. I don’t give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am – I really do – but people never notice it. People never notice anything.

In my misconceptions of The Catcher In The Rye being about baseball (although a baseball glove does feature), I’d assumed that the title referred, in some way, to playing baseball in a field of rye. Simple, I know. I was surprised, however, to see, as the story makes clear, that it’s another classic American novel, like Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men, taking its title from a Robert Burns poem, in this case Comin’ Thro’ The Rye, a poem that calls for self responsibility without busybodies interfering. It’s a reference to an image Caulfield has of children playing in a field of rye near a cliff where he is there to catch them as they fall, something he misinterprets as to do with the preservation of his sister Phoebe’s childhood, a misunderstanding that leads to epiphany.

That The Catcher In The Rye is often seen as a novel best read in one’s youth is perhaps true in part. The wise words of a teacher, coupled with Caulfield’s realisation showing he is on the path to adulthood, is geared for that age group. The masterly control Salinger shows in his anti-hero’s voice, a casual, limited vernacular, capable of expressing (and suppressing) a great deal of content and experience. Growing up is painful, and Caulfield’s as good a guide as any. But as an adult, the enjoyment of the book is not in its lessons but its allusions, tone, and its character, all satisfying, and nary a whiff of didacticism making the novel feel like a life lived than one taught. In talking about books, Holden says it best:

What I like best is a book that’s at least funny once in a while. I read a lot of classical books like The Return of the Native and all, and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and mysteries and all, but they don’t knock me out too much. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.

Ah, Salinger: he doesn’t write, he doesn’t call. Perhaps that’s why.

9 Replies to “J.D. Salinger: The Catcher In The Rye”

  1. Thank you for your very informative comment on polish writing – you have given me several links which are well-worth following up.

    I read the Catcher in the Rye in my 20s and enjoyed it. It has a sardonic, reflective voice which is very appealing and yes, definitely an American classic – I wonder if there’ll be a Steinbeck revival one day? I know nobody who’s read any of his books but I’m sure I read them all about 30 years ago!

  2. Thank you for your very informative comment on polish writing – you have given me several links which are well-worth following up.

    No problem. I think I’m privileged to have, at my nearest Waterstone’s, a bona fide book seller, one with an interest in European and Latin American literature, so the displays help get an idea of the wealth of unsung publishers and literature out there.

    I wonder if there’ll be a Steinbeck revival one day? I know nobody who’s read any of his books but I’m sure I read them all about 30 years ago!

    Steinbeck’s a favourite of mine, although I’ve only listed one title here so far, his first novel Cup Of Gold. I was intending on reading them in order, as I have all his books on my shelves in the Penguin Modern Classics editions. I suppose what’s stopping me reading them in order is that next up is To A God Unknown, which I’ve read before. Others I’ve read are Burning Bright, The Moon Is Down, Of Mice And Men, The Pearl, and The Red Pony. I’ve deliberately avoided the larger ones, The Grapes Of Wrath and East Of Eden. For now, anyway.

  3. Stewart,
    You’ve once again managed to accomplish as much as any writer can hope for when penning a review–you’ve made this reader determined fit in a reading of _The Catcher in the Rye_ as soon as possible. Your profound understanding of the character of Holden Caulfield demonstrates that the age at which you read this book scarcely matters. At 26, I suspect I’ll be able to appreciate it more thoroughly than I would have at a younger age. As you aptly point out, the book is not about “lessons,” as such. But does every great book have to have a moral? I think we already know the answer to that. I would have to question those who pass _The Catcher in the Rye_ off as mere coming-of-age novel. From reading your review, it’s obvious it’s so much more than that.

    Brilliant work, Stewart. Brilliant.

    Titania

  4. An excellent review on an important book. I reread Catcher in the Rye a few years ago along with The Great Gatsby to decide which deserved their place in the American canon — and came away firmly believing in Catcher in the Rye. I moved on to Salinger’s three volumes of short stories centred on the Glass family and found them equally rewarding. I would urge people who like this book to do the same.

    There is a part of me that hopes that Salinger in his New England retreat has been writing things and stowing them on the shelf, for publication later. He is a masterful writer, this book is only an introduction and I am sorry that he did not write more.

  5. I reread Catcher in the Rye a few years ago along with The Great Gatsby to decide which deserved their place in the American canon — and came away firmly believing in Catcher in the Rye.

    Sometimes I read a book and don’t get around to writing about it in time before the detail is gone, leaving only a gist. The Great Gatsby is one. I can hardly remember it, and it was only a few months back. A Clockwork Orange, which sadly I didn’t write about, even though it’s one of favourites for this year, still shines bright in my mind. But Gatsby? No.

    There is a part of me that hopes that Salinger in his New England retreat has been writing things and stowing them on the shelf, for publication later.

    Well, according to Wikipedia, there’s this:

    While he was living with Maynard, Salinger continued to write in a disciplined fashion, a few hours every morning. According to Maynard, by 1972 he had completed two new novels. In a rare 1974 interview with The New York Times, he explained: “There is a marvelous peace in not publishing.… I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.” According to Maynard, he saw publication as “a damned interruption”. In her memoir, Margaret Salinger describes the detailed filing system her father had for his unpublished manuscripts: “A red mark meant, if I die before I finish my work, publish this ‘as is,’ blue meant publish but edit first, and so on.”

    Whether he’s kept them after the fiasco with the women’s memoirs in the 1990s, we’ll find out when he pops his clogs.

    Titania, you say:

    Your profound understanding of the character of Holden Caulfield demonstrates that the age at which you read this book scarcely matters.

    I don’t think you need to be any age to understand Holden Caulfield, but it may help to be a similar age and in a similar situation to empathise wholly with him.

    You know, when I read this review over this morning, I was amazed I’d got through it without mentioning the repeated refrain of phony. In a way, that’s nice, I think.

  6. Hi Stewart,
    An insightful reading of the novel. I can see the spine of the novel on my shelf from where I’m sitting and can see myself finishing it in one evening – if I didn’t have other stuff to do !
    Concerning what age you have or don’t have to be I’d say it wasn’t important. I certainly think you could have occasion to enjoy it at very different times in your life: a teenager, of course, but why not as a parent too?
    James

  7. I loved Catcher in the Rye when I read it at 15 or 16. I had to read it again in college and only *liked* it. But reading this review reminds me of why I loved it as a teen. I suppose it’s time to reread it again!

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