The Catcher In The Rye

Title: The Catcher In The Rye

Author: D. J. Salinger

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Publish date: 1951

ISBN: 9782253009788

Book quote:

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.” 

I re-read this recently after a gap of three decades or so, and a prompting from comments to the effect of What is the point of this book, why would I want to read about some crappy dude who’s hopeless at everything and screws up his life in every possible way? To be fair, my only recollection of the novel from last reading was a vague sensation of annoyance.

For starters, what comes out of Holden’s mouth and transpires in action is certainly crappy, but there’s no doubt we’re meant to have empathy for him – precisely because of his empathy for others. It’s this, and the inability to bear the monstrous injustice he starts to be aware of as he grows out of the viewfinder of childhood, that makes him turn away from the painful sight and start poking his finger in his eye or whatever moronic consequential action he decides on next. He can’t stand to see a stranger snubbed in the street, or a roommate he doesn’t like being excluded (even it’s for precisely the same reasons he dislikes them for). Certainly not even entertain the idea of a young girl whom he likes being treated in a way that – well, in a way that boys tend to treat girls. The moral struggle and culpability of not being able to right all (or any) of the wrongs in the world is an ongoing issue for any human with a conscience. The post-war environment of the early 1950s and the state of being an adolescent serve here as nexus for this anxiety to coalesce against. It’s not, however, a unique situation.

Critics sometimes cite the ‘shocking’ vocabulary as a milestone in literary freedom of expression. The only shocking thing about the vocabulary is the head-bangingly monotonous repetition. Whether Salinger set out to gain profanity-notoriety-points or whether he was merely using the inarticulacy as a show-not-tell for the powerlessness of Holden’s emotional state is a moot point. For sure, something written this self-indulgently and carelessly would never see past the inside of a garbage bin in an editor’s office these days. If writers today wanted to gain the same effect we’d have to use a whole heap of other tactics to keep the reader interested and validate the page count. The flat-footedness is accentuated in portions where other narrators come in. Strangely, they all have similar diction – minus some profanity, perhaps. It’s probably because of the shock-value that the volume ever got published. Moral mores are some of the hardest obstacles to transcend and often they’re so ingrained we don’t even know they’re restraining us. So I guess good on you Salinger. Does that make it a classic though? No, I don’t think so. It makes it a historical piece, worthy of note. To hold it up as a valid literary example to generations of today is erroneous.

It’s only towards the end that we’re told of the event that started Holden on his downwards spiral: the suicide of a boy in the first school he was expelled from. The boy jumps to his death one night having borrowed Holden’s polo neck jumper. The jumper and not knowing why he’d wanted to borrow it connect Holden indecipherably and unstatedly to culpability for the death. The still relatively new field of psychology that Salinger explores through this plot and structure is clumsy by today’s standards but as an early conscious assay in literature it probably has a laudable place. Not one we need to linger at.

In short, yes, there is a point to Catcher In The Rye. It says, take time to bear with obnoxious moody teenagers (and people in general) because they might well be trying their best to reconcile themselves to an insane world full of cruelty, and figuring out how to respond. Today, we’d try to say this on a budget of about 1,500 words max. If you wanted longer, you’d have to make it a damned sight more interesting.

Two Moose Hoofs up out of five – both for historical value.