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"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".
The first sentence of J.D.Salinger's 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye will be instantly recognisable to many of you. It is, more or less, to me - but I've never actually sat down and read the book in its entirety. For the shame. I flirted with it as a teenager but never properly read it. Aged fifty (and very far from being a teenager), I decided it was time to give it a thorough going over and, as luck would have it, my friends Stuart and Sue bought me a copy for my fiftieth birthday last year.
Caulfield narrates the book in a frantic manner, as if he can't stop talking, like a speeding stranger who's sat next to you on a long coach journey and is determined to tell you his life story whether you want to hear it or not. It's not dull though. His observations are too precise. I loved it when he griped about people who never sit on chairs, just on the arm of them, and slagged off "dopey guys" who "always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars".
Caulfield hates the movies (his brother DB is a 'prostitute' in Hollywood), he hates his school, he hates college football, he hates the word 'nice', people are phony slobs, a former headmaster is "the phoniest bastard" he's met in his whole life, his room mate Stradlater is a "moron" and a New York hotel is "lousy with perverts". He's "not too crazy about sick people", he "can't stand" ministers, and the Disciples of Jesus "annoy the hell" out of him. He hates people with cheap suitcases, he loathes the word 'grand', and even hills are 'stupid'.
Does he find any joy in life? He seems to like (some) girls, he's "very fond of dancing", thinks Massachusetts and Vermont are beautiful, partakes willingly of a game or two of Canasta, he's "quite interested" in tennis, he enjoys a cigarette (especially smoked in a no smoking zone), and (even though it's 'childish') he seems to take pleasure in a snowball fight at school!
A harsh critic could say it's just page after page of a disaffected youth saying, in a hi-falutin' fashion, "it's so unfair" over and over again but there's enough humour, enough bathos, and enough pathos for it to be a lot more than that.
An exam paper is handled "like it was a turd or something", a woman he meets on a train has such a "nice telephone voice" that "she should've carried a goddam telephone around with her", his ten year old sister Phoebe is, famously, "roller-skate skinny", and an old cab he takes smells like someone "just tossed his cookies in it".
Three girls he meets in a bar are wearing "the kind of hats that you knew they didn't really live in New York", he castigates, quite correctly, "morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn't funny", he's dismissive of his grandfather from Detroit who "keeps calling out the numbers of the streets when you ride on a goddam bus with him", and even refers, amusingly, to himself as "a prize horse's ass".
These are the gems of writing Salinger has bestowed upon us, a genius for understanding the way people with super active minds link things, free associate, and articulate with both passion and disdain. As if they actually care about the person who's listening. So few do.
Pathos comes often when you least expect. When Holden is packing to leave school after being kicked out and packs some ice skates that he'd received as a gift from his mother just a couple of days before he reflects on how sad it makes him and goes on to say "almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad", during an uncomfortable encounter with a prostitute in a New York hotel room he feels "sad as hell" when he hangs her green dress up so it doesn't get "all wrinkly", and he even gets down in the mouth about two nuns collecting for charity who probably never go anywhere swanky for lunch!
Bathos comes when Caulfield imagines his own death and funeral, "who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody" and there's even a kind of bathetic reversal when one of Caulfield's teachers, Mr Antolini, picks up the dead body of a suicide victim and covers him with his coat. Caulfield observes, with respect, "he didn't even give a damn if his coat got all bloody".
Holden Caulfield seems to me essentially a pretty lonely guy. A teenager already at the middle age divorcee stage of striking up conversations in bars and with cab drivers. He even trys to get cabbies to break off work and join him for a drink. They tend to decline and not particularly politely either.
On the other hand, he's younger than his age. He has that annoying teenage thing of constantly telling people he's "crazy" or a "madman" that really starts to irk. I mean, he may well be - but that's for other people to decide. Like when somebody tells you how clever they are, how attractive they are, or what a great judge of character they are. I'll decide that, thanks!
Still, questions linger. Does Salinger have sympathy for Holden Caulfield or is he ripping the piss out of him? Did I enjoy the book? Find it worthwhile?
I certainly enjoyed it. It was remarkably easy to read, as easy as a chat with an old, if troubled, friend. Anyone would enjoy an evening or two in Holden Caulfield's company though I'm not sure you'd want to move in with him. Hard to say if it was 'worthwhile'. That's a strange way to judge culture anyway. I enjoyed it - so that made it worthwhile. Did it improve my life? I guess so. A tiny bit. Enjoyment does improve one's life.
As for what Salinger intended us to think of Caulfield I'm none the wiser. Did he like him? Did he loathe him? Did he take pity on him? I think a little of all three. Holden Caulfield is a character and he's got good traits, bad traits, and whole lot more in between.
He's a very well drawn character. The pictures Salinger paints with his words for Caulfield are so vivid that he really comes to life so when you feel sorry for him, you feel really sorry for him and when you're pissed off by him, you're really pissed off by him. An old acquaintance of mine in Basingstoke, Jim Barker (I'd like to use the word 'friend' but I've not seen him in years and it seems over familiar), during an exchange in the comments section on Facebook came up with two very interesting points and I quote Jim below:-
(1) "Holden Caulfield went from someone I completely identified with, to a deeply irritating idiot, to a something that I can't easily articulate. All reactions are valid, and Salinger was a genius for writing a book that changes depending on where you are in your life".
(2) "Deep melancholy. Holden is an idealist covered in cynicism, and there's nothing sadder than that".
The first comment got four 'likes', the second scored three. But it's not a numbers game (it really isn't) and they're both excellent points. It's the line about "an idealist covered in cynicism" that really struck home with me and, to be honest, that could act as an entire review of the book, it'd have saved me a lot of typing, because with that comment Jim has nailed it.
It's horrible when you're young and you have this idealistic vision of how life will be. Life has a way of kicking that shit out of you, you run into bullies, you get stuck in crap jobs, you see mediocrities flourish, and you more than likely get some pretty big rejections. It's easy to become a cynic - and if you're an amusing, intelligent cynic people will even let you get away with it.
But it also means something inside of you, let's call it hope, is slowly dying. With each thing you pronounce "phony", or worthless you're ruling out more and more little chances to experience joy, pleasure, and love - and when all that's gone from your life the next thing to go will be your friends. An angry teenager like Holden Caulfield might seem like a fun guy to be around but transplant those ideas into the mind and body of a middle aged man and they make for a pretty unattractive package.
This is even touched on in one of the book's final chapters when Caulfield calls on a former teacher. Mr Antolini again, now in bathrobes, "oiled up", and constantly topping up his highball, tells Caulfield he's "riding for some kind of terrible terrible fall" and that he can see him "dying nobly, for some highly unworthy cause".
Despite the fact that Antolini's motivations prove to be more than a little problematic it's the only time any of the other characters in the book really get to say anything to Caulfield that carries any weight. With the reader at least. Whether or not Caulfield, who castigates himself as a "rude bastard" for yawning, takes it in is debatable.
Which, it seems, is the way Salinger wants it. There's no conclusion to this book. We have no idea what Holden Caulfield went on to do. If he remained a smart arse cynic, if he buckled down to a 9 to 5 and a wife, or if he found the third way you imagine he was searching for.
None of that matters. This is just a brief snapshot into one young man's head. His insecurities, his dislikes, his passions, and his desires. In a very short book, J D Salinger managed to create a character very much of his time but one whose words and motivations echo down the ages. So, in summing up, the book was great. Not phony at all.
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