I read it in 10th or 11th grade, not as required reading but just because I’d heard it was a classic. I don’t remember much of anything about it, but I vividly remember my reaction to it. I was finishing it while waiting for a Chemistry class to start, and when it was over I just started crying and couldn’t stop. I had to leave the room and cut that class so that nobody could see me just bawling. (Definitely not cool for 11th grade). I can’t even remember why I reacted to it like that, just that I did; maybe it was a subconscious thing.
So I’ve always remembered it as being extremely powerful, but I wouldn’t be able to explain why.
A few people say that they didn’t necessarily like Holden. Do you have to like the lead character to enjoy the book? I know you (Mudshark) qualify this but it’s like it detracts from the enjoyment for you.
I guess if there are characters you can empathise with then it helps you get more personal satisfaction from the writing but sometimes just the opposite is true. Stories of those with failings are, after all, much more true to life in the long run I think.
I have never understood the appeal of reading about a whiney, smarmy, boring punk* who whines about everything but never gets off his ass to do anything about his endless angst but bitches endlessly in a narrative voice as phoney as any found in an Ed Wood film. C’mon. Imagine Holden having a conversation with Eros the Alien and Jeff Trent:
Eros: Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots!
Jeff Trent: Now you just hold on, Buster
Holden: He just doesn’t fucking get it, does he Eros?
Eros: No. He doesn’t. Tsk.
Jeff Trent: Shut up, kid. Anyway, so what if we do develop this Solaranite bomb? We’d be even a stronger nation than now.
Eros: “Stronger.” You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Holden: Yeah! Fucking stupid minds.
It’s technically a classic, in that a classic is what people point to and say “That’s a classic”. (No more or less, IMO) but IMO, it’s crap…and whiney pretentious crap at that.
Fenris
*Note, I thought exactly the same thing about Holden when I was his age and read Catcher for the first time.
But it is a story about what it feels like for a very specific personality type to be stuck between childhood and adulthood out in the real world.
I think a great deal of the disconnect between those who loved the book and those who hated it is whether you inately have the gate key to Holden’s world.
I have to admit to being in the “slap the little bugger until he stops it” camp. But I also recognise that this is because I have no empathy for the character. My personality type is just so far removed from what Holden’s was that his point of veiw didn’t resonate. Someone who can recognise themselves in Holden, however would get something enitely different out of the story.
Both Catcher and Death of a Salesman, both on highschool engish must inflict list.
I wont speak to the content ,as everyone will get something out of it , but I think those two books would for me , probably have been better read by choice ,than by school fiat.
I think it’s a brilliantly written book. It’s so well written, in fact, that I’m not sure I even care what it’s “about” or if it is really “about” anything at all. Definitely a classic.
I don’t understand why people find Holden whiny, but then I don’t understand why people say Luke Skywalker is whiny either.
Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again.
To understand this book, you have to have gone through a certain phase. People who haven’t gone through that phase will think Holden is stupid; people who have will be able to relate. (Don’t worry if you don’t get it; that’s probably a good thing.)
BlackKnight: the difference is that Luke starts out whiney (“But Unnnnncle OoooOooOowen! I wanna go to Mos Eeeeeeeesley”) but gets over it and grows up. There’s growth, there’s change, there’s self-examination (or as much as can be expected in a movie).
Holden wallows in the fact that he’s a whiney git. IIRC he doesn’t grow, change or even self-examine. It’s just whine, curse, whine.
And while I have no problem with realistic foul language in a novel, someone should have washed the little twerp’s mouth out with soap.
As an aside, while I dislike Catcher, as so-called “classics” go it’s not nearly as bad as the single worst novel ever written, apparently for the sole purpose of torturing High-School students: Tess of the D’Ubervilles.
I was made to read Tess of the D’Urbervilles as a college sophomore, and it was my favorite of the books I had to read that year. But I’ll agree that it might be a little too much for high school.
I can see what you’re saying, Fenris. I don’t have a problem with Holden not changing significantly since I consider the book to take place between major changes. There are obviously important events that have happened in Holden’s past that have affected him, and at the end of the book I got the impression that other changes are on the way. The book is a little slice of Holden’s searching for something stable to cling to, which I found fascinating.
If I were to dislike stories where the main character does almost nothing but complain and be a jerk, I’d have to hate “Hamlet”.
I’ve never heard of “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”, but I’m skeptical that it could possibly be worse than anything Henry James ever wrote.
I never get why people always say “all he does is whine about things, and he never does anything about it.” because, frankly, I have no idea what could be done about the things he complains about.
In the beginning of the book, he talks about an ad for Pency that says “we mold young men” when he knew for a fact that no molding of any sort really went on. What is he supposed to do? Run to the creator of that ad and demand he/she make a new one?
Or when he notices the couple spitting water on each others faces in what appeared to be some kind of foreplay. What was Holden to do? Run to that particular room and tell them how they should get it on?
Or when he sees “Fuck You” written on the wall of his school, and he predicted that someday someone will write “Fuck You” on his tombstone. What was he to do? Preach to every child not to write the “f” word?
Or when he sees the prostitute in his room, and how she has a nice dress. He then invisioned her buying the dress, and how the clerk at the store thought she must have been some well-to-do girl when in fact she needed something to wear when selling herself. What was Holden supposed to do? Track down the clerk and make the prostitute admit that the dress was to be worn while prostituting herself?
Holden is keenly observent (in my mind) and has devolped a genuine dislike and sadness for most of the stupid/pointless things people say and do, and so he runs away from it all, off to California.
Which to me is the best thing that could be done about his situation.
I think that what Holden means by being a “catcher in the rye” is that he doesn’t want the young and innocent youth to conform to the wicked ways of the world. He wants to save them from the aspects of life that he talks about in the book.
…It runs in my mind that someone in a post before mentioned something similar, so I apologize no for beng redundant.
BlackKnight: Good point on the “slice of life between big events” idea. I like that thought a lot.
The best thing that can be said for Holden is that he runs away? I can’t imagine how this is interesting to people. The interesting part of the story is what comes next. It’s all about plot people. Characterization is crucial to a good story, but plot comes first. (And the idea of going off to California to get away from phonies…hee! That’s like going off to Newcastle to get away from the coaldust )
You ask, “What was Holden supposed to do?”
< mostly kidding >
He coulda become a ninja. Any book is improved by the presence of ninjas, as ninjas force the author to do something, not just have a character wander around aimlessly spewing out precocious, pretentious teenage angst (IMO)
See, were I Salinger, I’d have had the prostitute stabbed in the back with a sai and this brutal murder jars Holden out of his navel-gazing self-absorbsion. He tries to join a dojo but, due to years of snivelling, is rejected as unworthy by the sensi. Undaunted he gets a job as the guy who wipes down the mats (which get all sweaty ‘n’ stuff). As he works, he watches and learns despite the bullying of the star pupil who the sensi hopes will learn humility.
Eventually, Holden beats the snot out of the bully, but shows mercy and doesn’t snap the bully’s neck like a twig. The sensi realizes he makes a mistake by not accepting Holden and begins to train him in the ways of the mysterious Orient after expelling the bully. Eventually, it turns out that the bully was the one who killed the prostitue in the first place and there’s a huge battle on the New York rooftops between Ninja Holden and the bully. Holden wins, and the bully falls to his death. Ninja Holden decides to go to California continue to try to protect the people who can’t protect themselves.
…or…Holden sees the prostitute and as they’re about to boink she reveals taht she’s actually a time traveller sent back to learn the secret of why everyone in New York except Holden dies four days in Holden’s future. It’s a race against time as they try to stop the dreadful chain of events.
…or…after boinking the prostitute, Holden falls asleep (all men are pigs, after all) and wakes up to find the prostitute dead…stabbed to death. And he’s holding the knife in his bloody hand! Just then, the police knock on his door demanding entry. Holden sneaks out a fire escape, and spends the rest of the book a hunted man, wrongly accused of a crime he didn’t commit.
…or…boinking the prostitute changes his outlook. He has an ephiphiny that A) Boinking is fun and B) Whining isn’t the way to attract girls who don’t give green stamps after sex. He joins an artic expedition that needs a few able-bodied hands and within weeks finds himself in a lost world *inside the hollow Earth * fighting robot-dinosaurs bent on WORLD CONQUEST!
…or combine them all: as Holden is about to boink the hooker, time-travelling robot-dinosaurs falsely accuse Holden of a crime he didn’t commit. Holden must develop vast mystic powers to stop them…and boink the hookers too.
Ninja robot Time Travelling Dinosaurs=something happening
Holden whining about how people are all fucking phonies = nothing happening (unless the ninjas attack while he’s whining of course)
</ mostly kidding >
Kidding aside, Holden exemplifies to me the worst of a genre of books about whiney do-nothings. Judy Blume’s characters also fall into this group. Lookit the book Blubber. It was a very hot “Must read!” book when I was going to school. It’s about an overweight girl who whines a lot about being overweight and being teased pretty badly about her weight. (Keeping in mind it’s been thirty years since I read it and may be misremembering)[ul]
[li]Does she lose weight? No. [/li][li]Does she tell her tormenters to fuck off and realize that her weight and their opinion do not determine her worth as a person? No.[/li][li]Does she slap her tormenters with a lawsuit for harassment and abuse? Or her school for allowing it to happen? No.[/li][li]Does she write an article for the local paper explaining what happens to her so that the evil kids get thrown out of school? No.[/li][li]Does she say “Screw this” and bring dad’s Glock to school and go all Columbine on her tormenters? No. (As an overweight kid who was forced to read this piece of offal, I was hoping for that outcome…and it was 20-some years before Columbine)[/li][li]Does she do anything but snivel? No. [/li][/ul]
So why should I care about her or Holden? They don’t face adversity, they don’t change, they don’t grow and nothing happens
"Characterization is crucial to a good story, but plot comes first. " (Fenris)
But not always surely? Sometimes a book, or a film, is exactly about character. What happens to them is incidental to the value of learning more about them and about humanity in general. ‘Crime and Punishment’ for instance, would be a pretty dire book if you were only concerned about plot: Guy kills woman, is pursued by police, is caught, repents (I don’t think that’s a spoiler precisely because it’s not the point of the novel).
That was really what I was getting at earlier. You don’t need to like Holden - he doesn’t have the standard ‘Hollywood hero’ character after all - but you can learn something about him and about people in general from the story.
Additionally, also as said above, it is a book of its time - the first time really that this voice had been heard in literature.
Gee, Fenris it seems like your major complaint is that Salinger just gives you the wrong weekend in Holden’s life, one that doesn’t have anything at all to do with anything you or anybody you care about has ever experienced.
Gotta admit, Heinlein could pack a lot more life experience into a slim paperback than Salinger managed to.
I never thought I would find myself in the position of being an apologist for Salinger or Catcher, but I want to comment further on this discussion.
Fenris - you clearly appreciate it when things progress in a novel - characters have an arc, so Luke grows up and stops whining. That’s cool.
but in a “traditional” novel (don’t get me started about post-modern lit), there are, I suppose, two things that matter (there are obviously lots more, but work with me here a sec):
Plot - or, to equate it to music, melody - something happens over time moving things forward
Characterization - or, musically, harmony - within a moment of time, you find the characters relate-able, complex, accurately voiced, etc…
Different forms of literature typically use different combo’s of Plot and character - sweeping epics often focus mostly on plot, with snippets of character thrown in. Great novels balance both. Short stories are almost pure character with limited plot - often there is only one plot event depicted and the short story is really about how the characters deal with that event. Many short stories, though, just capture character - the plot event(s) depicted are often random excuses just to show characters interacting. Anton Chekhov - the brilliant Russian playwrite who is often credited with being the father of the modern short story - would present incomplete interactions between dentist and patient, people talking on the street, etc., as a short story - framing the characters without benefit of plot.
I present this observation because, as I stated in my previous post, I do NOT think that Catcher is a novel, per se. It is a character study centered around a single Event - Holden’s walking around the city over the course of a night as he deals with leaving school. Expecting character development - beyond the final reflections shared when we realize he is writing this after having broken down - is bound to leave a reader disappointed. This is about Holden’s character - his being paralyzed by the need to act vs. dealing with phoniness and how he explores that.
If you think about what Catcher is typically praised for, it is things that speak to it being a short story - Holden is considered accurately voiced for a teen, it captures a moment in a person’s life, it has interesting, almost random interactions of characters just to sketch out how they might interact and to add additional layers to Holden’s character and the dilemma he is both confronting and avoiding.
So I am taking a while to do it, but I am trying to agree with BlackKnight - this is a short story/novella about a character - and Salinger puts that character under a microscope has he drifts between changes and puts the character in interactions with other characters to see what happens. That is the book - and it works for what it is trying to do because the people who like it can relate to both the inner voice of Holden and the feeling of drifting/needing to make a choice.
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