book comments 1

So I've decided occasionally to write something relatively brief about whatever book I happen to be reading at the time. For my first one, my thoughts concern not a book I'm currently reading, but one which I have just finished:

The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger

Surprisingly enough, this was the first time I've ever read this novel (see: English degree). I'd heard of it many times--mainly through Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire"--so I'd long been curious about it. Now that I'm finished with it, I'm not sure it was a good thing that I finally satisfied my curiosity.

SPOILERS FOLLOWING

The Catcher in the Rye is, on the surface, about this teenager named Holden Caulfield who has just been expelled from yet another elite private school. Rather than go home and tell his parents before they receive the school's letter, Holden runs away to New York and spends a few days/nights in slummy hotels, bars, and on the streets. And everything he sees, every person he meets, and every conversation he has is, in his viewpoint, completely stupid (his main words are "phony"...and, well..."phony")--with the exception of two nuns and his kid sister. In the end, he goes home and his parents stick him in a clinic for psychoanalysis.

Congratulations. You have now read The Catcher in the Rye.

Oh, I know I should go into how he's just trying to deal with the death of his brother and find out what's really important to him and decide whether or not to throw his life completely away or find a way to swim against the stream of hypocritical society and all that jazz.....but really, I don't have the energy. Holden's attitude that every person around him, everything around him, and pretty much everything within himself is stupid...well, this attitude permeates every sentence of the novel and suffocates any hope of drawing deeper meaning from his experiences. Frankly, I wanted to give the kid a good dunking in ice-cold water and then make him sit in the corner.

Which probably would've fit right in with how he sees the world anyway.

Yes, there were some good points to the novel. Salinger kept me hooked and wanting to read more...but mainly because I was trying to figure out when the story was actually going to start. I was halfway through the book before I realized that this was it. I did mark two pages for copying quotes, and I had several moments of relating to what Holden was thinking--mainly about people who take themselves and their entertainments way too seriously--and I will admit to having laughed out loud three times at Holden's descriptions and ruminations. I appreciated his attitude toward women, which was mostly fairly decent, even though he lied to every single one of them. But he lied habitually to everyone he came into contact with, so that's no biggie.

What interested me the most was seeing the change of word-usage since the 1950s. Take the word "sexy" for instance: Today, it means physically attractive, sexually stimulating in a visual way. But whenever Salinger used it, it was in reference to feeling sexy. If Holden spoke about feeling sexy (i.e. "I was really sexy."), it meant that he was sexually excited. Also, there was the phrase, "That killed me." It didn't mean death, it didn't mean getting tired, etc. It meant, "I thought that was cool" or "That cracked me up." From a linguistic perspective, I thought those were interesting points.

I can understand why this novel was so avant-garde and controversial in the '50s and '60s...but I guess my main reaction to it was a desire to get it over with. When it destroyed my hopes for a cathartic ending on the next-to-last page...well, that was all *he* wrote, I guess. ;o)