Re-reading Catcher In the Rye

During my Bloomsday extravaganza this past year – which a ton of people seemed to really enjoy, actually – I got a couple of comments in emails, and also a couple of cowards posted stuff about me on OTHER people’s blogs (but didn’t have the balls to come to me themselves. The comments were full of the misguided feeling that somehow I was trying to say I felt I was BETTER than other people because I loved James Joyce. There were comments like: “Maybe I’m ignorant, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with loving Robert Ludlum.” Can you say “projection”? I know you can!

I never said, “To all you idiots who love Robert Ludlum, let me show you what REAL literature is like.”

I would never ever do that. And if you think I would, you don’t know me at all. It’s your problem, all yours. It’s that whole populist chip-on-shoulder thing that is so tiresome. I know it’s best to ignore it, and I will from now on.

So, as a JD Salinger lover, I was interested and annoyed in Jonathan Yardley’s column about re-reading Catcher in the Rye. It’s a part of that awesome Washington Post series, re-reading old classics, taking a new look at them. I read all of Yardley’s columns, I love them, and will continue to do so even though I disagree with him wholeheartedly on this one.

I recently re-read Catcher, and found myself, one night, laughing out loud like a hyena on a silent bus – I was snorting, cackling, etc. I love it! It’s the PROSE I love. I can’t explain it further than that – it makes me laugh. Yardley finds the prose manipulative (which, for me, is a rather meaningless word … what does he mean by it?) That Salinger wants to make us feel things? Well, what author DOESN’T want that?

Yardley writes that the book “touches adolescents’ emotional buttons without putting their minds to work.” I totally disagree with that.

Mr. Crothers (my great 10th grade teacher) taught the book – and yes, indeed, the book “touched emotional buttons” – but there was quite a BIT to think about as well. I remember almost word for word Crothers’ discussion on the whole “where do the ducks go when the ponds freeze” conversation that Holden has with the cabbie and various others … This was not about emotional manipulation, this was a book like any other, a book of puzzle pieces – and for ONCE it was fun to try to put them together. (Unlike putting together the boring symbolic puzzle pieces of Billy Budd – now THAT book is manipulative!!)

Additionally: I have to say to Yardley: Er – why do you have contempt for something that wants to “push adolescents emotional buttons”? It’s that kind of hostility towards outright sentiment, or emotion, that I don’t like. It’s the kind of attitude that thinks Notting Hill is a shitty movie because it wants to make you feel something. There might be a better example than Notting Hill, but whatever. I don’t have a problem with sentiment, with open emotion, or with the simple beautiful love expressed in the book between Holden and Phoebe. I LOVE it, as a matter of fact. I don’t think Holden is a “saint” with Phoebe. I think he’s all messed up with Phoebe. It’s a perfect description of the kind of codependent worried vibe that goes on between siblings. I LOVE Phoebe.

Back to “manipulation”: I find books like Bridges of Madison County to be manipulative. I found The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks to be so manipulative that I couldn’t even finish it, and left it in a drawer in my youth-hostel room in Galway. Now THAT book was going for the emotional jugular without touching your brain ONCE. In that mawkish book I can look right through the prose and see the puppet-strings. And I can tell that the author is aiming right for the lowest common denominator.

Yardley is obviously entitled to his opinion, but this is just my counter-opinion, I suppose. I don’t find Catcher manipulative in THAT way at all. The book certainly makes me feel things – and I’ve read it multiple times. As an adolescent, I read it, and fell in love with Holden. As a young woman I read it, and perceived other depths in it – the love of siblings, the need to have a meaningful life, the unresolved issues of Allie’s death. And recently, I just read the damn thing and found a great story. Funny, sad, chaotic, mysterious – I don’t know. To me, it’s a great story. Even though nothing really happens. It’s like a Cassavetes film – an exploration of a state of mind, a minute description of 48 hours.

I don’t think a book that wants to make you feel something and ACHIEVES IT is anything to be ashamed of.

A book that desperately wants to make me feel something and FAILS to achieve it, on the other hand, is a blight upon this earth. I can’t stand books like that. Or movies, for that matter.

But I’ve got no problem with emotion, honestly asked-for and honestly-earned. I love books that make me love them. There aren’t many. Catcher in the Rye is one of those books for me. I can’t say why, because it seems to be a different book every time I read it.

Perhaps it is the fact that there is some mystery at the center of the book – something UNdescribed, UNexpressed – that makes it such a classic. Actually, “classic” is the wrong word. The better word is “beloved”.

To me, that book is a beloved book. I grew, when I read it for the first time. Soul-growth, whatever you want to call it. Yardley may look down his nose on the soul-growth of a 14 year old, but I think it’s the most important kind of growth. I will always be glad I read the book when I did. It made a huge impact … and now, when I pick it up again, I’m not looking for insight, or for the answer to the meaning of life … Usually, when I pick it up now, I’m just looking for a good laugh.

In that respect, Salinger always delivers.

And lastly: Yardley puts down some of the aspects of the book that would only appeal to teenagers (all grown-ups are phonies, etc.) I think THAT, actually, is a snobby attitude. “It can’t be a classic if teenagers love the book in droves.” Personally, I think that The Pigman, by Paul Zindel, is one of the best books I have ever read. Hands down. It was assigned to my 8th grade English class … and it’s about two teenage misfits who find each other … and it’s full of humor, and pain, and rebellion … and it continues to be a favorite of mine to this day. I tip my cap to Paul Zindel. I tip my cap to Salinger. I don’t think there’s anything “lesser” about their books, just because teenagers “get” them.

Update: Erin at Critical Mass weighs in.

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23 Responses to Re-reading Catcher In the Rye

  1. Linus says:

    As someone who was read the bulk of Robert Ludlum’s oeuvre with gusto and joy, may I note with completely self-imposed authority that anyone who seriously thinks Ludlum does literature needs a bonk on the head.

    Sure is fun to read, though. Sort of a mouthwash for the brain.

    Welcome back! It’s good to read you again.

  2. Dave J says:

    “I never said, ‘To all you idiots who love Robert Ludlum, let me show you what REAL literature is like.'”

    Tangential, but do you remember Christopher Hitchens writing about his word game with Salman Rushdie, where they would retitle Shakespeare plays as if they had been written by Robert Ludlum? The ones I’m remembering are The Dunsinane Reforestation and The Rialto Sanction, but I know there were others.

  3. red says:

    Linus –

    Well, what I’m really complaining about there is that people projected onto me that I JUDGED them for liking the books they liked (whatever they were)- and for going so nuts during Bloomsday. There were other authors mentioned, too, in the cowardly comments on other people’s blogs. Like: “Am I stupid because I mostly like Stephen King?” Grrrr. I never said that. I love Stephen King, too.

    I love books that give you “mouthwash for the brain”!

  4. red says:

    Dave J:

    HA! I do remember that. “The Dunsinane Reforestation” – heh heh heh Actually, my friend Ann Marie and I used to describe certain moments or events in our life like Robert Ludlum’s novels.

  5. Linus says:

    I looooove Stephen King. Just finished The Dark Tower: wonderful, wonderful. I’ve been reading those books for 20 years or so, say thankya.

    Then again, I think King is undiscovered literature (ample use of air quotes should be assumed here). Not all of it, certainly, I’m not going to start defending Firestarter or anything. But through the years he’s always been close to something remarkable when he’s been at his best, as in The Stand. The Dark Tower series has unified the bulk of his writing, and I think it’s an amazing thing.

    I should mention here that I suspect that Tolkien and Nabokov are probably the two most “important” writers of the last century, given the nebulous nature of qualifications for things that are to be “important.” That probably disqualifies me from any serious discussions of what constitutes literature. But this is probably not the time to launch that particular boat. Let’s just leave it with this: Stephen King, Yay!

    Ludlow, however, is a hack. A brilliant one, but a hack nevertheless. I’ve been annoyed by every single one of his books, especially the ones I’ve read twice. 8)

  6. Dave J says:

    I think Hamlet was The Elsinore Equivocation.

  7. red says:

    Linus – My favorite Stephen King books were The Stand and It. I think It might be my favorite. I remember where I was when I finished that book. It was that kind of important experience. I just had to put the book down, and sit still for a while, thinking about it.

  8. red says:

    DaveJ:

    hahahaha I love that.

  9. Bryan says:

    Does anyone have a URL for the Hitchens wordgame? I’m a big Hitchens fan, but I missed that one.

  10. Linus says:

    Red, the first 100 pages of It terrified me more than any other book I have ever read. I was working as a night security guard at college and I was reading it on a shift in the Faculty Club, which was a creaky old wooden building. Somewhere in the middle of first meeting Pennywise – “Down here everything floats” – someone used the mailbox just outside the door, and the lid slammed shut with a metallic crash. It was probably 2:00 a.m.

    I nearly hit the silent alarm before I got things back in order. Scared the hell out of me. No sleep *that* night.

    An interesting side note: It is nearly identical to Peter Straub’s Floating Dragon, down to the most absurd details (though it is framed slightly differently), including the weird understated underage sex kink at the end. I have always believed that they were talking about Floating Dragon and got into a bet about whether Stephen King could rewrite it. They were collaborating on that dreadful Talisman book around then (also part of the Dark Tower material, as it turns out).

  11. red says:

    Pennywise still scares me out of my mind. There’s nothing scarier than an evil clown. I mean that. NOTHING.

  12. red says:

    Bryan –

    I think Dave J has referenced the game on my blog before – I just did a search for it, though, and could not find it. Maybe Dave J remembers where he saw it? I remember reading the original piece myself, and it was hilarious – but I can’t remember where.

  13. Bryan says:

    Dave,

    Thanks. That’s a great article, too.

  14. DBW says:

    Sheila–So nice to have you back.

    My mother introduced Salinger’s books to me back when I was about 12 or 13. “Soul growth” is a good term for what happened to me, too. There is a quality about Salinger’s characters that I connected with unlike any others I had encountered before. Without question, that quality is more immediate for a young person than an adult. I have had friends reread Catcher in the Rye, and remark about Holden Caulfield’s “immaturity.” Of course, he is immature–he is a kid–a particularly bright and sensitive kid, but a kid nonetheless. To me, many of the modern complaints about Salinger and his writing have more to do with the revelations of some sordid details of his personal life than with his writing. I know people who worshiped him when they were younger, but felt betrayed that he turned out to be a human being with personal failings. You posted a while ago about being able to separate an actor’s political leanings from his work. I am not always so open-minded, but I am capable of separating Salinger’s writing from his private life. I told you once before that Seymour Glass was the favorite fictional character of my youth. I always hoped that Salinger’s estate would release many Glass family stories after his death. I am sure that is a pipedream, but I know one reader who would devour any such releases.

    By the way, “mawkish” is a charitable term for The Notebook and Bridges of Madison County, but to each its own. I will say no more.

    And, by all means, lets not have any literature, music, cinema, or art that tries to ‘manipulate’ our emotions, attempting to make us feel something. God forbid.

  15. red says:

    David:

    “Mawkish” is indeed a kind word for The Notebook. That book actually made me ANGRY. So funny, in retrospect. I felt like he was writing as though I, the audience member, was the biggest retard on the face of the planet and couldn’t see the end of the book from the first page.

    And just the name “Seymour Glass” gives me a bit of a thrill. On some level, I prefer Franny and Zooey to Catcher. I remember where I was when I finished Franny and Zooey – sitting in Cafe 28, a coffee shop on Irving Park in Chicago – on a freezing cold day … I was not the same person when I finished that book as when I started it.

    I’ve also got pipedreams about the treasure trove of unreleased stuff in JD Salinger’s drawer. :)

  16. red says:

    Dave J:

    Bravo on the quick response. The Internet amazes me.

  17. Salinger is right up there with Chabon when it comes to “I would do really nasty, unspeakably vile and evil things to be able to write prose like that”.

  18. red says:

    Scott – You must be referencing Kavalier and Clay, right??? What a BOOK! You are so damn right about his writing ability. It’s just old-time good prose, ain’t it?

  19. All of Chabon’s work has prose as sumptuous as Kavalier. He has a new book coming out Nov, 9, The Final Solution.

  20. red says:

    Scott – Can’t wait for his new book!!

    I’ve been a fan of his since his first novel which was published when he was this little wunderkind boy. Mysteries of Pittsburgh gave a glimpse of what was to come.

    And then of course – Wonder Boys … so great.

    But I would say that Kavalier and Clay is that rarity – a great American novel.

  21. Linus says:

    Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Ahh. I don’t even want to say anything more about it; I’ll just repeat the title, brings it all back.

    Mysteries of Pittsburgh. What a book that was.

  22. tom rom says:

    J.D. Salinger is one of my favorite writers, considering he only wrote one novel.

    What I find so great about his short stories — mostly centered around the Glass family — is the references to Zen Buddhism (of which he is, or at least was at the time, a follower). The more I read into the seemingly simple dialogue stories, the more evident it became.

    He supposedly has tons of stories that he refuses to release. Several years ago, one of these stories was scheduled for publication, but was pulled. I’ve also heard a rumor (at least I hope it is) that the rights to “Catcher in the Rye” are owned by Jerry Lewis. Sounds kind of weird.

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