The Catcher in the Rye

Staying on the coming-of-age and short read path, I have read something much more familiar. The Catcher in the Rye. It was a random buy while I still had all of my books in storage. I had always been aware of The Catcher in the Rye growing up: the acclaim, the love for it, the hate for it, a basic knowledge of its premise. I had not really wanted to read it, based off of the complaints. I must have forgotten that when I bought it. I wanted to see what the hype was.

[Spoiler] Holden Caulfield is a high schooler who fails out of another high school. He comes from high wealth and lives in New York. His oldest brother lives in LA as a film writer. His other brother passed away. He has skipped around to at least three schools because that school setting just does not click for him. He is so incredibly full of teenage anxiety and anger it is remarkable that he still alive let alone functioning. Holden skips out of school, the whole “hit them before they hit me” tactic, and hangs out in the city for a night while he formulates his next move. Regardless, he wants to visit his little sister at home before he does anything. He leaves her his hat because she enjoys it so much. To be honest, I do not remember if she makes him keep it, but he takes off on his own, and we do not know what he ends up doing.

That is the whole book for you. It is episodic, a nice real-time snapshot of someone who to our modern standards of living is treading water. Holden frustrates the absolute shit out of me, probably because of the cultural differences of the late 1940s. To us, we would assume that he would be getting help and working through all of the pent up anger and “proper” grief process for his brother.

After taking that into consideration, The Catcher in the Rye is very well written. It is honest. It is banned because of the subject matter and the language. The overkill of “fuck” and “goddamn”. It does get hard to read at times for that, not for the offensiveness, but just to follow where Holden is getting at. As an outsider looking in on someone’s life that is stuck and does not what to do and where to go, all they know is that they cannot go home, it gets gritty and heart wrenching. You want the best for Holden, you want him to succeed, if he would only do this and this and that, but that is not how it works. He wants peace and quiet, and has to work out how to get that. It might not be the most realistic because he would be a high school dropout, I mean maybe whatever plan he settles on would work, I do not know. He just knows that something has to change.

This is such a relatable situation to be in for so many people. There are still so many out there that are in the same boat that Holden is in that just do not have the capability, or the resources to work through things as society now expects us to. I have hope for Holden, though. He will find his way.

I think this was another “one and done” for me. It was a good experience, but I do not think I can sit through it again. I would say this is a good discussion book, and I can see why this was used in schools for awhile. Hopefully it was a good launching point to discuss what is available now and the potential any person can have. The Catcher in the Rye is available here.

8/10