This book gets 2 fancy drinks out of 5; which is infinitesimally fewer drinks than Holden Caulfield consumes in the novel. I think the drinking is making me generous when it comes to scoring.
[The same picture is repeated in a sort of diptych; a fancy stemmed glass, covered in condensation, sits on a table. There is a tantalizing slice of orange (or is it grapefruit, who knows?) in the glass and the word “Tanqueray” scrolls across the glass. Yummy.]
- Why did I pick this book up?
Now, unlike most people, I did not read The Catcher in the Rye in school. So why, you may ask, did I choose to read it now? Much like a high school student, I did not have much of a choice.
A few weeks ago I was in Toronto visiting my partner’s family. I had neglected to bring a book with me for some reason. My partner suggested I raid her parents’ library for a nice poolside read. This proved to be more challenging than I had anticipated. Apparently when my partner was a teen, she only liked to read depressing things. So the library consisted of the following; it is 1945, and a woman accused of taking a Nazi as a lover is humiliated and punished, she marries, and conflict continues; a collection of narratives by Nigerian child-soldiers; a memoir on eating disorders; the best-selling, but heavy and intense, Book of Negroes; and this classic, the John Lennon murdering (my favourite joke to make about this book) Catcher in the Rye.
I figured that out of all these choices, The Catcher in the Rye would be the most enjoyable and pool-side appropriate. I think I may have been wrong.
- Would I recommend why/why not?
Well, this book killed John Lennon – I will never stop saying this – so make of that what you will. I mean, John Lennon is himself a controversial figure, so maybe for you this is a bonus? So if it is, I recommend this book because it killed him! Otherwise, I don’t recommend this book because it killed him!
No but honestly, I don’t think I would recommend this book. If you have not caught on by this review (what, #5?), the score of the book is a direct reflection of whether or not I would recommend it. It barely gets a passing grade. And this is only due to the latter half of the book, where Holden Caulfield grows a bit less insufferable, and a bit more sympathetic. Heads up: this doesn’t last very long.
- Quick Synopsis **SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON, DO I EVEN HAVE TO SAY IT?!**:
The Catcher in the Rye manages to be a book where almost nothing happens, and yet when you try and describe it, it sounds like a lot of stuff has gone down. The novel opens with Holden Caulfield being kicked out of yet another prep school. Because this is back when people communicated via letter, Holden knows that his parents are in the dark about his expulsion. He decides that he is too cowardly to tell them himself, so he decides to go bum around New York for a couple days until he is ready to go home.
What happens? He fights his roommate, he cries, he calls everyone a phony maybe a million times, tells us about his dead brother who is so smart, tells us he hates Hollywood, most writing, and most people. He lies a lot, compulsively it seems, about stuff that is unimportant and bizarre for someone who seems to think everyone else is a fake. Seriously: I’d be intrigued to see how many times he uses a variation of that term. One thing is for sure and it’s that Holden doesn’t seem to own a thesaurus or a metaphorical mirror for his personality.
He drinks, tries to get with various women in a bar, has bad luck, drinks some more. Eventually he hires a prostitute because he is depressed, but finds that too depressing (no shit Sherlock), so he pays her without having sex with her. Then her pimp shows up and they mug him for more money. Basically a bunch of other random stuff happens; he goes on a date with a girl he knows: it goes poorly; Holden has a weird but cute interaction with his little sister; he goes to see an old teacher in the middle of the night for somewhere to stay, the teacher gives him a stern talking to about his life and work ethic, and then proceeds to try and molest him (maybe. This is up for debate, as Holden wakes up to him caressing his hair, which is creepy but not necessarily sexual? Who knows); Holden gets really drunk and catches hypothermia wandering around Central Park wondering where the ducks have gone, and then the story ends, with him seemingly in some sort of convalescent home trying to recover from his illness (there was definitely some hints that it is not just a physical illness he is suffering from). Ya that’s about it. Also, he talks a lot about committing suicide or killing other people (mostly in jest maybe?) so I can see how it might make you a little weird and murderous.
[A hand holds a book in front of some yellow flowers: a leaf caresses the upper right corner of the book. The bottom half of the cover is white, and the top half is reddish: the red creates an intense drawing of a horse, and the white half has a crude outline of a city skyline. “the CATCHER in the RYE” is scrawled across the top in yellow lettering.]
- Overall brain gushings :
The book annoyed me. But then, interestingly, towards the end of the book, Holden seems less of an annoying young man, and more of a depressed lost soul worthy of sympathy. There was a moment where I thought, “Ok, Holden is annoying, but he’s just a depressed teenager who is having a hard time fitting in, and who hasn’t felt like that?”
Then Holden continues to be his annoying self, and instead of a meaningful and inspiring bildungsroman we get just a weird narrative about an immature guy who doesn’t change or grow at all in the course of the novel, or it seems in the year that follows it.
Holden also treats women like garbage, and gives me the vibes of what we might call an incel today. So that’s nice. I seriously am having a hard time understanding A) How this book came to be considered a classic and B) What kind of teachers think this is a good/interesting book for teens to read and study. I probably would not like literature as much if I’d had to read this in high school instead of 1984.
- What does it mean?
Wikipedia tells me that this book is about teenage rebellion, superficiality, and themes of belonging and identity. I would agree, but I do not think that Catcher says anything particularly interesting or revolutionary about these things, and it also doesn’t say these things well or in a manner that I found enjoyable to read. I’m not holding my punches with this damn book. Wikipedia says that Catcher demonstrates Holden losing his innocence, and yet I find that we begin the narrative with a cynical and apathetic Holden, and I wonder at what point it is that he really lost his childlike wonder and likeability. Maybe when his younger brother dies – this is the only time where Holden’s emotional reactions seem to make any sense. And yet, it happens before the events of the novel, and does not seem as central as the banal and pedestrian events that get covered in the narrative.
To me, this book represents the ways in which white men are just allowed to write anything. Like, this book doesn’t have anything exciting happen in it. And it’s not written particularly well. And yet, it is popular and hailed a classic. Like Kafka and The Trial, I see this as an example of books that get too much credit. Besides, can anybody even name another of Salinger’s works? No! You can’t! This I firmly believe. Sure, maybe that’s because he wrote a lot of short stories and short story writers get screwed by the hierarchy of literature, but I can name a ton of famous short stories and Salinger’s is not one of them! I’m so over this book, honestly.
- Favourite passages :
I did not have many favourite passages, but there were a few that either made me laugh, or that somehow humanized Holden and allowed me to make it to the end of the book, unlike The Trial.
The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to’ve met each other. Which always kills me. I’m always saying “Glad to’ve met you” to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though… People are always ruining things for you.
Salinger, pg 114
He was a very nice kid, and I liked him, but I could never see eye to eye with him on a lot of stuff in the Bible, especially the Disciples. He kept telling me if I didn’t like the Disciples, then I didn’t like Jesus and all. He said that because Jesus picked the Disciples, you were supposed to like them. I said I knew He picked them, but that He picked them at random. I said He didn’t have time to go around analyzing everybody. I said I wasn’t blaming Jesus or anything.
Salinger, pg 130-131
“I think that one of these days,” he said, “you’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you’ve got to start going there.”
Salinger, pg 245
- Things that made me go “ugh” :
Most of the book made my face twist up all ugly-like. Holden is insufferable and I did not find Salinger to be a good writer. Also there is a lot of creepy misogynistic shit in the novel, and Holden is a huge hypocrite.
Also, there is a passage that addresses the title of the book. I thought maybe it would be exciting. Or insightful or something. This is where the title comes from:
“You know what I’d like to be? … I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy”.
Salinger, pg 224-225
What the hell is this?! So yeah. Not super rewarding in my opinion. I’m sure some people would analyze this passage for symbolism or whatever, arguing that Holden’s dream is about saving people when he can’t even save himself, or something like that. But I found this lame.
- If you liked this (or my review), consider reading :
If you want to read a good and satisfying bildungsroman read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson! Didn’t think that would come up when talking about The Catcher in the Rye eh? But seriously. Wikipedia tells me that Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (which I’ve read and is damn excellent and definitely a coming of age story) is a bildungsroman and you should read that because it is written by a Canadian women! Yass!
If you want to read a classic that is actually good and from a similar era, read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Yes, I know, controversial suggestion, but it happens to be one of my favourite books because of how beautifully written it is, and how ethically challenging the narrative and unreliable narration of Humbert Humbert are. You could also read James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room which is a wonderful novel about jazz, homosexuality, and Paris in the post-WWII era.
If you want to read a book that made a splash in the 50s, read D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover which is super sexy, which Holden Caulfield decidedly is not.
Stay tuned for my next review, Wasted: A Memoir by Marya Hornbacher. *MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING* : This is a memoir about eating disorders. Because of the subject matter, the review will be notably short.
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