Over
the past month or so I’ve been delving into the icons and school-reading list staples
of American literature, each with a particular view of their own decade: there
was The Great Gatsby, which dealt
with the high-class drunken rave that was the ‘20s, then I had a look at
labouring-class misery in ‘30s Of Mice
and Men, and now, completely by accident, I’m reviewing post-war
middle-class teen apathy in the late ‘40s/early ‘50s with The Catcher in the Rye. I didn’t actually plan this; I just ended
up following the pattern that seemed to be developing.
The Catcher in the Rye
is the account of seventeen year-old Holden Caulfield, an apathetic and
clinically depressed youth who is explaining to the reader about a particular
episode in his life from a year before. After being expelled from school,
Holden decides to drift around New York for a while before returning home to
face his parents, and the subsequent novel is effectively the details of what
he’d done and the people he’d met. That’s it essentially, although I would
myself say it was really a teenager’s harrowing 48 hour trip through hell. The
more time you spend with him, the more you realise how alienated and genuinely
miserable this lad is, and the longer he spends wandering around, the more his
condition deteriorates. As he goes on, he smokes himself half to death, drinks
way too much, and goes almost without sleep for two nights running. By
the end he’s a complete mess, and you’re right there with him.
The
thing most apparent about the novel is its writing style. It’s a first-person
account with an extremely colloquial edge, Holden’s lack of eloquence in his
language and repetition of certain phrases and patterns of speech being the
book’s major hallmark. What he does is, he puts his commas in unusual places, always
talks about phonies, and all, and then usually drops in a short reinforcing
sentence afterwards. Like this. He really does. It’s an interesting style, and
it can get on the nerves sometimes, but I will give it 10/10 for its effect. It
genuinely creates this voice of Holden Caulfield in the reader’s head, and
whereas I’d usually read a book with sort of an idealised version of my own
voice in my head (or possibly in the addictive gravelly voice of Rene
Auberjonois (Odo) if I’d watched an episode of DS9 at any point
that day), with The Catcher in the Rye I
ended up with this strangely unfamiliar voice of a disaffected American teen
speaking to me as I read on. This rarely happens for any book I read
first-time, so something about the writing style definitely works. I mean it.
The
writing style itself is so closely joined with the main character that it’s not
really possible to separate the two. The writing style is the character of Holden Caulfield, and helps make him not just
the main character of the novel, but its sole reason for existing. Caulfield
spends the entire novel trying to find somebody to talk to who’ll actually
listen to him in return, and in effect by reading his story, the reader is
fulfilling his one desire of being listened to for once. He’s an excellent
character, and while I personally found him a little trying at times, as I
expect most people would if they met him in real life, it was difficult to not
be drawn into his world and his dreadful experiences, and to feel genuine
understanding for him. This is course is one of the main reasons for actually picking up a novel at all; to step into somebody else’s world and feel a sense of
empathy for them or for other characters. The
Catcher in the Rye is one of the best examples of this. Maybe you
personally don’t like him, in fact I’d be more surprised if somebody did like
him, but by stepping into his head we can get a sense of his own feelings, and can
understand his near total isolation from everybody around him. He could put
into writing what he could not convey in conversation.
One
of the most apparent aspects to Caulfield’s psychology is his dislike
(bordering on hatred) of people he describes as ‘phonies’. When something is
phony, or phoney, it generally means that it’s not genuine; it’s counterfeit,
or not real. Throughout the novel he calls just about everyone and everything a
‘phony’, usually when referring to actors and musicians, or his fellow
students. They’re always ‘putting it on’, not behaving as they should because
they’re just showing off, or following habit. Caulfield has a really big
problem with these people, and it is one of the main things that is causing him
to mentally withdraw from life in general. It’s indicative of his state of mind
that he condemns so much of his surroundings and fellow-humans as not wholly
real; nobody behaves as they should, and instead they’re just performing as
though they’re on some personal stage. And if they’re not a phony, then he has
some other reason for despising other people. About the only person he doesn’t
think negatively of is his kid sister Phoebe, and children in general. They
seem to be the only people who are wholly real.
So,
in order to avoid veering off and starting a full literary review of the book,
I’m just going to reign myself in here. It’s not a nice book, and reading it is not something you should do for fun,
but it is definitely a rewarding experience. It is one of those things that you
should definitely try at least once, because it offers a unique,
character-building view of the world. Also I hear it’s one of those things that
causes moral outrage in certain parts of the U.S., because it shows you in an
unneutered way how life actually is and how people actually think – a bit like Slaughterhouse 5 in that respect, and
that’s a good recommendation if ever I gave one. But one thing I advise, if
you’ve never read this before, is to get through it as quickly as possible – that is,
read the entire thing within a week or so, just in order to get the maximum
effect from the book. It’s not an especially long story, and it’s not really
the sort of thing you can read one chapter of and then leave for a few days
before continuing – Caulfield’s recounting in excessive detail a very small
amount of time of his life, and you really need to be right there with him as
it happens. It’s not the sort of book you can really appreciate with any sort
of detachment.
[Have you read the book before? You can’t have seen The Catcher in the Rye The Movie before,
because this is one of the few books in the world that has never been made into
a film or anything. You either read the book, or no Caulfield for you. So if
you know the book, then what did you think of it? Do you agree with this
review? If you haven’t read it yet, has the review properly encouraged you to try it out? Any opinions, anything at all, then please comment, or put it in the
old F.B, and I’ll know if I’m doing anything right or wrong. Thank You.]
Bibliograph
Salinger, J.D. The
Catcher in the Rye. Penguin: St. Ives. (1951).
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