Cheesy Commentary on Rye

If you haven’t read J.D. Salinger’s the Catcher in the Rye I have some sage advice: Don’t. If you have read it and remember it fondly, don’t read it again now (like I did) just because Salinger passed away last month. Or, if you must, try to remember the era in which it was published, that being the early 1950’s. Hailed as a “classic” almost immediately upon publication it became a popular sensation and Holden Caulfield, its narrator, a symbol of disaffected youth. After reading it again over 50 years later it can only be considered a curiosity trapped in its own history and that of its reclusive author. It’s essentially still a bummer but nowadays we know too much about mental illness and it’s so easy to practice armchair psychology and label young Mr. Caulfield as definitely bi-polar, if not totally manic-depressive.

Also, this time, I felt ripped off (it took me about ten minutes to read, give or take an hour or so) even though I bought the book extra-cheapo on Amazon.com. It’s easy to read not only because the type-font is big but Catcher is presented as if it was written by a 17-year-old who, although privately and expensively schooled, just doesn’t have all that good a way with words, with all the “you knows” and “all that’s” that annoy the hell out of normal human beings. Holden is a total jerk and completely incomprehensible to somebody reared under completely different circumstances at the same age; on a different coast and with a totally different financial background. How could I relate to someone so hateful, so self-entitled, self-deluded and a chronic liar to boot? My tear ducts were bereft of liquid this time although I don’t really remember crying over that spilt milk originally. I was not a bully in school but I think I might have been tempted to take a sock at this whining, wimpy character if he had been my classmate.

There are two things that made me laugh; both jokes on myself really. 1) There is still a typographical error in the book that I can remember spotting (honest!) 50 years ago and 2) one of Holden’s made-up names for himself is Jim Steele, which is the name I used when playing super-hero detectives with my brother (Bob Steele) when we were kids. A third observation that I have somehow dredged up from the slime at the bottom of my brain is that the cover-illustration for the book; a rampant, red carousel horse, has nothing at all to do with anything at all. Oh, there is a carousel (with horses) near the end of the book but this illustration didn’t seem all that applicable in the 50’s and it doesn’t now.

Anyway, in my opinion the Catcher in the Rye is a book of its time and the year 2010 needn’t apply.