This past July 16 was the 75th anniversary of the publication of J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.”
More Top Picks Best Plate Seeders
There is no denying the staying power of this novel over its 75 years in print. It still sells an estimated 250,000 copies a year, and Holden Caulfield remains a cultural touchstone as an avatar for disaffected youth in America. I don’t anticipate the novel fading in prominence any time soon.
I first read the book 40 years ago in high school. Prompted by the anniversary, I read it again this past week.
High school me did not care for “The Catcher in the Rye” because I could not identify with the life of an East Coast prep school kid who gets to operate so seemingly freely in the world, as he leaves Pencey Preparatory Academy after getting kicked out, and meanders back towards home. I was just about the same age as Holden when I first read the book, but my youth was much closer to the John Hughes films of the North Shore.
Different flavors of the same teen angst generations apart, I suppose, but by 16 I was much more interested in the real adult world of the 1980s that awaited me. The characters surrounding Holden find him annoying and I was sympathetic to them, rather than the protagonist.
Reading the book from the perspective of someone decidedly middle-aged was, for sure, different. Holden’s New York City and prep school life is still foreign to my experience, but I had considerably more sympathy for Holden, and I recognized a kind of integrity in his worldview that I was not attuned to as a teenager.
Holden sees everyone else as a bunch of “phonies,” and as a youth, I read his attitude as arrogance, but paying a different kind of attention this time around I see that Holden is not dealing with typical teen angst, but a profound, unaddressed grief over the loss of his younger brother Allie, who died from leukemia three years before the compressed of events in the novel.
Of Allie’s death, Holden says, “I was only 13, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. … I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddamn windows with my fist, just for the hell of it.”
Holden getting expelled from a series of prep schools is the equivalent of busting those windows. He wants connection but has been sent away. The novel’s quest is to get home to his sister Phoebe, who he just wants to talk to, more than anything else. I suppose Holden’s distress should have been obvious to me even at 16, but this time around it was far more urgent and palpable.
Holden is often held up as a rebel fighting conformity, but I could only see a kid in pain. The novel’s climax is a moment of happiness as Holden watches Phoebe ride a carousel in Central Park as a soaking rain pours down, “She looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around. … God, I wish you could’ve been there.”
It remained a frustrating read, slow, circular, as Salinger seems to tease us, even taking back Holden’s climactic epiphany with a final chapter that has him cautioning the reader, “Don’t ever tell anybody anything.”
Within a few years, Salinger would take his own advice, publishing no more, becoming something like a mythical creature, just like his character.
Maybe he knew he’d already done the book we couldn’t stop talking about.
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
More Top Picks Best Cordless Drills
1. “Leonardo da Vinci” by Walter Isaacson
2. “The Correspondent” by Virginia Evans
3. “The Sea Captain’s Wife” by Tilar J. Mazzeo
4. “The Election of Pope Leo XIV” by Gerard O’Connell and Elisabetta Piqué
5. “The Bully Pulpit” by Doris Kearns Goodwin
— Jeannie J., Geneva
For Jeannie, I’m going to recommend a book by my favorite dramatist of history in the novel form, E.L. Doctorow. The book is “The March.”
1. “The Correspondent” by Virginia Evans
2. “James” by Percival Everett
3. “The Trees” by Percival Everett
4. “The Turner House” by Angela Flournoy
5. “Some Bright Nowhere” by Ann Packer
— Delia P., Chicago
Deesha Philyaw has a new novel coming out later this year that I’m looking forward to, but for now, Delia and I must satisfy ourselves with “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.”
1. “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin
2. “The Good Lord Bird” by James McBride
3. “Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy
4. “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry
5. “The Ministry of Time” by Kaliane Bradley
— Thomas M., Highland Park
For Thomas, a novel about friendship, and all kinds of other stuff: “The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” by Michael Chabon.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to [email protected].
John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.