Book Review: "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye (1951)  

J. D. Salinger (1919-2010)

214 pages

Having seen the trailer for the new documentary about J. D. Salinger’s life several times in the last couple of weeks, I decided it was time to fill-in a hole in my reading list: I’d never read The Catcher in the Rye. I hadn’t been avoiding it all these years exactly, but it has remained one of those well-known novels that “everyone” seems have read except me. One concrete reason that may have contributed to this is that many years ago I read his book Nine Stories --- it was on my parent’s bookshelf and I had recognized the author’s famous name, and I remember being under-whelmed at the time. I no longer recall why, but I simply didn’t find the stories particularly engaging. So, I suppose I’ve just never been all that motivated to seek out The Catcher in the Rye.

I’ve rectified that now, having just finished an old edition of the book my wife has. And, at the risk of typing out a kind of blasphemy, I didn’t find it very engaging either, at least not to the extent I expected from what I’ve heard about it, especially recently again, from the famous authors and actors who comment positively on it in the trailer for the documentary.

For those who have not read it and are not familiar with the story, Salinger wrote the novel in the voice of Holden Caulfield, a boy in his late teens from a well-to-do family in New York City. Written as a kind of testimonial, Holden recollects as he says in the opening paragraph, “the madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas.” On the verge of being kicked out of his third prep school because of poor academic performance, and with Christmas break just days away, Holden abruptly leaves the school and takes the train to New York City. He has no firm plans, except that he does not want to arrive at home before his parents receive the letter informing them of his dismissal. He describes his many experiences and encounters over the few days he tries to avoid going home, as he bounces haphazardly around the city. It becomes clear from his telling of these days (and nights) that his failures in school are not due to a lack of intellectual ability so much as to the same alienation and aimlessness that drives his chaotic wandering through the city.

Salinger’s writing captures Holden’s voice brilliantly, and through Holden’s telling of his adventures in the city, and his recollections of earlier events, his confusion with the world and uncertainty over his place in it become clear. I suppose the struggle I had as I read the story may reveal more about me than the novel itself: I have trouble reading (or watching movies for that matter) about someone who is self-destructing at every turn due to fundamental misunderstandings of themselves and others. In his recent novel, The Sound of Things Falling, Juan Gabriel Vásquez writes: “Experience, or what we call experience, is not the inventory of our pains, but rather sympathy we learn to feel for the pain of others.” Holden sometimes recognizes “the pain of others”, but he seems incapable of learning sympathy for it, of finding empathy for those he meets. For him, everyone is classified in some simple categories, mostly negative, and even most of those who he first states that he likes quickly come in for complaint.

Maybe this was the point for Salinger in writing this novel; if it was, he succeeded brilliantly, but for me it made for an extremely frustrating read.

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
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