If you really want to hear about it...

The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger

Quick synopsis: A young man named Holden Caulfield gets kicked out of his school and searches for something--anything--that isn't phony or lousy, although almost everything he comes in contact with is just that.



This is the only book on my list that I once began. Many years ago, I went through a phase, a short phase, of wanting to read books like the ones I'm reading now. I started with The Catcher in the Rye. I didn't get very far. I think I stopped somewhere in the beginning, because then, I didn't have much tolerance for books that didn't grab me right away. And, truthfully, my tolerance level may have only gone up just a tad--but if it weren't for the commitment I made to myself, I probably would have closed this book before its end again.

But this is not the place to rant about how unentertained I was. I'm here to speculate why this book, THIS book, has become an American classic.

One of things I've thought about was its connection and relatability to teenagers. So many high schoolers read this book because, I'm sure, they feel the same way as Holden does. They have the same unexplainable angst, the same desires (or lack thereof), the same worry and fear of identity. I believe the ending is what has made it so timeless. If Holden hadn't changed (and some critics do argue that he didn't change and he was still just as "lousy" as he was in the beginning), then this book would have gone no where. But for two-hundred-some-odd pages, we're subjected to this whiney guy who is never in the mood to do anything, gets kicked out of school AGAIN, and seemingly has no direction, no care in his life whatsoever. Yet, as it ends with the beautiful image of him sitting in the pouring rain, watching his kid sister Phoebe, whom he truly adores, I can't help but think that that's what makes this book so great: that it goes beyond the depressive moods and the listlessness of Holden. It becomes something larger than him, which we never really get to experience until the end.

The stylistic choices of Salinger were spot on, and although the tone of the piece began to irritate me, I do feel like this is another reason this book has achieved such status. I'm not too familiar with contemporary American literature, especially literature published when Catcher was published, so I can't say that this style was "inventive" or "unique" (I hope to learn this, though, in my many years of studying literature), but I can say it seems to ring as innovative and ingenious. I can imagine being in the early Fifties and reading this book and seeing the slang and the cursing and the casual and conversational tone and being shocked that "lit-re-ture" would sound like this. And if you want to become a classic, I've learned, you've got to shock people.

I don't really have much more to say about the book.

I do, however, want to give a shout-out to my girl Kati Spayde, whose book I inherited when I bought it at a used-bookstore at Amazon.com. Kati had highlighted about 73% of the book. She even wrote things like, "New character!!" or "Why can't Holden enjoy the small things?" I found myself competing with this Kati Spayde, thinking, I'll show her--I'll show her what REAL annotation looks like. I wonder if her teacher would give me the same 86% that she received.