The Catcher in the Rye

By J.D. Salinger, published in 1951 by Little, Brown and Company, 216 pages
Reviewed by Kathleen Gobos, Aug. 17, 2020
Reviewed by Jim Stasiowski, Aug. 26, 2020

Review by Kathleen Gobos:

INTRODUCTION: “The Catcher in the Rye” was partially published in serial form in 1945–1946 and as a novel in 1951. It was originally intended for adults but is often read by adolescents for its themes of angst and alienation, and as a critique on superficiality in society. According to the dust-jacket notes, “The hero-narrator is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caufield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days.” The genre is described as Young Adult Fiction, Coming of Age, First-person narrative.

THE REVIEW: I confess, I did not read this when it was assigned in school and quite frankly would have never read it except it was a recent book club pick.

On the surface, this book could be read in 4 hours and tossed aside in the dislike pile if you can get through it. The main character, Holden Caufield, is full of angst and attitude and gives us a verbal vomit of every thought that comes into his mind over the course of three days. The only things he likes are his deceased brother, Allie, his little sister, and mummies. The overall tone of the book is cynical, judgmental, sad, compassionate and at times humorous, and that would be the review: Don’t bother.

But I found myself diving deeper into this book, stopping, digesting what I read and thinking about the teenage mind and how it translates to today’s society.

The first thing that struck me was the writing style. Holden Caufield speaks directly to you, and when reading this book, you will find yourself speaking directly to him! Every page is filled with cynicism and judgment, he judges almost everyone to be phony yet there is a tone of compassion. The conflict here is Holden hates phonies, yet he is constantly looking for someone to connect with.

At first blush you might think that Holden is dumb, but besides being incredibly sad and lonely, I think he is smart and a deep thinker. For instance, take his Oral Expression Class. Holden flunks the class because he digresses. He explains to us that he likes it when somebody digresses. “It’s more interesting and there are lots of times you don’t know what interests you most until you start talking about something that doesn’t interest you most.” And that is this book, a digression! Holden is telling us his story and is digressing, telling us all sorts of minutia to get to the most interesting parts, his brother’s baseball mitt, a fellow student committing suicide, his interest in Jane and all the things they did together. He did not know he wanted to talk about these things until he started telling us whatever was on his mind.

Do I recommend reading this book, hmmm? Yes, I recommend reading it with the caveat that you have a book club or at least one other person that you can discuss this with. Otherwise I think it will end up in the “Don’t bother” category. During my research of this book I found a reviewer who said, “Either you get this book, or you don’t.” I agree.

Review by Jim Stasiowski:

Somehow, I always knew this would happen, that I would end up being Holden Caulfield’s defense attorney.

Kathleen’s strong, well-reasoned review of “The Catcher in the Rye” gave me a twinge of “I should say something.” Then came several responses, some of them not so kind to the renowned J.D. Salinger novel.

I thought: What?

To me (and 16-year-old me), Holden Caulfield’s story is 24 karat gold, a standard yet everyday fresh tale acted out by Hollywood charmers as tarnished, troubled rogues: James Dean (“Rebel Without a Cause”), Marlon Brando (“The Wild One”), Paul Newman (“Cool Hand Luke), Jack Nicholson (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), Robert Redford (“… and the Sundance Kid”), even Dustin Hoffman (“The Graduate”). It’s the story of America’s anti-hero, the guy – sometimes a woman, but usually a man – who, with a toothy grin, pokes his thumb into the eye of authority.

The bad boy.

“Catcher” doesn’t grab readers today? OK, try Holden’s back-and-forth with Mrs. Morrow, whose son, Ernest, was a classmate of Holden’s at Pencey Prep, from which Holden was just kicked out:

Then she looked at me and asked me what I was afraid she was going to ask me. “Ernest wrote that he’d be home on Wednesday, that Christmas vacation would start on Wednesday,” she said. “I hope you weren’t called home suddenly because of illness in the family.” She really looked worried about it. She wasn’t just being nosy, you could tell.

“No, everybody’s fine at home,” I said. “It’s me. I have to have this operation.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry,” she said. She really was, too. I was right away sorry I’d said it, but it was too late.

“It isn’t very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.”

“Oh, no!” She put her hand up to her mouth and all.

“Oh, I’ll be all right and everything! It’s right near the outside. And it’s a very tiny one. They can take it out in about two minutes.”

Then I started reading this timetable I had in my pocket. Just to stop lying. Once I get started, I can go on for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours.

“It’s right near the outside”? That is funny, yesterday, today, tomorrow. Maybe funny-sad. But I ask you this: Have you ever been in a situation in which your brain came up with a lie that you were pretty sure, almost certain, you could sell, but you held back? You knew that if you started that lie, you might never escape it?

So you chickened out.

Holden Caulfield doesn’t chicken out. He’s (bleepin’) 16, the same age I was when I sat up in my bed at night and read “The Catcher in the Rye.” Lying was practically mandatory at that age; he had the guts to do it. I didn’t. But living vicariously through Holden was fun, rollicking fun, a no-risk way to be a bad boy. As I flip through the pages, it still is.

And that’s why, I think, some of those who commented on “Catcher” today don’t appreciate it as I do: Adults aren’t supposed to.

In the passage quoted above, please notice that twice Holden is amazed that Ernest Morrow’s mother, an adult, had sincere feelings. She wasn’t a phony: “She really looked worried about it. She wasn’t just being nosy, you could tell. … ‘Oh! I’m so sorry,’ she said. She really was, too.”

He rarely accepts adult authority. That’s another thing that was practically mandatory for a teenager.

It’s true that Holden doesn’t have high regard for many people his age, either. He despises Ernest Morrow (“doubtless the biggest bastard that ever went to Pencey”), taunts Robert Ackley (“He always brought out the old sadist in me”), thinks Ward Stradlater is conceited (“Suspense is good for some bastards like Stradlater”).

But his real problem is with adults. Here’s the book’s second-to-last paragraph, in which he is describing a situation in the hospital (or sanitarium, I’m not sure which) he is confined to after “I got sick and all”:

A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I’m going to apply myself when I go back to school next September. It’s such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean, how do you know what you’re going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don’t. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it’s a stupid question.

Look at the language. The “psychoanalyst guy … keeps asking me if I’m going to apply myself … .” Who says “apply myself?” Parents. Adults. Teachers, coaches, doctors, et al. What does “apply myself” mean, anyway? You “apply” sunscreen, you “apply” for a job. How do you “apply” yourself?

Kathleen’s review made excellent points, and she appreciated the book for its potential to spark conversation. (We have proof she was right.) But to get “Catcher” fully, she needed to read it as a kid. Holden was sad, judgmental, yes, and searching desperately. But he also was defiant. Risky. Confused but bold. On the train, when he offered Mrs. Morrow a cigarette, she hesitated, pointing out that the car they were in didn’t allow smoking. Holden answered as we all would wish to: “That’s all right. We can smoke till they start screaming at us.”

Conformity. Following the rules, following the crowd. It was (and should be) anathema. Giving in to peer pressure. It leads to all kinds of evils. Tommy Rhinehart taught me to spit.

Holden could have conformed. He was smart enough to be Stradlater, faking his way through Pencey Prep. But that wouldn’t have been honest or funny. Holden, full of the individuality that parents say they want from their offspring, picked the defiant path. Parents. They preach individuality – “If Bobby Blackert jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?” – but then impose a thousand-million rules. So do teachers. Coaches. Cops. Hell, the Safety Patrol at my school was full of authoritarians, short guys with silver badges. Holden’s defiance hurt him, hurt others, but it spawned a brilliant description of where we go when we go our own way. I mean, who hasn’t lost the school’s fencing equipment on the New York subway?

As Kathleen wrote in her review, “The main character, Holden Caufield, is full of angst and attitude and gives us a verbal vomit of every thought that comes into his mind over the course of three days.” In this scene, he goes to a movie with a happy ending, but that, like almost everything he faces in the book is, as he often says, phony:

The part that got me was, there was a lady sitting next to me that cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried. You’d have thought she did it because she was kindhearted as hell, but I was sitting right next to her, and she wasn’t. She had this little kid with her that was bored as hell and had to go to the bathroom, but she wouldn’t take him. She kept telling him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they’re mean bastards at heart. I’m not kidding.

Delusionally judgmental? Sure. But out-of-control bad boys give us the opportunity to laugh harmlessly, and if Holden had been “kidding,” it wouldn’t have been funny.