J D Salinger (1919–2010) was quite the enigma. Having created one of the Great American Novels in The Catcher In The Rye in 1951, he never published another full-length novel and gradually withdrew from society. Within two years of the publication of Catcher, Salinger had moved from New York to the small town of Cornish, New Hampshire, and was rarely seen out and about. In the role of “reclusive writer”, he gives Thomas Pynchon a run for his money (Pynchon, prolific and still-living novelist known for Gravity’s Rainbow amongst others, is so reclusive that no-one knows where he lives and there aren’t any pictures of him in the public domain from any time after about 1955). Salinger didn’t stop writing however: it is rumoured that he wrote up to fifteen novels…but just didn’t publish them!
The Catcher in the Rye was originally intended for adults, but of course has since been celebrated as a novel for adolescents due to its themes of angst and alienation, and its icon of teenage rebellion, Holden Caulfield. 16-year-old Holden has been expelled from prep school and wanders New York City, grappling with feelings about the superficiality of adult society (its “phoniness”), and embodying for the reader themes of innocence, identity, sex, and depression. His journey takes in a number of awkward altercations and misadventures with prostitutes and pimps and other exemplars of an underbelly of society that does nothing to disabuse him of his suspicions of the adult world.
Heartily sick of the harsh realities of growing up, Holden sneaks back into his parents’ home while they are out and wakes his little sister, Phoebe. Although she is happy to see him, Phoebe is annoyed that he’s aimlessly ruining his life. Isn’t there anything he cares about? It turns out that there is: Holden shares a fantasy, which he seems to have cooked up based on a literal interpretation of some lines in Robert Burns’s Comin’ Through the Rye (“when a body catch a body, comin’ through the rye”). There is a field of rye through which children are running dangerously towards a cliff, and Holden is there to catch them before they fall off. This seems to point towards a compassionate streak that his parents and teachers have hitherto failed to uncover. Although the novel leaves his future uncertain, who knows, perhaps some inchoate purpose in life is being hinted at?
Meanwhile, here is a flavour of the narrator’s dialogue and you can feel (perhaps remember?) the teenage disdain…
I’m not too sure what the name of the song was that he was playing when I came in, but whatever it was, he was really stinking it up. He was putting all these dumb, show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass. You should’ve heard the crowd, though, when he was finished. You would’ve puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn’t funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes though I was terrific, I’d hate it. I wouldn’t even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I’d play it in the goddam closet. Anyway, when he was finished, and everybody was clapping their heads off, old Ernie turned around on his stool and gave this very phony, humble bow. Like as if he was a helluva humble guy, besides being a terrific piano player. It was very phony—I mean him being such a big snob and all. In a funny way, though, I felt sort of sorry for him when he was finished. I don’t even think he knows any more when he’s playing right or not. It isn’t all his fault. I partly blame all those dopes that clap their heads off—they’d foul up anybody, if you gave them a chance.
