Catcher in the Rye

 

I have the privilege currently of teaching the novel Catcher in the Rye. A friend from college never recovered from reading it. He identified completely with Holden Caulfield. I can see how easy that is to do; many have.

For me, more the opposite; I was appalled by Caulfield. I would have cuffed him upside the head.

He shows no guilt for letting down his parents, his history teacher, his fencing teammates. He is perfectly amoral.

He does not credit Pency Prep with having good intentions, or his history teacher with good intentions, only with salving his own conscience. He shows no gratitude to his older brother who is looking after him, only seeing him as a sellout for writing for the movies.

He lies to his history teacher.

And all this in just the first four chapters.

Caulfield is right, of course, to see everyone else as a phony. But he fails to take the next step, of seeing that he is a phony too.

And we need to ask the next question: if all of this is phony, compared to what? What is real?

For Holden, it seems to be his own impulses. Therefore he is justified in not studying ancient Egypt; it does not interest him. Therefore he suddenly puts his roommate in a headlock while he is shaving. He simply felt like it. On impulse, he buys a hunting cap.

This is the worship of self: the path we have wandered down. We must “be our true selves,” not be “repressed,” “do our own thing.”

This is infantilism; this is narcissism.

Holden Caulfield needed to find religion.

I do not know, but I think Salinger, author, did. I like his later stories, which do involve religious themes. I wonder if the fact that so many took Holden Caulfield as a model horrified Salinger. Might it have been why he stopped publishing?

Or perhaps he stopped because he did not find religion; and therefore fell into a permanent depression like Holden Caulfield has.

 

More Salinger to Come?

Here, if true, is exceptionally good news: new Salinger stories and novels are going to appear soon.

I strongly suspect this is true, and have been waiting for it. Most writers write as a matter of compulsion. So it seems to me unlikely that JD Salinger was not writing all those years since "Hapworth."

Of course, the writing might be drek. But I think the odds are that it is good. By ceasing publication and waiting until his death, Salinger seems to have been trying to free himself to write with absolute sincerity and without any distracting ulterior considerations.

The history of posthumous publication is an encouraging one. It includes the Aeneid, Emily Dickenson's entire production, Wordsword's Prelude, Kafka's The Trial, The Canterbury Tales, Doctor Faustus, Faust, and The Dream of the Red Chamber.

I should write so well after I'm dead.

Was Salinger Demonically Possessed?

There seem to be two distinct schools on JD Salinger: those who remember him best for Catcher in the Rye, and those who better remember better Franny & Zooey. Among Catholics, this division is expressed equally well as: those who detest Salinger (the Catcher crew) and those who see him at least as a spiritual fellow-traveller (the Zooeys). David Warren is of the former party: not to be hyperbolic or anything, he sees Salinger as writing “under direct demonic possession.”

I am in the second camp. Catcher in the Rye left relatively little impression on me. I saw Holden Caulfield as sincere, and his problem as real and fundamental, but I did not really identify with him, because I felt, even as a teenager myself, that he was reacting to it in entirely the wrong way—just thrashing about instead of looking for a solution. I surmised, and still think, the author thought the same, and was ironically distancing himself from Caulfield in many ways—firstly be making him young. I feel a lot of people, including Warren, as well as the several million who have seen Holden Caulfield as themselves, and all been totally alienated from one another together, have been missing the main point.

As I see it, Salinger was using Catcher in the Rye to lay out the problem—the problem of life in general, or life in what Jesus called “this world,” the objective, physical, shared, social world. Caulfield calls it “phoniness”; Jesus and John the Baptist called it “hypocrisy”; Socrates and Plato called it “sophistry.” Any reasonably intelligent adolescent figures out, by about Holden's age, that things here are rarely what they seem, and rarely what they clearly ought to be. Those in charge are generally liars, and nobody says the truth to anyone else.

But so far, in Catcher in the Rye, he was only setting out the problem. I believe Salinger then created the Glass family to explore and debate possible solutions. Caulfield had nobody to talk to about his perceptions; and this alienation was itself a large part of the problem. In a world of phoniness, whom can you trust? Salinger's Glass family, as a mental experiment, at least solves this problem: because they are all siblings, and already know each other thoroughly well, they are rather more likely to be straight with one another, and permitted to speak at the deepest emotional levels. Being exceptionally intelligent, they are allowed, in ordinary dialogue, to refer to anything and everything that might be relevant, however arcane the scholarship, however subtle the point.

Salinger can then use these characters to each represent a different possible path out of this thicket of phoniness, and have them by their interaction draw out the strengths and weaknesses of each possibility.

Seymour was the first and most obvious option, and so the first one Salinger explored in his stories: suicide. Obviously, that is not the option Salinger himself chose, in the end, since he lived into his nineties.

We know less about Salinger's other characters, because their choices were more complex. One of them, Waker, was already, when Salinger stopped publishing, a Carthusian monk—the religious life. Buddy represents the life of the writer, or artist, standing aloof and commenting on the world. Walt, “the only truly lighthearted member of the family,” represents the option of laughter, of seeing it all as absurd and meaningless and not caring; but Salinger seems to have already dismissed that option by blowing him up. Boo Boo represents the conventional life, trying to “fit in” and be “normal.” Zooey represents the life of an actor, the option of eternally wearing a mask for the world. Franny has an emotional breakdown—she is well-placed, at least, to be elaborated into an investigation of the always-popular option of going mad.

My guess is that it was Salinger’s plan to work out the issue by following through with the life stories of all of the Glasses, not really knowing himself which option would win out in the end. It was his plan for his personal spiritual development, which is one reason he felt no need to publish. My guess is that he has followed through on this, and his posthumous manuscripts will include the full biographies of all the Glasses.

I’m not sure who will win out, or whether that will even be apparent; other than that it’s pretty clearly not Seymour, Walt, or Zooey.

I’m kind of betting on the Carthusian monk. His name seems to suggest he had the inside track as of the 1950s. And Franny & Zooey already ended on a distinctly Christian note.

Written with a child on my lap.

Good Neighbour Jerry

Here's a glimpse of the real Salinger, as he was known to his neighbours. Accept no BS about him being mad, eccentric, or a recluse.

The Mad Hermit Salinger

I'm starting to get irritated by the coverage of J.D. Salinger's death—or rather, his life, as described in his obituaries. Nobody seems to be able to accept his withdrawal from the world. One writer even insists he was “mentally ill,” as if that was an explanation instead of simply a pejorative. W.P. Kinsella claims archly that his attempt to avoid publicity was simply a ploy to get publicity. All speak of him as “eccentric,” and a “recluse.”

All I see is an intelligent man. He was, in his own words, “in the world but not of it.” Though Salinger was apparently not a Christian this is simply what all Christians are called to be. This, indeed, is the only sane option in life; everything else is madness. Holden Caulfield would have called it, the whole social game, "phoniness"; and this is exactly what Jesus called it: "hypocrisy" is simply the New Testament Greek equivalent. Having made enough from his first novel to live comfortably for the rest of his life, why should he have chased after more money? Why should he have sought more fame? Why not instead take the opportunity to spend the rest of his life writing, in its purest form—that being a form of prayer, a dialogue with God? Since God exists, nothing else matters nearly so much. Salinger made the wisest choice; I would have done the same.

Indeed, William James Sardis, the man with the highest IQ ever measured, did the same. The monastery is the same thing yet again—and our ancestors understood monks to be the happiest of men. Intelligent men do not seek money, beyond their basic needs, or fame, or the world's approval. This is the secret of happiness.

That people these days see this wisdom as “eccentric” or even “mentally ill” is the clearest evidence that the world is mad, madder than ever. Why would a sane man want any part of it?