America and the Human Rights Frontier: A Religion in Rebellion, or The American Expression by John Hamburg

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What is it about J.D. Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye that draws a sense of popularity?

Originally conceived and written on April 25, 2019

              

                The first time I knew about the book was a movie about a moment in the author's life. I saw the film listed as playing and I read in the logline that it was about a writer. I love films about writers and writing, so I recorded an encore that was on later in the week. The film is called ‘Rebel in the Rye’ starring Nicholas Holt as the author, J.D. Salinger.

 

                The film has Salinger attend a creative writing class and he would send stories and got rejected over and over again, he went to war where he would write stories and would eventually write a short story starring Holden Caulfield. His teacher told him he needed a novel saying how he deserves his own book, and so began on ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, which was popular with teenagers everywhere. After I saw the film, I went to buy the book at my local Barnes and Nobel and read it in the remaining final weeks of the school semester. I as read it, and when I finished, I found myself not understanding what was big deal about this book as it has a weird structure, a protagonist who isn’t appealing, and an odd essence of time.

 

                The structure is weird enough but I get what the author is doing. The story is written out as if the narrator is talking, just talking, even when he goes into what is being thought of. It didn’t feel like a book, it felt like I was reading or listening to someone who is telling me a story next to me.

    

        Holden Caulfield never backs down from his thoughts, he tells it the way it is, and it makes the structure even repetitive by bringing up the same phrases or responses like what he hates, and/or doesn’t understand about the movies for instance. I thought that he is a – critique of life who is very complex because of it, he doesn’t know how to respond to something. Holden would say negative things about Ackley, Spencer, Pencey, and then turn it around and compliant them. For Ackley, he says how he is a pig who lives in a room with clothes everywhere, that he smells, that he acts like he has the best body because of his abs, then he flips it by saying how he does have a nice body. “He really does”, that is his catchphrase as he says it repeatedly. He complains so much but then he is okay with their existence. He uses time-oriented words like “Grand if there’s one word I hate is grand.” I get this feeling it is set in the 1940s, even thou there is no actual sense of time apart from the style of narration and dialogues. Like it is phony. He talks about how actors are phony, which makes think of actors today like Leonardo Di Caprio who doesn’t act but is the character. I think Holden Caulfield is phony, he is cheesy. Even the surrounding cast of characters hate him, calling his questions ‘typical Caulfield questions’.

 

    The strange thing is that he would bring something up and may or may not bring it up again like ducks and where it might go, or the museum, his sister, Phoebe or his brother D.B. Phoebe doesn’t appear till the very end and D.B. is not in it. I was told that the protagonist is the one who changes the most. Holden mentioned leaving to California but he ends up staying, even when he ran out of Antolini’s house, and with that moment there was only a small realization of something that Stradlater says about people being “flits”. He seems to only realize the truth but does not do anything to change him. I read that word, flits, the author's word of use for homosexuals, gays, etc. and how meaning and words changes. I knew right away he was gay as he was targeting everyone else.

 

    There are moments I like thou, and a moment that sticks out that is relatable. I love the museum part of the book, how the narrator goes into what the history museum has that stands out to a person like the bosom of a native girl or that these guys in the museum, the native, the Eskimo, and the birds will always be doing what they are doing because they don’t change. When Holden pointed out about girls and how they can’t be satisfied one way or another about a guy rather they are punks or the nice kid on the block sticks out to me. It is the smaller things that have me understand what Is to like about it. The moment Holden went to a bar and conversed with a singer imprinted the 40’s setting of the book and not much else but I like the moment. Phoebe asked him what he cared about and to say one thing that he cared about. Holden took forever going from one thought to the next. Phoebe says how doesn’t care about anything and he does. That is something I relate to. Above it all, it has philosophical moments about films, books, girls, and I appreciate those moments as well. It is the smaller details that can be appreciated because then, overall as a book, it is not particularly interesting. The meaning of the title itself doesn’t come up till the end when Holden acknowledged what career he wants which is to catch kids before leaping off a cliff.

 

    I am one of those readers who doesn’t understand it and yet I do. I understand why the structure is the way it is because this is the way people think and live their life. There is nothing consecutive about life, it is random and so the book ends with the happiest day of Holden’s life, being with his sister. I think the reason that most don’t understand it or even hates it is because the reader or the viewer is not used to the idea of how grounded it is, it isn’t written as a traditional fictional book. In films, the details are linear and to the point from books which has details that build worlds. This book does have a world in the sense that the protagonist is constantly making it in the format of thoughts, where everyone is important enough to have a name like a cab driver and the backstories that are otherwise pointless other than that it means something to the character(s) like James Castle of Elkton Hills.

 

    I think it just needs to sink in to be appreciated and to look back at the details to see the connections. I read this book because it is not a movie nor will it be a movie, so it is the only way I can experience it. ‘I’m not going to tell you my whole goddamn autobiography or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.’