A review by goodnightmoonie
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

I know the people that love this book feel very defensive of Holden and often identify with his struggle. And I have seen quite a few pretty strong rebukes of people critiquing The Catcher in the Rye. (You must not be very smart, it requires real empathy to enjoy the book, he's literally a *child*, etc.) However I just feel there are books that better explore the ideas of grief, trauma and the emotional turbulence of adolescence. This criticism mostly requires you to defend the book by defending Holden as if he were a real person separate from the work itself. But if the actual work is repetitive, boorish, relies almost exclusively on subtext and a meandering story then what else is there to defend of Holden? I understand the argument made that his character is young and mentally ill/suffering with loss and traumas. I just don't see how that is enough on its face to make the experience of this book worth it. The only view we get of Holdens mental state and experiences are from him and he is obviously an unreliable narrator. (So no enlightening commentary to be found there) He also never has the opportunity for growth whether it be from an outside influence or internal change that would force some kind of meaningful introspection (beyond coming to the conclusion that everyone and everything is phony). I am also not opposed to a character study and every book doesn't need a strict start, middle and end with visible character growth *but* people lauding this book as a voice given to people suffering or a transgressive attempt to show the real inner life of someone struggling falls flat for me. He learns nothing about himself or his experiences over the course of his time away from home, admits he has no interest in delving any deeper than surface level recollections and from the readers perspective all we get are repetitive one note scenes of Holden being an absolute terror to everyone around him. There are far better books that don't sugar coat things or sacrifice *being real* and achieve a similar goal. Sorry but implying there's some lack of empathy or anti-intelectualism involved in not liking this book really kills me, it really does. Absolutely corny.
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