I was hesitant to read The Catcher in the Rye because I had heard it was such a controversial book. And, well, if there’s any book that can illustrate the change of mindset we have from the previous generation, it might be this one. I expected from The Catcher something obscene, taboo, outrageous; instead I found a story that is very tame in all these regards. Another reason I had my reservations, was that the protagonist has a bad reputation in pop culture, it’s often on the list of ‘red flag books’ for people to like. I didn’t love Holden, but I did feel sorry for him, most of all because I feel he’s so mis-characterized in the popular psyche!
The following recent Tweet was what made me finally want to check this story out for myself: Why is Catcher in the Rye a red flag for me? It's not an automatic no, but I just can't relate to "whiny suburban white boy problems". Sorry not sorry. (Also, I'm not minimizing mental health issues, I'm neurodivergent myself, the book is just off puting/childish to me.)
SPOILER REVIEW
Whiny suburban white boy problems! Now that is certainly a way to describe it. There’s something ironic about a novel wherein a young boy is constantly ignored by every adult and capable person around him, written off as a do-no-good’er, then sinks into a depressive episode, as ‘whiny’. Holden is no Saint. He flunked out of four high schools and it’s clear that he has no interest in academics. But here is also a boy — who I actually find to be quite empathetic and perceptive — who is still healing from his younger brother’s death, who is dealing with his own feelings of insecurity and place in the world, who’s so afraid of his parent’s disapproval that he near freezes to death to avoid going home, who then, in desperation, turns to an old teacher of his, only to then be near-molested.
Our dear Holden is really insecure (give me one person who wasn’t at sixteen!), and he has a touch for the melodramatics: he finds everyone a phony, he doesn’t much like girls if not for their attractiveness, he’s especially uncomfortable in his skin (he’s tall but lanky, and he can’t measure up to the other boys). But he’s also really empathetic, and I find it strange that so little people touch up on this, as I find it to be rather clear in the novel. He picks a fight with Stradlater because (and this is my interpretation) he believes he took advantage of a girl, he constantly thinks of his late little brother, he tries to console Jane when she is visibly troubled by the presence of her dad, he hires a prostitute but then can’t have sex with her because he is sickened by the idea, he really worries about the ducks in winter. He exhibits a sense of empathy where he feels like no one in the world cares (). He wants to run away, but in the end he decides against it because his little sister begged him not to. In the end, he decides to try to get better. I find that to be really mature actually.
Once a novel catches the wind of the masses it’s quite hard to reel it in again. I don’t figure JD Salinger meant for The Catcher to become so momentous or so controversial. The novel is in my modern mind really not all that taboo or unique for that matter, if not for the knowledge that a non-reliable, non-likeable, and morally grey narrator was truly out there at-the-time. Well, remind me to never trust popular opinion on a piece of media again!