50bookchallenge #32/50 <u>The Catcher in the Rye</u>, J. D. Salinger

I’ve kept this copy since junior high and I’m sure I haven’t read it since seventh or eighth grade when I had to read it as part of my education. I’ve kept it for what? 22, 23 years without reading it again, just riding on the fact that I had read it. Of course, I didn’t recall a single passage from reading it the first time when I went through now, with the singular exception of the description of one of his teachers picking his nose while pretending to rub his nose.

Probably this is not the best choice for someone working through depression, or maybe it is. Over and over I was struck not with what a great antihero Holden makes, but what an immature brat he is. I lost patience with his antics just as his friends did and I had very little sympathy for him. I remember my younger self thinking there was something noble about Holden Caulfield’s self-absorption, but now even as I relate to some of it I view it with distaste or at best pity.

Salinger does deserve his reputation, of course. This is a provocative novel even today, and Salinger is able to capture the reactions to an ever-changing environment admirably. I suppose my only disappointment is that I’m not Caulfield any longer and really wasn’t anymore even in High School. What I don’t think I fully appreciated when I first read it was Caulfield’s hypocrisy. How am I supposed to take a self-described compulsive liar seriously when he complains of alienation amongst all the phonies? Perhaps it’s admirable that Caulfield has at least the self-awareness to know that he’s a liar, but awareness means very little without the integrity to take action.

As a novel it’s perhaps much stronger than I remembered. As a role model or even a sympathetic antihero, Caulfield falls much shorter than I remembered.