Finished: August 8, 2024
Why I read this
On my recent vacation to the US I was having a discussion with my mother and my aunt (who is a English teacher for high schoolers) about what books might be good for a high school reading list. We of course covered some of the classics like Shakespeare, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and To Kill a Mockingbird. But where the conversation got a bit difficult was how to match good books with the criteria necessary for high school readers. It needs to be short enough to be an easy read (no one is going to enjoy reading Moby Dick or Ulysses in a high school course), with a high level of English, while staying appropriate for young teen readers, and impactful enough to make them think. I thought that since I had read a lot of books lately I would have no trouble making suggestions, yet I still floundered in the discussion proposing mostly books that I liked, but that weren’t really right for the context.
During this conversation we eventually drifted to books we ourselves hadn’t liked very much when we read them, often turning to the classics we knew, and I was surprised to hear that my Mother had felt rather “so-so” about The Catcher in the Rye. It’s one of those books that stays with the classics although probably one notch down from the “Greatest of all times” type lists. It is also featured on the list of Great American Reads published by PBS and various other “must-read” lists. She didn’t say that she disliked it, just that she didn’t feel it was all that ground breaking. This got me to thinking what I thought about the book. I could have sworn I read it in late middle school or early high school, but for the life of me I could not recall the plot or what I had thought about it. So when I saw how small of a book it was sitting in the collection of secondhand books my mom has stocked for me now, I decided I should refresh my memory on the story and see if I agreed or not about whether it was great, or just so-so.
What I learned
Sad to disagree with my mom, but I’m not sure this one is just so-so. I honestly thought it was pretty damn good. Maybe not one of The great books of all time, but certainly worth the two hundred page read. It definitely passed the test of “do I want to continue reading this?” whenever I put it down (which is more than I can say for many books these days). There was just something about the meandering path of Holden Caufield that made it one of those subjects that feels forever more pertinent than less. Kind of like how 1984 feels even more applicable today than when it was written. It’s just that each new theme would be equally, if not more relevant today than it was in the 1950’s when the book was published. The societal pressures to adapt and conform, the increasing fakeness of people, and the struggles of young people to find their path in life, are all challenges I’ve seen my generation struggle with. I imagine it is also true for the next generation after me (I’m finally getting old enough that I’m not sure I can be included in the “youth generation”). Maybe they are just subjects that are intergenerational and everyone who has ever been a teenager will relate.
Because after all, isn’t Holden’s three day adventure in New York, unburdened by the restrictions of school, parents, a job, or really anything at all, the dream for most young people? Even adults often daydream about their upcoming vacations where they can escape the responsibilities of life for a week or two. But Holden’s trip was far from a vacation. Disconnecting from work for a few days is very different from being kicked out of the most recent of a chain of expensive private schools. This pause for Holden was nothing more than an evasion of responsibility, not a well earned break. Like all of us, he is a procrastinator because he knew what was going to happen. He mentions at one point in the book that his father would probably just yell at him a bunch and then send him to a military school. If you know you’re about to be sent somewhere that freedom will be limited if not entirely non-existent a three day bender to delay that isn’t the most unreasonable thing in the world.
As usual I was surprised at how eerily similar the themes in the book were to many of the discussions I’ve seen in other recent non-fiction reads. It’s not much related to the more technical topics like I’ve read with Vaclav Smil, but the more humanitarian or self-improvement subjects like Humankind, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Nudge, or Thinking Fast and Slow. Holden’s non-stop criticisms, softened by non-stop caveats displayed perfectly the muddied waters of reality between moral black and white. His repetition of “in the moment” emotions (for example swapping between thinking Sally Hayes is a drag, to loving her in the moment) emphasized how quickly our minds really swap between subjects and feelings. It reminded me of the discussion of the experiencing mind versus the remembering mind in Thinking Fast and Slow. Holden is able to unable to separate the two until his narration (his remembering mind) is able to untangle the rapid signals of his experiencing mind in later recollection. I think the phrase “hindsight is 20/20” is something we can all relate to.
Another concept I think Salinger nailed was a rather simple subject with Stradlater, Holden’s roommate at the Pencey boarding high school in the beginning of the novel. Holden, who’s opinions of Stradlater rapidly change from a general acceptance to disdain depending on the second, discusses a habit of Stradlater’s that he can’ stand. Its the habit of whenever someone is good at something he diminishes their success with caveats. When talking about writing with Holden, Stradlater implies that Holden is better at writing because he knows how to put all the commas in the right place. Or when discussing another student who was a sport prodigy, he constantly remarks that the other student had just “the perfect build” for that sport. Both of these might seem like compliments, but really they diminish the achievement of the others. Stradlater does this probably because he is not as accomplished in either of those two activities he can either diminish others or do the much harder thing of acknowledging that the reason someone is better than you at something is that they worked harder to be smarter, or stronger, or more skilled than you. It’s very easy to just think “oh well if I just spent a couple hours on learning to place commas I could write well too.” It’s a attitude I think we see pretty often in our lives. I know I’ve lived the same comments about sports and genetics with one of my friends making comments on another’s ability in certain sports being “higher because of genetics”. Genetics play a part in anything, but its probably more from the fact that this second friend has put in the work non-stop for 18 years and his general level of fitness is extremely high because of it. Why are humans so prone to being so egotistical? Why do we have such challenges to offer genuine praise, and why do we often feel that genuine praise for another diminishes our own value? Maybe Holden would argue that ego is one of our greatest flaws as a species, and I’m not sure that I would disagree with him.
The last subject that has stuck with me was summed up in a quote Holden made when discussing a previous classmate who flunked a public speaking course because he could not stay on topic. Holden said that “Lots of time you don’t know what interests you most until you start talking about something that doesn’t interest you most.” You can see that he really believes this with how he goes back and forth through the city rapidly changing from one thing to the next because he doesn’t seem to know what he wants, or what he likes until he is doing it. It touches on the idea that Humans are notoriously bad at making decisions. If you ask people what they want, very few people can give you more than vague or superficial answers. Experiments in Nudge for example, show that people will choose the default answer far more often than exploring the options on any decision, even the very important ones, such as what type of insurance to get, or what type of loan you need for a house or a car. From how he varies back and forth between wanting to go away and wanting to stay its clear Holden doesn’t know what he wants either. He hates the way the current system is, and he wants to change things, but he is not equipped to know how. Instead he circles the drain towards his own destruction not committing to anything. I think it is a feeling that almost anyone today can relate to. We are inundated day in and day out with information about how we need to change the political systems, the healthcare systems, improve the economy, reduced social injustice, take care of the environment, on and on, but very few people are equipped with the tools to handle such complex and enormous problems. What we are left with instead is disappointment and melancholy. There is nothing worse than being told you’re contributing to the fall of civilization (which journalists are keen to liken things like climate change or Republicans winning the presidency to), but having no actionable way of doing anything about it? Holden sees the world around him going downhill. People being more and more fake, schools teaching the wrong things, but at 16 he is powerless to do anything but go with the flow of the system, the crushing weight of which pushes him to search for any escape possible such as cigarettes, sex, and alcohol. How many of us have wasted potential because with the major challenges in the world today we simply aren’t equipped to do anything about them?
What I didn’t like
It’s maybe a small thing, but the number of times Holden called people late at night was just ridiculous. Really, I don’t care how inconsiderate someone is, making a character call multiple people at two, three, four in the morning over and over is simply not realistic. No one would do that, and no one would pick up (maybe they would have if it was in the 1950’s and the only way to stop the phone from ringing was to pick it up). It it had happened once or twice ok, I get it, but in the three days of the story he does it half a dozen or more times!
I was also a bit annoyed by the subject of Holden’s age. He repeatedly says that he is 16, yet he smokes and drinks like a 40 year-old alcoholic. Sure there are young people that have problems with that type of thing, and clearly things like the acceptance of smoking have changed (for example his 9 year-old younger sister Phoebe takes the fall for him smoking at one point, and her mother is hardly upset with her. If at 9 I had been caught smoking it would have been a disaster), but the way he talks about it you’d think he had been smoking and drinking for a decade, not a couple of years. Maybe the character was trying to up his bravado, or maybe it was Salinger’s way of criticizing the accessibility of vices to the younger generation, maybe it is even a way of showing that time moves more slowly for younger people and just a year or two can feel like ages. Whatever the reasoning behind it all, I would have at least liked Salinger to give him a stronger hangover after drinking until 7am three nights in a row.
Questions I asked
Why are we so fascinated by stories of people who are failing, outcast, or abnormal?
What would Holden think of social media?
Why do humans continue to do so many things they don’t like, such as Holden going to the movies even though he hated them? Does he really hate the movies?
My Favorite Quote
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”
Holden Caufield
Books I liked like this one
Rage : Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) (for the dark possibilities of dysfunctional youth)
Le Petit Prince : Antoine de Saint Exupéry (for observations of how society forces us to adapt)
Book Reviews for Mom 