J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, and Nine Stories, is dead at the age of ninety-one. His son confirmed that he died of natural causes.
As I wrote last June, since its publication in 1951, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye has been the favored bildungsroman novel of the American teen. At least it was, that is, before the arrival of the current generation of discerning readers:
Teachers say young readers just don’t like Holden as much as they used to. What once seemed like courageous truth-telling now strikes many of them as “weird,” “whiny” and “immature.” . . .
“Holden Caulfield is supposed to be this paradigmatic teenager we can all relate to, but we don’t really speak this way or talk about these things,” Ms. Levenson said, summarizing a typical response. At the public charter school where she used to teach, she said, “I had a lot of students comment, ‘I can’t really feel bad for this rich kid with a weekend free in New York City.’ “
When I first read Catcher (circa 1986) I thought it was one of most profound novels I’d ever read (of course at the time I thought the same about Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, so my literary judgment was suspect). But when my sixteen-year-old daughter recently read the book her verdict was quite different: Holden Caulfield is a pathetic bore.
Her assessment is similar to the fifteen-year-old boy from Long Island who, according to the Times, told an expert on children’s literature: “Oh, we all hated Holden in my class. We just wanted to tell him, ‘Shut up and take your Prozac.’”
There is no doubt that Salinger had a profound influence on many Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers. But will that be enough to sustain his literary legacy? How do you think future generations will regard his body of work? Will there be a resurgence of interest or was he a minor author who merely connected with the zeitgeist of the late twentieth century youth?
January 28th, 2010 | 3:23 pm
How interesting – my 18-year old daughter had this conversation last week. She couldn’t even finish Catcher in the Rye, and essentially echoed your daughter’s opinion.
January 28th, 2010 | 3:28 pm
Eh, it’s an English teacher’s favored bildungsroman novel for inflicting on the American teen.
Was not noticeably bad among the other novels inflicted on me — some time ago — but wasn’t noticeably good, either.
January 28th, 2010 | 3:45 pm
I must add my 18 year-old’s comments as well. He read it last year in school and his main takeaway was, “Where were Holden’s parents?” I thought it was interesting especially when held up to the conventional thought that Salinger was always on the side of the kids in his writing. I don’t know enough about him to speculate or do any arm chair psychoanalysis but there is probably a “where” there.
January 28th, 2010 | 3:54 pm
[...] Previous |Home| Salinger and Christ [...]
January 28th, 2010 | 6:44 pm
As a Baby Boomer, I’ll echo some of the comments regarding a general apathy towards fictional characters wallowing in a world of teenage angst. None of Salinger’s works were pitched at me in high school (early ’70s) and, judging from what I’ve read *about* those works, I consider myself lucky. Perhaps my lack of appreciation of literature, that which has essentially been mandated as provocative, is simply a matter of literary ignorance – something which I just don’t *get*. Or perhaps it’s just as simple as not liking the taste of it.
January 28th, 2010 | 7:11 pm
When I first read Catcher (circa 1959) I found it to be a great bore, with a main character totally foreign to me. Of course, I’d already read Atlas Shrugged during the previous summer, and it wasn’t likely that anything was going to top that.
Perhaps part of the reason was that Catcher was required reading, although I think the problem was deeper. I fared no better with Salinger’s short stories, even though I recognized the good writing.
January 28th, 2010 | 7:21 pm
When I read Catcher in college in the 1950s it blew me away. I haven’t gone back to it, in part because of fear I’d be embarrassed by my youthful enthusiasm. It’s better to recall the glow of what I felt then.
January 28th, 2010 | 8:47 pm
I was forced to read “The Catcher in the Rye” as a high school sophomore. I really didn’t understand the appeal of Holden Caulfield or Salinger’s novel. And like all teenagers, I had my problems and concerns at the time.
Regarding Salinger’s quest for his privacy, that was his right. But if he wanted people to leave him alone, he could have given a few interviews over the years and end a few mysteries. Also, if the book you write happens to sell tens of millions copies, be prepared to deal with the fame.
January 28th, 2010 | 10:05 pm
I read Catcher on my own, not part of a class assignment. (~ ’00). I only made it half-way and that took a lot of effort. It was boring, repetative, and overall dismal. I’d spent enough time in the mind of that creepy guy. The only cure for that was some cheap romance.
January 29th, 2010 | 12:36 am
[...] has become fashionable in certain quarters to sneer at Holden as an over-entitled, basically uninteresting character. I suspect this is [...]
January 29th, 2010 | 1:49 am
I feel like I’m in high school again. I’m surrounded by all the popular kids who are too busy with their lipstick and their football games to give any thought to English class, and who think every assigned reading is “dumb” or “boring.”
I read Catcher in the Rye right after high school (mid 00′s) and thought Holden was the most sympathetic character I had ever read. Granted, it was probably a combo of teen angst and the fact that I was the quiet cynical kid in high school. But still, basing literary judgments on a bunch of popular high school kids is a bad idea.
January 29th, 2010 | 2:30 am
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January 29th, 2010 | 8:41 am
I read Catcher in the Rye when I was 16, and I think it was supposed to resonate with me. Not so – I thought Holden Caulfield was a whiny, self absorbed git. Still do.
January 29th, 2010 | 8:50 am
Catcher was actually taken away from me in Jr. High (circa 1964) by a disapproving teacher in Omaha. So, naturally, I adored Salinger & read every one of his works. I remember one of his characters struggling to pray constantly — anybody remember which book that was in?
January 29th, 2010 | 12:17 pm
Franny and Zooey.
January 29th, 2010 | 1:04 pm
Did your popular kids think that Shakespeare was “dull” and “boring”? He wasn’t. (Even after being taught in English, he wasn’t.) But Catcher in the Rye was.
January 29th, 2010 | 1:11 pm
Mr. Carter,
I, now aged 64, somehow managed to escape reading “Catcher in the Rye” or anything else by Salinger. However, I think one observation is in order about Ayn Rand’s work. While her novels are by no means great or profound literature, many of her observations about the fallenness of human behavior are profound. And I find it somewhat ironic that she, an intransigently committed atheist, could so well see and describe what amounts to the present rehearsal of original sin to be found so consistently amongst collectivists and progressives. This is perhaps more true of “Atlas Shrugged” than it is of “The Fountainhead,” both of which I did read in high school. The former book as a selection from a list for a book report, the latter because I was intrigued by her insights into the evils of illiberalism (i.e., modern liberalism and progressivism). To my great benefit, and by the grace of God, her atheism I did not absorb, but her revulsion for the actions of those who think they know what is best for others has stayed with me to the present.
January 29th, 2010 | 2:48 pm
Mr. Toepfer, I too went through my Ayn Rand phase in college. To this day I appreciate many of the her penetrating insights into the human condition, and, like you, I am glad her atheism did not catch me.
What should we think of people like Rand who are obviously intelligent and have many great things to say, but miss badly on THE question? Well, Augustine’s “all truth is God’s truth” leaps to mind. We should not be surprised when intelligent people are able to suss out great truths. The one you mention – the fallen human condition – is not particularly difficult to grasp. Any three year-old who has just had his favorite toy jerked out of his hands by his playmate is already on his way to understanding it. Someone once said that of all the dogmas of Christianity, original sin is the most objectively verifiable.
At the end of the day, however, I must agree with the Psalmist: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God.’” Rand got a lot of the smaller questions right, but on the ultimate question she was a fool.
January 29th, 2010 | 4:25 pm
You wonder how many men, whose favorite novel is “The Catcher in the Rye,” married women, whose favorite novel happened to be Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar”?
You wonder what those relationships were like?
January 29th, 2010 | 4:52 pm
I thought he was a whiney rich kid 50 years ago…
Maybe it’s a class thing: We weren’t allowed the luxury to whine about angst.
January 29th, 2010 | 7:56 pm
I think it’s a mistake to assume that Salinger wanted the reader to approve of Holden’s every thought and action. On the other hand, while the book is certainly flawed, I found most of Holden’s one-liners to be funny, or at least I did when I was fourteen.
I suppose critiques of the “I can’t identify with a rich kid” kind are poetic justice, since Holden had similar sentiments. He couldn’t understand why his brother identified with Lt. Henry (of A Farewell to Arms) when he (the brother) hated all the actual lieutenants he had met when in the Army.
February 4th, 2010 | 3:11 am
Prozac has just been defined as the chasm separating contemporary Youth from the young folk of the Twentieth Century; young people used to agonize over the dislocation and dehumanization of their times, and resonate with literary portrayals of this existential angst. Young people today just wonder why they don’t just drug themselves into moral insensibility and get on with their life; Soma, anyone?
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