For the April book club this year we read "The Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger. We had read Joyce Maynard's "At Home In The World", so when Salinger died in January the book was a natural choice.
I must have bought four copies of that book for the boys over the years, and yet not one remains in the house. I had to borrow it from the library. I read the book once before, when I was in 7th grade. As I remembered, it was about a teenage boy who did not seem to be connected; it was a story of adolescent angst, confusion and rebellion. It made me feel uncomfortable when I was 13, and I did not have a fondness for the book.
I was a voracious reader when I was young, but I often did not understand what I was reading. And looking at the many online reviews of The Catcher in the Rye, I realize that many people reading this book are also clueless as to what the book is about. True Holden is a disaffected, wayward youth, with no direction and no growth demonstrated as a result of his adventures. He is dissolute and rambling, not really understanding his motivations, nor acting on his life. He reacts. He is in the world, but not part of it. No adult is there to guide him and he is lost. At the end of the book, he has an emotional breakdown.
The key point that I had missed about the book when I was 13 is that Holden had a brother who had died. From that point, Holden is lost. He never grows or matures, never moves forward, he is lost in memories and emotions that get tangled up in his adolescent biological growth. He is a shadow moving through his life, flitting from moment to moment. And his dream is to become a "catcher in the rye"; the person who catches innocent children from falling off a cliff. If only he could have caught his brother who wrote poetry in his baseball mitt.
Tellingly, the adults in Holden's life are ineffectual (the professor) or not available (his parents). The parents send him to schools, and do not really inquire about his activities or progress at the schools. His younger sister is left home with the servants. They are not there. His parents too are living in shock they have disappeared from the emotional neediness of their children.
I could not go to book club to discuss the book, the emotions I have are too close to the surface. This book felt honest to me - the emotions of disembodiment and angst and hopelessness, they are the emotions of grief.
