On This Day, Catcher
Published sixty-two years ago today, July 16, 1951, J.D. Salinger penned a novel about a rebellious teenage boy dismissed from prep school, drifting through Manhattan. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is today a 20th-century classic, a story that has been translated into nearly every major languages. As a personal fan of Salinger, and to celebrate the 52nd anniversary of "The Catcher in the Rye," I offer a small tribute with a few of my favorite "Catcher" quotes.
"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. That doesn't happen much, though."
- Holden Caulfield reflecting on his favorite authors, among them Isak Dinesen and Thomas Hardy. Interesting, in that as an author, Salinger was a famous recluse.
"Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right � I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game."
� Holden's response to his headmaster's remark, "life is a game." A telling glimpse of the raw, blunt yet witty rebelliousness Holden displays to the given "rules of life." Young readers readily connect with the novel's undercurrents of teenage angst.
"A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going to apply myself when I go back to school next September. It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?"
� Holden speaks his piece as a patient in the sanitarium he alludes to at the end of the novel and from which he relates his story as he contemplates a return to school the following term.
"The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
� Holden Caulfield's former English teacher, Mr. Antolini, cites the poet and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Steckel in a late night discussion with Holden - words at odds with Holden's rebellious distrust, his idea of becoming a "catcher in the rye," symbolically saving children from the evils of adulthood by showing the virtues and freedoms of nonconformity.
CATCHER IN THE RYE subtly explores complex issues of identity, belonging, connection, and alienation. In the process of unburdening himself of his story, Holden Caulfield discovers the contradictions and surprises of his own experience. Thrown out of one world and not yet mature enough for the other, Holden crashes over the boundaries of teen and adult society, rejecting structure, misinterpreting freedoms, discovering things are not as he assumed. His taste of "unfettered life" plummets Holden into dizzying paradoxical misadventures. He is curious and baffled by the inconsistencies in what moves him, what he misinterprets about school and adult behavior, by the complexities of meshing his insecurities with his ambitions. By the end of "Catcher," Holden doesn't want to continue with his tale as he discovers he misses two of his former classmates, Stradlater and Ackley. He even misses the pimp Maurice, who hit him. He warns the reader that telling others about personal experiences will lead to missing the people who shared them.
This anniversary of "The Catcher in the Rye" marks a perfect time to pick up Joanna Rakoff's "My Salinger Year," reviewed last month on this blog. And if like the young Joanna of her memoir, you aren't familiar with the books of J. D. Salinger, check them out. See where the stories take you. Happy anniversary, "Catcher."
"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. That doesn't happen much, though."
- Holden Caulfield reflecting on his favorite authors, among them Isak Dinesen and Thomas Hardy. Interesting, in that as an author, Salinger was a famous recluse.
"Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right � I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game."
� Holden's response to his headmaster's remark, "life is a game." A telling glimpse of the raw, blunt yet witty rebelliousness Holden displays to the given "rules of life." Young readers readily connect with the novel's undercurrents of teenage angst.
"A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going to apply myself when I go back to school next September. It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?"
� Holden speaks his piece as a patient in the sanitarium he alludes to at the end of the novel and from which he relates his story as he contemplates a return to school the following term.
"The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
� Holden Caulfield's former English teacher, Mr. Antolini, cites the poet and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Steckel in a late night discussion with Holden - words at odds with Holden's rebellious distrust, his idea of becoming a "catcher in the rye," symbolically saving children from the evils of adulthood by showing the virtues and freedoms of nonconformity.
CATCHER IN THE RYE subtly explores complex issues of identity, belonging, connection, and alienation. In the process of unburdening himself of his story, Holden Caulfield discovers the contradictions and surprises of his own experience. Thrown out of one world and not yet mature enough for the other, Holden crashes over the boundaries of teen and adult society, rejecting structure, misinterpreting freedoms, discovering things are not as he assumed. His taste of "unfettered life" plummets Holden into dizzying paradoxical misadventures. He is curious and baffled by the inconsistencies in what moves him, what he misinterprets about school and adult behavior, by the complexities of meshing his insecurities with his ambitions. By the end of "Catcher," Holden doesn't want to continue with his tale as he discovers he misses two of his former classmates, Stradlater and Ackley. He even misses the pimp Maurice, who hit him. He warns the reader that telling others about personal experiences will lead to missing the people who shared them.
This anniversary of "The Catcher in the Rye" marks a perfect time to pick up Joanna Rakoff's "My Salinger Year," reviewed last month on this blog. And if like the young Joanna of her memoir, you aren't familiar with the books of J. D. Salinger, check them out. See where the stories take you. Happy anniversary, "Catcher."
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