Upon Rereading The Catcher in the Rye

by Christian De Matteo

HUGE

            While rewatching Pleasantville, a film I have much love for, on my last vacation, I reached the great scene when Tobey Maguire and Jeff Daniels’s characters paint the mural on the jailhouse wall, by way of protest.  As the camera panned across the wall, I read the titles of the books they had chosen to represent artistic and personal freedom.

            The Catcher in the Rye was one of those books.  Being as avid a reader as I am a film buff, I was at that moment in the middle of two books (The Seven Daughters of Eve by Byron Sykes and Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies) and dying to start another (American Gods by Neil Gaiman).  And yet, somehow, out of the three books featured on that wall mural, Catcher hit me hard, so hard that when the credits rolled on the film, I immediately pulled a copy off the bookshelf and began reading.

            The time was 2:45 AM.

            Within two days I had the book finished, no small feat considering my constant need to put it down and think.  I rarely reread books, mostly because there are so many others I’ve yet to get to for the first time, and I’d read Catcher when I was a junior in high school.  I am now 25 (year written 2002) and can’t imagine how I got anything out of it back then.

            The book is absolute brilliance, a tale of loss, immaturity, existential angst and the every day disgust with humanity that I too have a hard time dealing with.  The Catcher in the Rye also wonderfully and perversely celebrates life and humanity, with just the same opposing emotions I too fight with.  Basically, the book about this high school student was more about me now, than about the high school me who read it.

            In the space of a few short days in the life of Holden, our guide and antihero, more philosophical issues are covered than in some philosophy books I’ve read.  It is clear from page one, that Holden is not being presented as the way we ought to be— far from it, he doesn’t want to be the way he is— but as the way we could be and, in some case, are.  What Holden does is personify the journey, so many thinking humans are always on.

The Catcher in the Rye

       Now, do not misunderstand this.  Catcher is far from some new age, self-help book with all the answers for a better life.  No, the novel is well aware of the negativity that we can’t change in the world and how limited we truly are.  Never does Salinger pretend to have the answers, nor does one get the feeling he would particularly care to give them, if he did.  Instead, he tells a tale about a very particular character, with very particular thoughts, loves, hates and confusions, that somehow we can easily relate to our own lives and thoughts, loves, hates and confusions.  He tells the tale of a human, a highly individualized Everyman (what a concept!), a child for adults to relate to, and studies the concept of being alive through this colorful cipher of a character. 

       Holden’s uncomfortable adolescence manages to encapsulate so many of the great questions and frustrations of humans from the beginning of time.  How does one deal with the “phoniness” of the world, the “two-facedness” or the “stupidity” of those who seem to walk through the world without thinking, losing themselves in celebrities and fleeting good times?  How can you walk around surrounded by the evil that man can commit?  How does one deal with not being able to save everyone, and being often not even able to save oneself? 

       Salinger manages to capture the essence of the human condition by using those people most human: the teenage boy searching for meaning; the grown teacher with a lot of the answers for others, but obviously still missing a lot for himself; and the little girl, living through unconditional love and spunk.

Ultimately dealing with what it means to be alive and be with others, Salinger’s book floored me, picked me up to the levels of revelation and dropped me back to the realities of my condition, personally and universally.  I was simultaneously frightened by how much of myself I saw in Holden, and comforted by it as well.  More than anything I was humbled and enlightened by what I saw of myself in Holden, taking on the lessons he receives personally.

Obviously, not every aspect of Holden was applicable to me.  Holden is too real and fleshed out of a character for that.  When Holden goes for his pivotal conversation with his old teacher, Mr. Antonini, however, I did feel every word, sentence and thought that was directed to Holden as though it were directed to me, so powerful and brilliant was the writing.  I literally had no other option but to put the book down and sit, let Mr. Antonini’s words wash over me and realize that, whatever else he was, he was right.

When discussing this recently with a professor of mine from my undergrad, she told me she rereads The Catcher in the Rye every ten years or so, and gets something different out of it every time.  I now understand this.  J.D. Salinger’s great work spoke to me now, in this exact phase of my life, so specifically that I wondered if the book wasn’t put back in my hands by divine province.  I truly feel that I was meant to reread it at exactly this juncture of my life.

I only wish I could fast forward and reread it again in ten years now, just to see what else I will find in it then.

But that would be silly, wouldn’t it?

I’m sure I’ll get those new insights precisely when I need them.

I’ve heard it said that J.D. Salinger wasn’t prolific at all.  He in fact, suggests that in his opening to Franny and Zooey, but I disagree.  With the single work of The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger will be producing for eternity.

Copyright © 2002 by Christian De Matteo, all rights reserved