"Youth is wasted on the Young." - George Bernard Shaw
"I mean, fuck, Joe, these goddamn teenagers don't even know what they are saying, and they say the most brilliant fucking things, and they follow it up by saying something unbelievably fucking stupid, and it's ridiculous." - some asshole
I was, at one point in my life, thinking I was going to follow in my mother's footsteps and be a teacher. The plan was to teach elementary school kids, because I honestly thought you had to be insane to work with the older youth. Teenagers have always been strange, worrisome creatures for me, even/especially when I was a teenager. Someone who is just realizing their power, without any guide how to use it, to me that's disorienting to engage, because how can you have an idea what someone is going to do or say when they don't even know from minute-to-minute? Thanks, but I'll stick with the 8 year-olds.*
Catcher in the Rye is a great book. Is it the best book I've read this year? Not quite, but it comes closer to knocking Franzen of his island-mountain perch than anybody else so far. Holden Caulfield rolls through New York, driven by loneliness and procrastination to find somebody else to regard and be regarded, all while Lust and Fear joust for the controls inside his head. There are so many moments, that I had to stop while reading because my head had instantly gone back to a memory, where I was Caulfield, or maybe he was me, and I recalled how everything seemed to move so damn fast around me. Life whirled by and I had to go by some instinct because I had no idea what to do, and seemingly no time to sit down and say, "Just what the fuck is going on?". I have a tendency to look back at those years with a melancholic sense, wishing I had made different (not necessarily better, but different) choices, but with this book, I more remembered how I was thinking back then, how rightfully clueless I was. And how can you pick over decisions that you made with incomplete information? Is it your fault when you are steering a car with complete control over everything but the gearshift?
Obviously, I did not read this book when I was an actual teenager, as Joe did. Had I, surely that would change how I feel about the book, which is just made for other adolescents to read and tie in with. I would probably, much like Joe, consider this one of the benchmark novels of my life.** Now, I see how it connects with kids, and how much I have changed since then. And the strange thing, I have not changed as much as I thought I would have. I am not the same, but if feels like I have not grown up so much as I've grown outward. The mind is the same, but the perspective has expanded so much. I still will have crippling bouts with self-flagellation and doubt, but where I used to think that nobody else dealt with that, at least to the extent that I do, now I know that everybody fights those demons. Some people are better at the war than others, but we all are dragged into the battlefield. Maybe, in the end, I am better off reading the book now. Maybe Salinger was ultimately trying to tell people that they are not alone, and everybody needs a little of that, no matter the age.
*= This may be the most misleading and terribly worded sentence I have put on the internet.
**= I say probably because, there is at least a small chance that Teenage David would have written off Holden as some spoiled rich kid, who couldn't or wouldn't ever be able to relate to anybody "normal" person, and therefore unable to be saved or sympathized over. Goddamn, Teenage David could be a fucking moron at times.
don't take Joe's take too seriously for teens. I had to read it for AP Honors and i was honestly kind of bored. I never bought into the one of the greatest books of all time business. I fell more into the camp of this dude has too much money to have these sorts of problems. I still have that book sitting on my shelf, so perhaps i'll bring it into rotation, see if with 20+ yrs i think it's actually any better than my original memories of it.
ReplyDeleteI read this after moving in high school and doubt I will ever relate to it again. This makes ne want to never read it again. I do not recommend moving in HS to anyone. If I do read it again I will brace for disappointment.
ReplyDeleteLike I said above, I think there is something for anybody in the book to relate to, even if it speaks to one particular age group. That said, James, I don't know if your perspective is going to change as much. It sounds like you really had a problem with the Character, and not the viewpoints, and that's will likely not alter reading it now. I will admit that there were more than a few things with Holden that bugged me, for the same reasons it bugged you.
ReplyDeleteI did not read this in HS (mainly because my HS did not introduce me to any decent literature!). I read this book in my 20's and it floored me. As you said Dave "maybe Salinger was trying to tell people that they are not alone." That is how I felt, that I connected with something. That I was not alone in the way I looked at the world. Had I read this in HS I might've felt the same, but either way can still read this book today and give thanks to Salinger. Thank you for allowing me to feel like I was and am still OK. I am not entirely wrong, inappropriate, & alone with how I view the world. Great literature has made me see that and for me this book was pivotal.
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