The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
I just finished re-reading The Catcher in the Rye. I last read it in my teens. After scolding my husband for failing to have ever read it, I decided to pick it up and breeze through it after he finished.
The Catcher in the Rye is a classic story about a young man, Holden Caulfield, who gets kicked out of his prep school right before Christmas. He wanders aimlessly around New York City for a few days before heading to his New York City home to tell his parents the bad news. The book was first published in 1945. It is great to read about how the city appeared then. Many things about the city are the same, like the ice rink by Radio City Music Hall, but many things have changed, too. I don’t think ladies can are able to rent short skating skirts to ice skate at the rink anymore.
The story is told through Holden’s distracted ramblings. His perspective is 100% teenager. Reading it now, when I am no longer in my teens, I was reminded of how different the world seemed in those years. I believe this perspective is what makes this book such a classic. Holden describes the City in his own unique way. Throughout the book he keeps asking what happens to the ducks in Central Park when winter comes, he takes his sister to the carousel there to cheer her up. Here is one of my favorite of Holden’s descriptions:
“The cab I had was a real old one that smelled like someone’d just tossed his cookies in it. I always get those vomity kind of cabs if I go anywhere late at night. What made it worse, it was so quiet and lonesome out, even though it was Saturday night. I didn’t see hardly anybody on the street. Now and then you just saw a man and a girl crossing the street, with their arms around each other’s waists and all, or a bunch of hoodlumy-looking guys and their dates, all of them laughing like hyenas at something you could bet wasn’t funny. New York’s terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed.”
Holden gets let down by everything, including New York City, but that is the fate of a teenage boy. If you haven’t read The Catcher in the Rye, pick it up and try a few chapters. If you aren’t hooked early on, it probably isn’t the book for you, but it will let you in on the mind of teenagers everywhere.
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- R.I.P. J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)
