Hi, Everyone!
This week I’m overwhelmed at work as my employer prepares to defend a grant application, but I wanted to share my thoughts on an article I read this week.
The piece made me feel gratified, maybe even vindicated, for my unappreciated take on a novel my English class read in high school.
Perhaps you also read J.D. Salinger’s Catcher In the Rye when you were a teen. You know that short book with the curse words and vivid red cover that someone must’ve assumed you couldn’t sneak past your parents?
Perhaps you also had an English teacher who provided the common analysis that the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, was a troubled, isolated kid who lashed out at the world in highly-critical fashion. Well, that may be true, but my read of the book was that Holden got a lot right. My English teacher at the time did not accept this interpretation. But I think I was right then, am right now, and was pleased to read Lily Meyer’s take in The Atlantic this week affirming exactly my position.
Meyer’s article on the 75th anniversary of Catcher’s publication sets Caulfield up as a far better, more ethical character than most readers give him credit for. I daresay he’d be a pretty positive social media influencer on young males today.
Meyer notes that in a world where a lot of influencers look to get attention without regard for consequences, and offer a bizarre version of ideal masculinity that includes misogynistic views about women, Caulfield is the opposite.
For example, Caulfield says this about women: “…if you don’t really like a girl, you shouldn’t horse around with her at all.” He hates hearing the boys around him make up tales of sexual escapades and he has no respect for those who do. And his attitudes toward women seem strongly influenced by his love for, and positive relationship with, his sister.
He detests “phonies,” which is something that deeply resonated with me when I was a teen reading the book. I see mostly phony people dominating the few social media feeds I view 40 years later. Caulfield hates any form of attention-seeking, and I can only imagine how Salinger would have incorporated TikTok or Instagram into the novel were it written today.
Caulfield’s big dream is to hide in a vast field of rye at the edge of a dangerous cliff and catch children before they fall off. He seems to believe deeply in childhood innocence and wants to protect it.
That’s the part that gets me most, all these decades later. Holden’s whole fantasy, the one thing he actually wants out of life, isn’t fame, or a girl, or revenge on anyone who’s wronged him. It’s standing at the edge of a cliff, catching kids before they fall. Forty years after I first read this book, that still strikes me as a better use of a young man’s attention than anything currently trending.
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