Salutations, bibliophiles.
Today, I’m very excited to bring you
.Kathleen writes
, where she explores how to layer stories with ideas, culture, places, and texts, as well as her excellent original fiction.Here, Kathleen has written an essay on an absolute classic for us, and she does it full justice. Enjoy!
—
You can fall in love with many books but the one that stays with you evolves over time. You read it again and again, finding intertexts between the you at that moment and the language dancing on the page. As the pages disintegrate and you create layers of margin notes in multicolor, the book ages with grace, becoming wiser and closer in kinship.
In the case of The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger (partially serialized in 1945-6, then fully published in 1951), the protagonist-narrator Holden Caulfield is aware that he, too, will look back on these words and that they will change. He writes at the age of seventeen from a psychiatric hospital, recalling his experience the previous year as an “ostracized,” failing student who continuously wears a red hunting hat while dealing with the grief over his brother’s death and the “phoniness” of society. With little resolution except the will to live – in spite of it all – Holden reminds us that our strength is within.
Catcher is one of those seminal works of American literature, remaining so despite the controversy surrounding its author, who died in 2010. I encountered the book first in my junior year English class with the marvelous Dick Steele (yes, that’s right): a teacher of dry humor, kind intensity, and deep knowledge of literature that he was able to relate to real life. I have fond memories of learning and laughing during passages of that book in his class. As teens, we were primarily hooked by Holden’s incessant fight against fake adult society and conformity as well as, paradoxically, the way he plays adult at bars and even attempts to lose his virginity to a “prostitute,” with whom he instead commiserates. But we also learned through the gaze of our inspiring teacher about its use of unreliable narration, clever characterization strategies, and the bildungsroman genre.
It was this element of the tale of growing up through a journey that first interested me on a more literary and layered level. I was already a lover of literature thanks to my librarian mom, and classroom analysis only helped the ideas become bigger. Mr. Steele shared the apt comparison of the openings between Catcher and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – second person narration, slang, child protagonists, and so many themes.
We also learned how to place this book in the context of post-WWII America, that is: The Cold War. This war, which we had only recently come out of in 1996 was, and is, in part, a war against the concept of complete annihilation by the atomic bomb. Holden mentions the bomb just once in an unusual way: “Anyway, I’m sort of glad they’ve got the atomic bomb invented. If there’s ever another war, I’m going to sit right the hell on top of it. I’ll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.” Suicidal? Perhaps. Or is Holden attempting to be an imagined martyr for a greater cause? At that point in my life, these ideas surpassed my level of understanding.
In college, I read Catcher again as part of a Cold War Literature course. We took these ideas about conformity and the atomic bomb further in a bigger dialogue of literary history. It made me realize that books can talk. Yes, fiction speaks. It not only reflects history and ideology but has the power to force us to question not only on a personal level but as a society. Within the ethical ellipsis of fiction, we can learn how to do the right thing.
But I was propelled right back to the personal when my roommate and friend died in a car crash. At this point of re-reading a book that was comforting in its familiarity, I was struck by the story as one of Holden dealing with both the grief following his brother’s death and grappling with his own mortality. When your friend dies at nineteen, you start to question everything, and I realized that Holden was simply seeking deeper meaning in his life than writing papers and supporting the fencing team. Although, because of his youth he couldn’t see then that those acts could also help him to be free through the ability to write and find friendships. Apparently, I talked about this book to a different college roommate at one point, because she presented me with a first edition copy at my graduation.
Just a couple years later, I was back at my old high school with my first teaching gig. Mr. Steele showed up occasionally as a sub following his retirement. He asked me what I was teaching that year and was visibly proud that much of his old syllabi featured.
In class, my students and I looked at all those literary features together and also shared some laughs. I added my own spin, such as an additional comparative layer to DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little (2003) with that familiar American ‘child’ narrator, only this time in the midst of a school shooting.
One day, a student of mine whom we can call ‘Frank’ said, “Hey Ms. Waller, can I talk to you a minute in the hallway?” just before class. Usually, these impromptu private meetings were to ask for assessment extensions. I had my guard up! What he said, though, blew my mind: “So you know this book we’re reading – Catcher in the Rye – it saved my life. What I mean is, I was suicidal until we read this book. Thank you. I just wanted to tell you.” We had a hug before he slipped by the door and into his seat. I did my best to teach that day without tearing up.
The title of the novel comes from a poem called “Comin’ thro’ the Rye,” by Robert Burns, which Holden’s little sister corrects him on and at the time of writing concedes his errors, demonstrating that he now values the literature he learned in school. Holden makes the poem his own through a dream that he shares with his sister:
“’If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye’…I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”
Teachers can “catch” students and help them find new meaning in life or just enjoy learning. Holden’s teacher, Mr. Antolini, tries to do such, warning him of a “special kind of fall, a horrible kind.” He does have an effect, for Holden proclaims first that Antolini “saved [his] life” before being scared off by his kindness and returning to isolation. Instead, it’s the narrator himself who finds the strength within. Books themselves, whether read in a classroom or returned to at different moments of one’s life, can save a person. They can give you the will to live. As one reads, they consider the questions and find possibilities, even or perhaps especially in response to tragic texts. Holden is the embodiment of that idea. He digs himself out of black hole while still acknowledging that things can be shit sometimes.
You can show a student you care about them, which might help them feel good and connect with their learning. But if you also give a student a book, and the knowledge to learn from other texts they discover for themselves, then you give them strength.
Since this experience in my first year of teaching, I would present the book as one of a powerful example of finding the will to live within oneself. I would also present any book – or text – as a thing to give us meaning. As we understand the nerdy literary stuff, we get access to even more of the story and the dialogue of texts across the ages. I’ve had a Singaporean student find solace in Camus’ existentialist thought, allowing him to make peace with his impending mandatory military service. I’ve had a student whose father died her senior year consider new ways to make family and experience joy through Yoshomito’s Kitchen.
Frank’s words had made me shockingly aware of just how important literature can be to people, no matter how much the academic subject becomes a part of their lives or not. Part of Salinger’s narrative genius is the way he reaches the reader directly, sharing the inner monologue of a fellow human who can’t be trusted simply because he isn’t yet able to fully see himself. Books give us that power to see.
P.S. For more ways of getting your writing in front of new readers, consider becoming a paying subscriber today.
Thanks for this. My Junior English teacher gave me a copy of “Catcher in the Rye” and said to me “Please don’t tell anyone I gave you this book. I’m not allowed to teach it.” 1968. Still have it. Still love it.
Very moving and powerful. I've been meaning to read 'Catcher' for ages; your essay has made me move it to the top of my TBR list.