Catcher in the Rye, The

Inhoud

Anyone who has read J. D. Salinger's New York stories - particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme - With Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is full of children.

The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days.

The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it.

There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices - but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.

Bespreking

Do not hesitate: read this book!

Holden Caufield, a 16 year-old boy on the verge of adulthood, is not sure of how to behave in a world filled with 'phonies'. Holden wanders around his hometown New York, after he got expelled from this fine school Pencey for bad term results. Not wanting to face his parents, he tries to find out what life has to offer, if there is a way out of superficiality.

What makes this story so controversial is that it attacks the basic values of the American Way of Living. At the age of sixteen Holden realizes that life is not like the make-believe of the pictures. After some embarrassing confrontation he realizes that what lies behind the façade of normality is often very painful, but still offers its own dark pleasures. Holden's biggest wish is to escape from everything 'phony', but what he gets is confirmation of his own faking.

The Catcher in the Rye is a book that has been analyzed by scholars like no other book. Trying to summarize the impact in a few lines is simply impossible. What can be made clear though, is that no matter if you hate or love the book, it will leave a permanent impression behind somewhere in every readers mind, a little devil that awakes at the most unexpected moments. If their is ever going to be made a list of most powerful books, The Catcher in the Rye is bound to be heavy competition for first place.

What the character Holden hungers for the most, is exactly for what Salinger himself has found the courage to accomplish: the author now lives in a secluded cottage, isolated form everything 'phony'. Rumors say that he is still writing books, but refuses to publish any of them. I find it very admirable that Salinger does not betray his own principles. But then again, if means that we cannot read what masterpieces he is bound to have written.