Catcher in the Rye is getting me started again.
It’s not my favourite favourite book, but it’s the one that feels the most personal, like I could never actually be Elizabeth Bennett, but I might already be Holden Caulfield.
I never read Catcher in school, but I read it at the right age: first the library copy with the orange-on-white cover art that I’ve never understood, and then my own second-hand copy with the iconic yellow text on front and back. When I didn’t want to give my name, I said I was Jane Gallagher; my novel that I bled into for five years began as a two-page monologue about Holden.
And now, my final essay of the year—perhaps of my entire academic career—will be on Catcher in the Rye, and I’m not sure how it’s going to go. I came to library school for a lot of reasons, but I’m not sure if the main one wasn’t that don’t want to write essays anymore. The older I get, it becomes increasingly difficult to write with only my head—to write formally, persuasively, but without feeling. My structure is failing me.
And I want it to fail. I’ve been writing some form of Thesis Statement-Three Points-Conclusion since high school, and I’m afraid of burying myself in convention. I know I just said it was difficult, but the truth is I could do it: banish all my “I”s and write with my head. But that’s my biggest writing fear: to lose my first-person voice. I’m scared of a time when I pick up Catcher and realize I couldn’t be Holden anymore.
The assignment is to write the social history of an influential book, and Catcher‘s seen enough ups and downs in fifty years to more than fit the bill. It gets a strong reaction, one way or another.
But it’s different than it used to be. Apparently, many teens today find Holden whiny, self-absorbed, and as phony as those he decries. And I get that, sort of. Growing up is accepting the world around you and making the most of your place in it. But Holden’s sixteen; and maybe we all have to accept the world at some point, but it’s a little sad, isn’t it? Don’t teenagers feel alienated anymore?
Maybe it’s an excapism thing. Today’s alienated teens have to marry vampires or save the world, and while a lot of good books can be read with escapist motives, I don’t think it’s healthy to read that way. I don’t want to imagine a world without beautiful losers. There’s no escape with Holden, and that may make him whiny, but it’s what makes him true.
