AN AMERICAN MASTERPIECE TURNS FIFTY

I'm going to start this with a generalization. The trouble with generalizations is that there are, of course, exceptions to the general. This is my generalization: Teenagers today (and adults too) do not read as much as teens (and adults) used to read. "Duh," you say. "Tell us
something we don't know."

I mention this generalization because I have a sixteen year old receptionist in my law office who almost caused me to have a heart attack the other day. She stays very busy but in a down time, I actually found her, hold your breath, READING! She was not reading the latest "People" mag or some light romantic novel with a gorgeous blonde and a hunk full of abs on the cover. As you can guess from the subject matter of this review, she was reading "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger.

As I picked myself off the floor, I asked how she liked this book that I had read way back in the dark ages of 1963. She said she not only liked it; she loved it and had read it 16 times. She practically knew it by heart.

I remembered that I, too, loved the book when I was a lad of 16. Since I'm now a mature (debatable proposition) 54 and 3/4's, I wondered if "Catcher" would appeal to me. I found a copy at Barnes and Noble which looks like a generic book. Almost totally plain cover with the title and author seven rainbow-colored lines running diagonally along the upper left corner.

It is a fast, easy book to read. It is not necessarily an easy book to understand. It might seem to be easy to understand, but that's part of its appealing mystery. As I prepared to write this epinion, I noticed quite by accident that Grouch had just written about "Catcher" from a virgin reader's point of view. Virgin as to this book. He says this so don't think I'm getting flitty or anything. His review not only is excellent but it celebrates the 50th anniversary of the book. Grouch says the 50th birthday of Holden Caulfield but Holden would not be around 66. Just fooling around. You have to read his review.

But I have a different perspective since I'd read the novel before. Didn't I? Perhaps. But it had been so long since I read "Catcher" that I might have well been a virgin too touched for the very first time by the incredible writing style of Salinger.

Holden Caulfield narrates much of his life to us while living on the edge of danger over a two day period. He has just been kicked out of about his 1000th private school and he doesn't want to tell his parents. Holden is telling the story from a mental institution which I would not have known had it not been for Kimberly, my aforementioned receptionist. After you read the whole book, you'll know why he's in an institution but that's not really all that
important.

What is important to this old fogey, is that Sallinger's Caulfield is as typical a teenager for the late 40's as the current 00's. Oh, he's more daring and wild than many of us were or are, but he shares the same insecurities that have plagued teens since before the days of Plato. Hell, I bet the caveman teens were criticized as wild by their parents. Holden thinks about sex a lot in the book. He even claims to be quite the little lover. But we never actually see him succeed on any level with a female.

One section that I found particularly funny, if politically incorrect was the following:
After talking about how he always stopped just short of intercourse because he felt sorry for girls, Holden says "I mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them loving their brains. You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn't any brains." How many times have you heard women say just the opposite about boys or men? If I've heard "He thinks with the wrong head" once, I've heard
it a million times. Eternal truth hear, if somewhat backwards.

Early in the book, Holden tells us that he's a first degree liar. Lies about every thing often and well. Throughout the narrative, we see examples of this as he tells the most outrageous stories to total strangers who seem to believe him because of his seeming innocence. Salinger has Caulfield telling us this early which puts the whole narrative somewhat in question. Did these adventures really happen? Or are they merely a product of an inventive mind?

As I did by saying that Holden had been kicked out of a 1000 schools, Caulfield does throughout the book. A bed in ten miles wide. He smokes three cartons of cigarettes in one day. But isn't that typical of teens. I know I exaggerated.

Caulfield is also a champion of the common man. He hates phonies who dress up in their Ivy League suits and try to snow the world. Although an accomplished liar himself, he hates liars. He does a real number on lawyers which doesn't offend me because I know he's right on point for many in my profession.

I've rambled around here describing a book that is very hard to review. I noticed one reviewer here saying that Salinger is America's worst writer. I thoroughly disagree but then if we all agreed on everything, this would be a boring world.

The tragedy of J.D. Salinger, to me, is that he stopped writing way back in the 60's. Why? I'm not sure if anyone knows the answer to that question.

The glory of J.D. Salinger is that he had this book in his system. It is the timeless discovery of how great, how shallow, how funny, how frightening each of our lives can be. From the eyes of the young, we see a future filled with despair, with hope, with yearning, and with simplicity. We know every thing in our teens. We know nothing in our teens. It is only later that we understand that all we can hope for is enough intelligence and fortitude to meet life's many challenges. I salute you, Mr. Salinger, and thank you a billion times. And thank you, Kimberly, for proving that generalities are not the truth for everyone.