The Catcher in the Rye Enigma Revisited

American Thinker ^ | 06/22/2024 | Alicia Colon

[DFG]

The 1951 J.D. Salinger novel The Catcher in the Rye has long been one of the most controversial literary tomes, inspiring films and criminal conspiracies. John Lennon’s murderer, Marc David Chapman, carried the book at the murder and continued reading it while Lennon lay bleeding at his feet. He has said that he wished to model his life after the novel's protagonist, Holden Caulfield, identifying with Holden’s misanthropic world view.

-snip-

There have been numerous books, podcasts, and lectures positing even more outlandish schemes emanating from the pen of Jerome David Salinger. One of the most amusing was a three part video on YouTube showing the hidden ‘Catcher’ symbols in Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining.

When I was 16, I read The Catcher in the Rye and loved it for all the wrong reasons. After a discussion about the book with my husband who wasn’t a fan, I decided to reread it as an adult and found it overwhelmingly relevant to today and understood finally why it’s a classic.

As a teenager, I could not identify with the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, and his angst-driven search for life’s answers. I was in my 12th year of an all-girls Catholic education and had all the tools I needed to deal with trauma and the vicissitudes of urban strife. Poor Holden had nothing to stop his depression and painful search for relevance in his scary impending adulthood. What we did have in common was the fact that we were native New Yorkers and what I loved about Catcher was the description of Holden’s trek into the Manhattan sites I had also escaped to from life in the barrio. I lived in the museums of Art and Natural History. I rode the carousel in my beloved playground of Central Park.

[rxh4n1]

Hated it. Rad part way through it and quit. It was another of those lame books popular in the ‘60s. Hesse, Castaneda, Brautigan did many of those. Just boring.

[Damifino]

It’s been 35 years since I read it. But I remember Holden calling many people ‘phonies’. I grew to agree with this part of his misanthropic seeming literature.<\i>

Same. I probably need to reread it to see if my aged world-view changes things.