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Until his press agent announced his death a few days ago, I‘d thought little about J.D. Salinger these last years. I suspect you hadn’t either. He’d slipped to a distant corner of my memory. I doubt though that the notoriously reclusive Salinger — if a “successful” recluse can also at the same time be notorious — would be offended by our lapses. I am sure that’s the way he would have things be. (I must confess that I have this penchant for deeming the once famous but also very much “still with us” to be long in the grave. It’s nothing personal or even intentional. I just sometimes have a hard time keeping up with who’s “Alive or Dead” … and if the “deemed deceased” is already an infamous recluse, well, it doesn’t help matters.)

I came across Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye the first time when I was around fifteen. At the time I was firmly ensconced in that clumsy, goofy, confused and cynical state that accompanies much of adolescence, or at least that accompanied mine. Catcher was on the Reading List in Mrs. Ashby’s English Lit class that semester, and there were rumors from people in the Junior Class about the book. There were also rumors about salacious passages in my first choice, God’s Little Acre, but it seemed on permanent loan at the library. We were required to select, read and report on twelve books for the semester and Catcher looked to be as short a “read” as any of the other eighty-three titles on the list (despite the fact that there were no pictures. Drat!) Of equal consequence  was that by the time that I’d caught the Number 57 Collier Heights bus and arrived at the Atlanta library’s Main Branch (behind Davison’s), there was still a  copy of Salinger’s 1951 seminal tome on the shelf.

As had been rumored, the cuss words were right there, in plain view, on page one:

“… In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They’re quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They’re nice and all — I’m not saying that — but they’re also touchy as hell. Besides, I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me …”

It wasn’t the cuss words that raised my teenage adrenaline level, although it would have been if this had been a year or two prior; salacious language or a suggestive scene in something like God’s Little Acre would have certainly done the trick.  The thing that kept me turning pages was Holden Caulfield’s narration — i.e. Salinger’s writing! By page ten or so, I was hooked. Holden Caulfield,  lo and behold, had a view of the world very similar to mine and he spoke in a down to Earth way that I could understand. None of that “Forsooth” stuff or “Wherefore art thou Guinivere” Shakespearean business. I didn’t need Mrs. Ashby or anyone else to interpret for me “what the author was really saying.” It was obvious.  It was as if Holden Caulfield was speaking directly to me or maybe even for me.

Even  in the first few pages, a teenager whose “wiring” was said to be sometimes faulty, could figure out that on the surface, Billy Cantrell and Holden Caulfield came from world’s that had little in common. Young Caulfield was a tall, gangling adolescent from a well-to-do family, who attended a private prep school in Agerstown (Pa.). Billy Cantrell, whose single mother was doing her best to keep Georgia Power at bay every month, was a relentlessly clumsy black kid living in the Deep South and trying his best to get out of adolescence — and English Lit — alive. But there were some strikingly similar undercurrents in Billy’s and Holden’s world especially when it came to dealing with adults, girls, teachers, and people that we both thought of as “phonies.” For the rest of the weekend,  I devoured Catcher as if it were my Aunt Vera’s peach cobbler … and ended up reading the damn thing  again — twice — long before any due date, a rarity for me in those days. (In a spirit of more or less full disclosure, I confess that both readings were aided by the fact that I was at home on two successive Saturday nights. Cassie Morgan had turned down my multiple requests to take her to see Goldfinger — or a date of any kind — because she told me that she always washed her hair on Saturday evenings.)

By the end of the book,  Holden Caulfield still is not terribly motivated to apply himself to school or to the conformist world of the early 1950s and, by denouement, he is “narrating” from a sanitarium. But despite his troubles, Holden figures out some basic truths about life, people and maybe even himself. By the time I’d gotten to the book’s last page, I had also figured out that despite Holden’s problems he was good at heart, cared about other people and maybe that was what mattered most in life. (A little before the book’s end I also finally figured out what the title meant. Sorry, I ain’t tellin’. You’ll have to read it for yourself.) As corny as this may read, Salinger’s Holden Caulfield made getting out of adolescence just a wee bit easier. (Of course, I’d also figured out that Cassie Morgan — not her real name by the way — was not only the prettiest girl in my class but also undoubtedly had the cleanest damn hair in the school district. Mrs. Ashby did have to tell me what “the author” was saying on that one.)

To be sure, Salinger, Catcher, and Holden Caulfield resonated with me. Catcher in the Rye resonated within a lot of us. Since its first printing in 1951, it has reportedly sold 65 million copies throughout the world and even sells a quarter million copies annually, 60 years after its first release. (I found this last fact somewhere on the Internet, so I guess that it must be true.) Salinger published other short stories and collections after Catcher but none received the acclaim of the 1951 publication.

As I read about Salinger’s death, I was reminded of the rumors that there may be a largesse of unpublished works in a safe in his Cornish, New Hampshire home … some of which could be released after his death.  At the same time, I am also reminded of my own intrigue at how Holden Caulfield “turned out.”  Did he, in fact, make it out of adolescence and the sanitarium alive?  What kind of a man did he grow to be?  Did he become the man that his daddy was?   I suspect that Geraldo, or some other erstwhile investigator, will be dusting off his safe-cracking skills again soon. Maybe Rivera will have a better go of it  this time around. In a way though, I hope that he doesn’t. Sequels are never as good as the original and there’s always the chance that Jerome David Salinger only caught ‘”lightning in a bottle” that one time. The naked truth is that I’d just as soon Holden Caulfield stay frozen in time, the way he was/is in my teenage memory. I suspect that if Salinger wanted us to know how things turned out with Holden, he’d have seen fit to tell us. He never did, of course. I suspect that both Salinger and Caulfield preferred it this way.

He was a recluse, of course. So you just never know.

© Copyright 2010 Will Cantrell

1. Frank Povah says:

   February 4, 2010 at 6:38 am

   I think he is safer in the sanitarium, Will. I, for one, don’t want to read any more about him – I like him the way he is. Imagine if A A Milne had reintroduced us to a mature Winnie -The- Pooh surrounded by a tribe of bearlings and married to a bearess like the one in the dunny paper commercials who insisted he stopped seeing Christopher Robin because he encouraged him to write poetry.

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2. Terri Evans says:

   February 4, 2010 at 10:02 am

   Really enjoyed this piece, Will. There are several insightful pieces in the New Yorker as well that made me want to go back (somehow) and read pieces of Salinger’s published in the New Yorker.

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3. Bob says:

   February 4, 2010 at 10:35 am

   Nice article, Will. Catcher in the Rye never resonated with me, and Salinger appears to have been another nut case, a la Howard Hughes. God’s Little Acre did resonate with me, perhaps because I grew up in Augusta, Ga., a city that figures prominently in that book.
   No matter. Different strokes, etc. Anyhow, take a bow.

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4. Ina says:

   February 4, 2010 at 4:13 pm

   Good article! Catcher in the Rye, I am ashamed to say never read it, I just know it is a must read, and now I am curious about this Holden and what Catcher in the Rye actually means! Thank you!

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5. rhonda says:

   February 6, 2010 at 7:34 pm

   Well done Wil! As per usual, your ingenious knack of putting sentences together to incite verbal drama in coffee houses and dinner tables across america has put a smile upon my face. For exactly 2 minutes i forgot about the recession, what dress Lady GaGa chose for the VMAs and why my chicken roast dinner tasted like cardboard! lol… I, too, remember reading The Catcher in the Rye as a teen, and still have the scar from walking into the light post while reading said book…I’m telling you people, Wil Cantrell is the answer to rainy days and boring nights… he truly has a gift! Now let us all race to our local bookstores to secure a copy of JD Salingers work! Quickly, before they disappear!

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6. Wendell says:

   February 7, 2010 at 11:15 am

   Will,
   I thoroughly enjoyed the read. Catcher in the Rye was a thought provoking for me as a teen. Love your humor. Who was the girl with the good smellin’ hair.

   Wendell

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