Archive for March, 2011

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

(DISCLAIMER: I know the immediately conclusion that will be drawn by those of you who stalk my blog and are non-fans of me, but no – I am not a deranged killer because I give The Catcher in the Rye five stars nor am I of the mindset that “no one understands me” which is the tone of Salinger’s great American novel. The voices in my head understand me just fine.)

I first read this book when I was in middle school. At the time, I was living in small town Georgia and it was the modern world of the eighties. This is important to know since the “why” I read this book is just as important in order to understand my love for it. You see, people tend to forget (or just gloss over the fact) that censorship still exists. Overzealous parents try to protect their precious little princes and princesses from the harsh realities of life and history by deeming works of art and literature “offensive” run rampant even today.

These are the same nitwits that recently had the word “nigger” removed from Huckleberry Finn.

(Gasp!)

That’s right. I typed the word. I have black friends (many of whom hate the phrase “African-American”) and I even dated a lovely black woman once. And a Latin one. And an Irish one. But I digress…

Lenny Bruce once said “it’s the suppression of the word that gives it the power.” Forgetting or hiding “the bad” in (our) history or life doesn’t make it go away; it merely takes away the lessons that can be learned from it. So no, I’m not even slightly racist because I used a that word earlier. I just hate hiding language that exists to remind us that the world isn’t rainbows and roses 24/7.

BACK TO SMALL TOWN GEORGIA IN THE EIGHTIES: My parent, like most, were far from perfect. God bless them, though, for their occasional nugget of genius that kept them separated from the masses of society. My mother received a list of the books that were being banned from our public schools via the local PTA(?) one day and instantly became infuriated. Mom grew up in the New Jersey/New York area, so she was still having trouble adapting to the slightly different mindset offered in the south. The idea of banning books just was something she thought didn’t exist any more.

(See my earlier Huckleberry Finn reference where I just learned the same sobering lesson.)

So my mother did what she felt made the most sense when presented with something as ludicrous as a “banned book” list. She started buying them for her son.

This was the first one on the list.

I have read The Catcher in the Rye at least once a decade. Each time, I find myself enthralled for a different reason.
- In my youth, it was the thrill of reading something that (according to the local education system) was “bad.”
- When I was in my twenties, in college and living on my own, it was relating to the world of indecision that Holden Caulfield deals with.
- More recently (I read it again last year) it is my current fascination with the past from years before I was born.

Reading that the 1950s wasn’t as sanitized as the image portrayed on the television of the era is a sobering reminder of how much things are still the same regardless of cell phones, computers and the Internet. The core issues that humans have to endure are the same now as they were then; and the ignorance that seeks to pretend otherwise is still among us.

Just ask Holden Caulfield or Huck Finn.

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