The Catcher in the Rye

I've just finished reading The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger.

A book I think every American except for me read in high school ... I guess I'm a bit late to the party but I finally got around to it. I would mark myself pleasantly surprised by this book—I found it a fairly tender portrayal of a teenager grappling in his own way with the cruelty of the world around him.

I think Salinger manages quite well to make you somehow love, hate, respect, and empathize with Holden all at the same time. I assume that's why it's endured for as long as it has in the U.S. high school curriculum, and across favorite book lists (according to some, it's the fourth-greatest book of all time). Salinger presents us a fairly authentic vision of a teenager—we see Holden tender with his little sister, childlike in his musings about the Central Park ducks, jaded in his interactions with almost everyone he encounters, pretending to be strong yet weak in the face of true confrontation, in a way that rang very true for me.

Another thing I liked: the slow, meandering style the book adopts. It seemed I spent 3/4 of the book wondering what exactly the driving force was, and while the last quarter clarifies it a bit, it ends quite nicely on an inconclusive note. I'm tempted to say the writing style, thought process, and overall organization seems close to what I was myself like as a teenager, but that was a fairly long time ago, so it's best not to speculate too much. There were definitely times when the style grates a bit, and Salinger is certainly not the world's greatest prosist, but overall I think the effect succeeds.

The last point I find myself wanting to mention is the portrayal of (I suppose upper-class) New York in the 50s. I found the setting quite charming honestly, though I can't say exactly why. It's always fun reading a book that is so much set in a particular place, between the pop culture references, place names, and of course the slang (the most insufferable parts of me are tempted to start calling people "Mac" and "fella"). I suspect it's in significant part due to how much we romanticize that time and place in general, but whatever the reason it did make for very fun reading.

To end, I'll have to pull my favorite quote, and even though it's a bit cheap I'm taking the very end, I think the entire last chapter is really done quite perfectly.