Allie Died: What Did He Stand For?

Allie died of cancer at age eleven. Other than innocence, what did he represent?  Both he and James Castle could symbolize innocence sacrificed on the alter of adulthood. Though Castle died violently, an apparent suicide, neither boy was guilty of some egregious wrongdoing. Religious rituals have involved the taking of innocent life, with Jesus being a prominent example. Through his poetry, Allie stood for art. And James Castle, by refusing to submit to fascist bulling, stood for freedom of the human spirit.

People always seem reluctant to talk about the ones who have died. People die and everyone's in a big hurry to forget about them. "Put it behind you," they say. "Let bygones be bygones."

No one talks about the dead and what their lives meant, what they stood for, or failed at while striving for something. But not Holden. Holden is haunted by the deaths of James Castle and Allie.
Innocent kids aren't supposed to die, but they do all the time and when they do it raises the ante on the bet made each time a child is born. Life means something. And when it stops we need to park the car, turn off the radio and think.

There were two alcohol-related death during my kids' high school years and nobody wanted to talk about it. Grief counselors should have been brought in at school. Nothing. Kids just went on with their cheerleading and football games and pep rallies and two kids' lives got brushed under the rug. Detritus on the soles of restless Reeboks and Nikes.

Holden Cauflield was profoundly affected by the deaths of Allie and James. He can't move on. He didn't cry at Allie's funeral. He's a basket case because he needs to grieve. He is forced to face what these two lives mean to him.

Allie speaks to us through Holden's "madman stuff" and the poems he wrote on his baseball glove. The deaths of Allie and James could represent not just the metaphoric death of childhood on the odyssey toward adulthood, but the deaths of all innocent people.

Holden still has the glove. He's holding onto it. He can't let go. A physical treasure of leather anointed with Allie's sweat and creativity.

If there were a sequel to Catcher in the Rye, what do you think Holden will do with Allie's glove?

When we die we leave a legacy, of things and of memories. The grim tally at Gettysburg gave Abraham Lincoln ample reason to give the value of life considerable thought: "...that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion --that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain."

What is a life worth? It's a question that each of us in our own individual way, moment by moment, lives into an answer.

Catcher: The Red Hat and Names

I have covered the Central Park ducks in a separate post, but symbolism can be a matter of how far you want to take it.

The red hat could be just a way for Holden to have fun with something as functional as head protection during cold weather. It's probably something Salinger actually did as a kid at Valley Forge Military Academy, a gesture of defiance and independence or a way to get attention. It also serves as a gesture of intimacy when he and Phoebe swap it back and forth. There may be some significance to her slapping it back on Holden's head at the end, perhaps signifying he's been claimed as Phoebe's trophy for being rescued.

Or if you want to take the red hat thing deeper, Holden says it's "a people hunting hat." It's red. Allie's hair is red. Holden has Allie's baseball mitt. Holden wears the hat  backwards, like a baseball catcher. Holden wants to be a "catcher in the rye" for children. Red and backwards are also signs of rebellion or defiance.

Either way, the red hat stands out. It makes us sit up and think. Any kid wearing a red hunting hat in the city, you'd think he'd just come from a sporting goods store. Or he was being silly or was a tad bit off-kilter, both of which apply to Holden.


The only name of outright significance to me is Ed Bankey, who is possibly named after WWII fighter pilot Ernest Bankey, famous for becoming Ace-in-a-day during the horrific Battle of the Bulge in which Salinger fought.

The name "Holden" could imply holding back from growing up, holding on to innocence, holding onto sanity, stopping time, although that seems rather weak.

If you're into Greek mythology, Phoebe was the Titan goddess of "bright" intellect, which resonates ironically with "Sunny," the child prostitute, tarnished, so-to-speak, by her profession, a shining example of the tarnished innocence Holden wants to protect. Seeing Sunny within the context of his own precious sister Phoebe could have erased any sexual desire Holden had after Maurice's proposition.

Relying on symbols that refer to Greek mythology is risky proposition because the meaning is lost on the vast majority of readers who are unfamiliar with Greek mythology. It can also be seen as elitist and alienate some readers. It can also be a crutch. An author who relies heavily on external works can be seen as either lazy or lacking imagination and ingenuity.



(My thanks to my lit-chums at Goodreads for pointing out some of this.)

Is Catcher in the Rye Outdated? (A Goodreads.com Conversation)

(From the "Most Overrated Books" Discussion, 12/31/14)

The Catcher in the Rye has been criticized as outdated because modern schoolkids can't relate to what has been described as a "spoiled rich kid" from the 1950s. The following conversation lifted from a discussion on Goodreads.com addresses this issue.


Cemre: Why do you think Catcher [in the Rye] saw such a huge backlash ?

I mean there are so many articles all over the internet about it aging badly. Words "spoiled rich kid" are frequently used, but then aren't most of the main characters of classics are rich ? Why is Catcher the biggest victim of this ? Is it because it is easy to read or is there any other reason that ı can't understand ?

Mochaspresso: Perhaps it's that the internet reaches the reader before the actual book does and influences their perceptions of it? It could also be that other literature, films and music have reached that reader and shaped their pov before the novel. I know of people who read it for the first time because of the movie, "Six Degrees of Separation". I also knew people who read the novel for the first time because it was mentioned in a Green Day song. I haven't read this particular book, but I read an article that claimed that the book "The Collector" references "The Catcher in the Rye" rather negatively.

Cemre: Yes Mocha. Even stranger, people sometimes have negative perceptions of a book without actually reading it, based solely on its representation in popular media. Furthermore, their expectations of the novel can colour their reading and even then, it's arguable if they had actually read it.

I haven't read The Collector, but ı've gazed through it in a book fair, mainly for finding that passage (yes, I'm obsessed.) If ı've understood it correctly, a girl recommends it to a man, because she thinks that man can identify with Holden, but the man doesn't like it because Holden is a rich prep kid who didn't suffer as much as he did, etc. etc. Same thing.

Books sometimes have cultural reputations that doesn't have anything to do with the actual text. People come CitR expecting a novel of a rebellion, a book that inspired the killing of a rockstar, a life changing manifesto. What they find is the life story of a confused 16 years old boy who have lost his little brother. This might have disappointed a lot of them, and made them to see it as worse than it actually is, despite the fact that Catcher is rather good at the thing it's trying to do.

Monty:  <Cemre wrote: "Why do you think Catcher saw such a huge backlash ?">

Two reasons. First, I believe the backlash reflects present political realities. Holden representsthe privileged 1%. Wealth and income disparity are reaching new highs every year and there's growing frustration and unrest among the poor and Middle Class who feel victimized by the job-destroying Mitt Romneys and Kochs who pull the strings behind the curtains of government and industry.

I am afraid that Holden has, unfairly, become a literary insult to those suffering the grim realities and hopelessness of the economic disparities of this age.

The second major reason, I suspect, is psychological. The book deals with the transition from juvenile to adulthood, a transition that young readers are still experiencing when they read it for the first time. I suspect reading about yourself as you are struggling with vital issues of personality development can feel theatening. It's also about a guy, and girls have their own issues.

Additionally, many older readers are still wrestling with unresloved issues of an incomplete transition to adulthood themselves. Many were forced by parental expectations into unfulfilling roles and careers, and the book reminds them of it.

A book that sells this well is an easy target. Expect the attacks to grow until the economics and politics reverse their present course. The other issues are timeless, and for this reason CiTR can never become outdated. Attacked for socio-political reasons, but never outdated.

Cemre: Is Holden 1% though ? USA is one of the richest countries in the world, Holden's family seems to do well, but can they represent 1% of United States of America ? Wasn't Holden's father a lawyer? I'm sure they're doing rather well, but c'mon ı don't think they eat money? There has to be richer characters in American fiction.

Monty: <Cemre wrote: "Is Holden 1% though ? USA is one of the richest countries in the world, Holden's family seems to do well, but can they represent 1% of United States of America ? Wasn't Holden's father a lawyer? ...">

True, but corporate lawyers are major facilitators of the Kochs and Romneys, and they're paid immensely well for it. They write the legislation that chains us. They sit on the Supreme Court that redefined money as speech.

It is perception that matters, and Holden, merely by attending prep school, represents that privileged class.

Salinger In the CIC With Henry Kissinger

Salinger served in the CIC (Counterintelligence Corps) during The Battle of the Bulge in World War II. He was responsible for interviewing captured German soldiers as well local civilians, friend or foe. Did he witness torture and if so how did he handle it? How much was he willing to face and share, or was allowed to? War does things to the mind. His mind failed under the relentless pressure of trauma after trauma. After having thoughts of self harm, he submitted to psychiatric care. After recovering, he volunteered to return for more. He was cited for valor more than a couple of times, a bonifide hero.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger also served in the CIC and the Battle of the Bulge. It would be interesting to know if their paths crossed during those assignments, for which they both received medals for valor. Here's the relevant Wikipedia quote about Kissinger in the CIC: 

"Kissinger was reassigned to the 84th Infantry Division. There, he made the acquaintance of Fritz Kraemer, a fellow immigrant from Germany who ...arranged for him to be assigned to the military intelligence section of the division. Kissinger saw combat with the division and volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge."

Further Wikipedia comments about the CIC:

"In the European and Pacific theaters of operations CIC deployed detachments at all levels. These detachments provided tactical intelligence about the enemy from captured documents, interrogations of captured troops, and from para-military and civilian sources. They were also involved in providing security for military installations and staging areas, located enemy agents, and acted to counter stay-behind networks. They also provided training to combat units in security, censorship, the seizure of documents, and the dangers of booby traps. In some cases CIC agents found themselves acting as the de facto military government on the occupation of large towns before the arrival of Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories (AMGOT) officers. As the war in Europe came to a close, CIC were involved in the Operations Alsos, Paperclip and TICOM, searching for German personnel and research in atomic weapons, rockets and cryptography. Recruits after World War II included Klaus Barbie, also known as the 'Butcher from Lyon', a former Gestapo member and war criminal."

After recovering from shell shock, Salinger volunteered to return to postwar Germany and hunt war criminals. He married a woman and later had the marriage annulled. She was a Nazi. Did he marry her for Intelligence reasons or did he truly love her? 

Salinger's war record was so highly personal we can understand why he had to lock himself away for long periods. It meant going deep and facing shame and trauma, and facing trauma can be re-traumatizing. This is why many combat veterans end up on welfare. PTSD, untreated, can be debilitating. Salinger wrote during the war, even during combat, stories that became The Catcher in the Rye.

Can you imagine sitting down with Charlie Rose to talk about killing and death? Or with any civilian who hasn't a clue what it is like to face combat? 

Read All Quiet on the Western Front  or Slaughterhouse Five for a sample of what it is like to return home after combat. These are be the standard by which any book about infantry combat is measured. In future volumes to be published we may see how Salinger does it.

The Catcher in the Rye: Phoebe, Ducks and Nature

When he needed it most, there was no one in Holden's life--not parents nor friends nor teachers--to let him know he was valued and loved. His veneer of rude independence was like a barking dog, keeping people at bay. Buy his little sister Phoebe proved her devotion by standing her ground to keep her brother safe. She had already lost one brother, Allie, to cancer, and wasn't about to let it happen again.

Phoebe represents not only innocence but family, clan or tribe, as do the Central Park ducks that Holden keeps mentioning. People are social creatures. Love is a powerful bonding emotion with profound survival implications for most higher forms of life. If you want to test the concept, just wander between a gorilla and her cubs in spring.

If a writer has to state the obvious it cheats the reader of that glorious "Ah-ha" moment of discovery, or worse,  insult the reader's intelligence. But by not spelling it out the author runs the risk that some readers won't get it. Herein lies some of the artistry in writing--the use of symbol (ducks, fish), metaphor (pond), mood and setting (rain).

In The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger strikes a balance between showing and telling, with full knowledge that some readers will walk away shaking their heads or come up with interpretations that he had not imagined. We tend to find what we are capable of seeing, or need to see.

Nature symbols are used effectively in this, Salinger's first novel. Ducks flying south and the "part frozen, and part not frozen" pond remind us of Holden's uncomfortable sate of transition. He is an adolescent, neither boy nor man. The fish are suggestive of nature, reminding that a natural process ("Mother Nature") is taking place. The seasons come and go. We get sick; we get well; we get hurt; we heal; we live; we die. Are the Central Park ducks in the story to remind us that to survive and thrive we need to stick together? Possibly.

Three times, Holden frets over the Central Park ducks, reflecting Salinger's study of Buddhism, a belief known for empathy. Such hypersensitivity would be expected of Salinger given his years of trauma in military combat.

When one has witnessed extreme suffering over three years--men chopped and blown to pieces, skeletal remains, walking dead and emaciated corpses in a concentration camp (Dachau)--life in all its forms can take on an expanded level of meaning.

What was Salinger's intent by making Holden worry about the welfare of ducks? It could show a wacky, childish aspect of Holden's character, or that he is mentally unbalanced or that he has the makings of a deeply spiritual, compassionate person. Or some combination of all three.

Here are four citations about the ducks:

On page 13, Holden is in a conversation with Mr. Spencer and daydreams about the ducks. "The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck an took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away."

On page 60 Holden asks the first cabby about the ducks."...listen, I said. "You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?"
He turned around and looked at me like I was a madman.
"Whatt're ya tryna do, bud?" he said. "Kid me?"
"No--I was just interested, that's all."
He didn't say anything more, so I didn't either.

On page 81 Holden brings up the ducks again with the second cabby: "Hey, Horwitz," I said. "You ever pass by the lagoon in Central Park? Down by Central Park South?"
"The what?"
"The lagoon. That little lake, like, there where the ducks are. You know."
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Well, you know the ducks that swim around in it? In the spring time and all? Do you happen to know where they go in the wintertime, by any chance?"
"Where who goes?"
"The ducks. Do you know, by any chance? I mean does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or to they fly away by themselves--go south or something?"
Old Horwitz turned all the way around and looked at me. He was a very impatient-type guy. He wasn't a bad guy, though.
"How the hell should I know about a stupid thing like that?"

The conversation goes on for two pages bout the Central Park ducks and fish, then Horwitz ends it with: "Listen," he said. "If you was a fish, Mother Nature'd take care of you, wouldn't she? Right? You don't think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?"
"No, but --"
"You're goddam right they don't," Horwitz said, and drove off like a bat out of hell.

The duck musings and dialog depict Holden, the cab drivers and city people in general as somewhat ignorant of nature, but if satire of urban life were on the agenda it would show up elsewhere. Like the theme of compassion, which crops up in every chapter--Holden fights Stradlater because of his probable abuse of Jane Galagher; he lies to a classmate's mother to make her feel good about her creep of a son; he chats with nuns, gives them money and tries to pay their bill; he lies to tourists about Gary Cooper to give them a story to tell when they return home; he hires a prostitute but he pays her to just talk to him instead of doing anything sexual because she's too young; he removes graffiti so kids won't see it; he wants to make a career of protecting kids from "going over a cliff"; he's even nostalgic over a nature diorama at the museum. Holden is such a softie that even reading about someone getting killed bothers him: The thing is, it drives me crazy if somebody gets killed--especially somebody very smart and entertaining and all--and it's somebody else's fault. Holden eventually feels sympathetic toward Stradlater, who knocked him flat, and even toward Maurice, the elevator operator/pimp who punched him.

Holden's concern over the ducks supports the themes of innocence and compassion and the security, warmth and social connection of family, making Phoebe's prominent climactic role in the story seem entirely natural.

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Maynard vs Salinger: Another Side to the Story

The recent PBS documentary seems to criticize J.D. Salinger for preferring the company of young women. 

These women were of age or were chaperoned, and eagerly sought his companionship. In the documentary Joyce Maynard expressed that she felt she was exploited by Salinger. Her mother even encouraged the relationship, sewing her a "sexy short dress" (her words) to wear to their first meeting. Maynard wrote a kiss-and-tell betrayal memoir and auctioned Salinger's love letters. The evidence suggests she was a highly ambitious, if not vindictive, young writer who expected to profit from a relationship with a well-known older writer. Maynard continues to benefit from her former relationship with Salinger by granting interviews on the topic to promote her writing. You can't Google "Salinger" without her name scrolling to page one.

Maynard portrayed Salinger as a despicable man who preyed on young girls. Her allegations played on public sympathies and cast a shadow over a highly respected writer's reputation. Salinger's silence can be seen not as gentlemanly conduct but a sign of guilt. The shadow has grown over the years as Maynard's repeated version of their relationship went unrebutted by Salinger himself, though not unchallenged by a few third parties. There is always more than one side to a story.

Just as there can be despicable men, there can also be misguided young women who prey on insecure older men and play the victim to avoid scrutiny. Such crimes don't leave many tracks, so the evidence is often circumstantial. You have to do some digging and connect the dots. (More on this below.)

History has shown that the title of Victim doesn't wear well with young women like Monica Lewinsky and Joyce Maynard who of their own volition court relationships with famous older men and cry "foul" when things don't go their way. Joyce received many letters from admiring male fans when her face appeared on that magazine cover; yet it was Salinger she chose to pursue. Who exploited whom?

That Maynard and Lewinsky may have been swept away starry-eyed or encouraged by their mothers may help explain, but not excuse, their behavior. They were past the age of consent and no one twisted their arms.People who at eighteen years of age are adult enough to fight in wars, purchase alcohol and vote, should be  adult  enough to take the consequences of poor relationship choices  without the "poor me" pose.

An eighteen-year-old boy in similar circumstances with a fifty-five year-old Cher Bono would be laughed out of town if he complained, and girls mature more rapidly than boys. Why is Maynard begging for and getting so much sympathy? Welder's goggles are needed against the glare of that double standard. Another glaring example is The Summer of 42, a '70s feature film and novella about a fifteen-year-old boy seduced by a beautiful young war widow played by Jennifer O'Neill. The novel was a best-seller and the film a "blockbuster" success. Harold and Maude is another highly popular mid-'70s film with an older woman opposite a teenage boy. The lack of outrage toward older women having sex with underage boys reflects a societal bias toward young women that Maynard is exploiting.

She talks about an imbalance of power, pointing to their chronological (emotional maturity is addressed below) age difference. Nothing prevented her or her mother from doing that arithmetic when she was eighteen. Maynard put on her sexy dress and made a beeline for Salinger's bed having weighed their age difference against some potential gain from a relationship with a handsome, successful, famous man.

Over the strident objections of her father, eighteen-year-old Oona O'Neill--Salinger's earlier love--married millionaire moviemaker Charlie Chaplin, a man thirty-six years her senior. Despite the odds, it was a marriage that worked. The risks paid off on both sides. Where is the outrage over that imbalanced union?

Maynard wants us to believe that she wrote her tell-all and auctioned Salinger's love letters to pay for her kid's college, and revenge had nothing to do with it. She didn't keep a sex-stained dress; she kept the intimate feelings he poured onto paper on her behalf, let them age like a fine merlot, then sold them to the highest bidder. Whatever you choose to believe, she cashed in on a bet she made when she was eighteen. Some people will respect her for that. Others will not.

Maynard said Salinger summarily dismissed her because she wanted children and he did not. Other sources say she had given out his phone number to agents and editors while marketing her work. Later--as did Martha Gellhorn and James Michener--Maynard adopted children and then handed them off to someone else to raise. There are elements here of half-truth, impulsiveness and ambition. Self-promotion is a messy process and can be embarrassingly self-revealing.

Despite his privileged origins, J.D. Salinger earned his respect the hard way, with talent and hard work and by risking his life with honorable military combat in some of the most difficult battles Americans ever fought. He sidestepped a wartime draft deferment to get into the Army and courageously volunteered to return and hunt Nazis after recovering from a nervous collapse. The blood, sweat and terror of his honorable service surges through his writing like steroids. I wonder if Maynard considered Salinger's record versus hers when she wrote her tell-all.

If anyone in this paring is due sympathy it is Jerry Salinger. Emotional maturity matters in a relationship, and there is ample evidence that he was fragile. He was socially withdrawn. He was born with one testicle, a deformity that made him extremely self-conscious and insecure in intimate settings. An inexperienced woman would be less likely to discover his freakishness and ruin the moment by laughing, or screaming. Salinger spent months in a mental ward recovering from battle fatigue. Could Maynard have sensed his fragility and sought to exploit it? She certainly knew there was no risk of him going public with his embarrassing deformity to defend his predilection toward young women.

On the other hand, where was Maynard on the scale of emotional maturity? She could have been emotionally much younger than her chronological age. Was it then a case of child-on-child mutual exploitation? It's an unanswerable question that must be considered and demands that we not judge too harshly either party.

Some men have a certain gullibility with women. Was not Salinger's demonstrated when Oona married Chaplin without so much as phone call or a "Dear John" letter to the man in uniform she had professed to love? And again later, when Salinger was a Nazi hunter in Army Intelligence and was fooled into marrying a Nazi? Insecure and devious women are drawn to powerful men they sense to be vulnerable, a profile Salinger fits.

Maybe the clincher in this lopsided romantic mystery lies between the covers of The Catcher in the Rye. Maynard wants us to see Salinger as Stradlater, Holden's sexually aggressive roommate. But as we all know, Holden, heroically fought Stradlater to protect Jane. "What a technique that guy [Stradlater] had. ...I damn near puked listening to him. His date kept saying, 'No--please. Please, don't. Please.' But old Stradlater kept snowing her in his Abraham Lincoln, sincere voice, and finally there'd be this silence in the back of the car." Does Holden, J.D.'s doppelganger, sound like a predator or a protector? There are a dozen similar instances in which Salinger, through Holden, displays a fundamentally compassionate nature incongruent with someone prone toward child exploitation.

Maynard, by contrast, has clearly demonstrated exploitation--by giving out Salinger's telephone number, by writing a tell-all memoir and auctioning love letters, by granting interviews and writing articles about their relationship to gain publicity and by playing on public sympathies toward young women to justify her exploitation of a socially withdrawn aging writer. However she tries to camouflage it, Maynard's behavior is like something from the pages of Seventeen, a magazine that to this day features revenge as a tonic for the fragile egos of jilted teenage girls.

Maynard accuses Salinger of being "seductive with words and ideas" yet her own words betray her own intent to manipulate and play to readers' sympathies. In her New York Times Sunday Magazine article, September, 2013, "Was Salinger Too Pure for This World?" she writes:  "...how can a woman say she is fully in charge of her body and her destiny, and then call herself a victim when, having given a man her heart of her own volition, he crushes it?" [emphasis added] So, if a girl ends a relationship she's just moving on, but if a guy does it it's "crushing" a "poor girl's heart." Maynard's gender bias and pandering for sympathy ripples throughout her article.  She accuses, interprets and judges, lulling the unwary reader into nodding in agreement.

Compare Joyce Maynard with the tragic case of Natalie Wood, a true example of childhood exploitation. At age sixteen while filming Rebel Without a Cause, she carried on  concurrent affairs with fellow actor Dennis Hopper and the film's director, Nicholas Ray. Hopper and Ray should have been dragged before a judge and Natalie's parents cited for neglect. Her  tortured life and tragic death can be attributed to childhood exploitation, but for Maynard to cast J.D. Salinger in a similar category with Hopper and Ray is unjust and vicious.

Maynard may have been too emotionally immature at age eighteen to have a relationship with Salinger or anyone else, and maybe it took a few months for him to figure that out. But Salinger should not be scapegoated for the inadequacies of her parents.

J.D. Salinger is gone. We will never know his side of it, but I am inclined to be wary of someone who would publicly disparage a former lover she knew could not or would not stand up for himself, and then, with all the sympathy of a pit viper for a field mouse, auction his love letters without a word of apology. At a minimum, we know there is a lot more to the story than Maynard let on.  And the more she tries to justify her actions, the worse she looks.

Women don't make themselves strong by playing victim. The young Joyce Maynard rolled the relationship dice and came up snake-eyes. We've all done that, and most of us move on and lick our wounds in silence. Choices have consequences.

Victim or viper, Maynard will go down in history as a whiner unless she writes something truly worthy of notice. She has a lot going for her; I hope she does. It takes courage to admit mistakes. What it comes down to is whether she wants to be known as a writer or as a girl dumped by a famous writer a half-century ago.

#   #   #

Codependent Holden Caulfield

A classic codependent is someone so emotionally entwined with an addict that she cannot extract herself from the chaos of his drug-induced lifestyle. His addictive erratic behavior harms not only himself, but her and others indirectly. Another type of codependent is someone whose life spins out of control because they are drawn irresistibly to the neediness of others, as seems to be the case with The Catcher in the Rye 's Holden Caulfield.

A close reading reveals ten instances in which Holden goes out on a limb for someone. The first is when he takes a swing at his prep school roommate, Stradlater, because he sees him as a sexual predator to Jane Gallagher, a vulnerable girl whom he knows well. Here are Holden's thoughts after he has been knocked flat and had his nose bloodied by the large and stronger athlete: "I just kept laying there on Ely's bed, thinking about Jane and all. It just drove me stark staring mad when I thought about her and Stradlater parked somewhere in that fat-assed Ed Banky's car. Every time I thought about it, I felt like jumping out the window. The thing is, you didn't know Stradlater. I knew him. Most guys at Pency just talked about having sexual intercourse with girls all the time--like Ackley, for instance-- but old Stradlater really did it. I was personally acquainted with at least two girls he gave the time to. That's the truth. ... I kept laying there in the dark anyway, though, trying not to think about old Jane and Stradlater in that goddam Ed Banky's car. But it was almost impossible. The trouble was, I knew that guy Stradlater's technique. ...I damn near puked listening to him. His date kept saying, 'No--please. Please, don't. Please.' But old Stradlater kept snowing her in his Abraham Lincoln, sincere voice, and finally there'd be this silence in the back of the car." 

In the next instance, Holden lies consolingly to Mr. Spencer so this aging History teacher will not feel bad about flunking him: "I told him I was a real Moron, and all that stuff. I told him how I would have done exactly the same thing if I'd been in his place, and how most people didn't appreciate how tough it is being a teacher. That kind of stuff. The old bull. ...'Look, sir. Don't worry about me,' I said. 'I mean it. I'll be all right. I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?'
'I don't know boy. I don't know.'
I hate it when somebody answers that way. 'Sure. Sure, they do,' I said. 'I mean it, sir. Please don't worry about me.'"

Next, on a night train to the City Holden runs into to classmate Ernest Morrow's mother and concocts an elaborate lie about Ernest's friends wanting him to run for Class President. Holden's intent is to make her feel better about her horse's ass of a son: "'Ernest's father and I sometimes worry about him," she said. ..."He's a very sensitive boy. He's never really been a terribly good mixer with other boys. ...'
Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddam toilet seat.
I gave her a good look. She didn't look like any dope to me. She looked like she might have a pretty damn good idea what a bastard  she was the mother of. ...Mothers are all slightly insane. The thing is though, I liked old Morrow's mother. She was all right.
...'Old Ernie,' I said. 'He's one of the most popular boys at Pency. Did you know that?'
'No, I didn't.'
...I had her glued to her seat. You take somebody's mother, all they want to hear about is what a hot-shot their son is.
...'Did he tell you about the elections?" I asked her. 'The class elections?'
She shook her head. I had her in a trance , like. I really did.
'Well, a bunch of us wanted Ernie to be president of the class. I mean, he was the unanimous choice.'"

Holden next tells about playing checkers with Jane Gallagher when she became upset over a confrontation with her stepfather, and Holden overreacted. He describes his actions as almost involuntary: "Then all of a sudden, this tear plopped down on the checkerboard. On one of the red squares--boy, I can still see it. She just rubbed it into the board with her finger. I don't know why, but it bothered hell out of me. So what I did was, I went over and made her move over on the glider so that I could sit down next to her--I practically sat down in her lap, as a matter of fact. Then she really started to cry, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over--anywhere--her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows and all, her ears--her whole face except her mouth and all. She sort of wouldn't let me get to her mouth. Anyway, it was the closest we ever got to necking."

In a nightclub later Holden tells a group of tourist women from Seattle that they just missed Gary Cooper. It's a lie he tells so they will have something interesting to report back home. Holden even worries about the welfare of animals, repeatedly expressing concern over how the ducks in Central Park get by during winter. Holden offers some nuns an over-sized donation, which they gracefully turn down. He even changes his mind about having sex with the prostitute, Sunny, whom he sees as too young. They talk instead, even though she had taken off her dress.

The ninth example of Holden's codependent drive to help and protect others is when he confesses to his younger sister Phoebe what he wants to do with his life--to be a "Catcher in the Rye" and protect children from going over an imaginary cliff. Near the end of the book, Holden sits in the rain in his red "people-hunting" cap while he watches Phoebe ride the carousel. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is playing in the background. The depth of his emotion shows how strongly he feels about seeing her safe and happy: "My hunting hat gave me quite a lot of protection, in a way, but I got soaked, anyway. I didn't care though. I felt so happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn  happy, if you want to know the truth. ...It was just that she looked so nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all."

It could be said that Holden is just a caring, kind person and these are all just examples of his compassionate nature. But if that were so, it wouldn't have put him in a mental hospital.

On the contrary, a case can be made that Holden became  hypersensitized by the death from leukemia of his little brother, Ailee. The suicide of Holden's classmate James Castle deepened that sensitivity. Holden's unresolved grief sabotages his life, rendering him unable to function normally. He is highly intelligent, but he can't concentrate and repeatedly flunks out  or drops out of school. Everywhere he turns he sees something wrong, making him anxious, confused, lonely. He cries and has feelings of bleeding from the gut. To make sense of his chaotic state of mind, he overreacts to everyday events, like meeting Earnest Morrow's mother on the train and concocting that elaborate lie.

Unresolved grief can be complicated and debilitating as we obsess over our relationship with the loved one who  died. Guilt can arise over something we said or did or failed to apologize for to someone whose dearness we may never have acknowledged.

When we are emotionally intimate with someone over a period of years the shared experiences and feelings become a part of our identity, anchoring us in the swirl of life. The sudden loss of these identity reference points can shake us to our knees, and it can take a long time to recover--years. Codependency can be a coping mechanism whereby we mimic with strangers a ritual cascade of apologies for our imagined inadequacies toward the person we lost. On the outside we seem normal, but inside our skin we writhe in pain from an invisible unnamed source.

Compassion may be the highest human value, but some people get hooked on it like a drug. Codependency is the clinician's label for being too human, so attuned to others' pain that we spin out of orbit as our own needs go unattended.

The measure of Holden's emotional investment in Ailee and James Castle is the level of chaos in his life that surfaced in the wake of their passing. Like a junkie, Holden craved the good feelings that came when he did something that relieved or prevented suffering. It gave him a sense of control over his chaotic life and made his bad feelings go away for a while. But it was never enough. And we are left wondering whether Holden will spend the rest of his life playing God and trying to fix the world instead of taking care of himself.

#   #   #

The Effect of Salinger's Combat Experience on His Writing

In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield's unrealistic concern for "little kids" resonates with the classic layman's definition of a codependent personality--someone whose life is spinning out of control out of concern for someone with a substance abuse problem.* Holden's codependency is addressed in a separate posting, but it is worth noting here that Holden, as a doppelganger for Salinger, can reflect the author's emotional state. Codependency, the compulsion to rescue others, can be the result of having seen so many men shot, killed, wounded and maimed and the Dachau concentration camp's emaciated bodies among the smell of burning flesh.

Salinger's war experience may account for the rambling structure and overall content of The Catcher in the Rye, as the book was worked on during endless months of combat overseas. Thoughts and memories of home gave the mind relief from the blood, chaos and gore and had a lot to do with Salinger's exquisite loving attention to these details of setting and character. I suspect it kept him from going mad sooner than he did.

He was once seen typing away under a desk while his unit was under fire. Everyone else had taken cover.

It has been widely expressed that Salinger was suffering from PTSD caused by combat trauma. It is logical that an extreme need to protect the innocent could arise from witnessing over a period of years the massive destruction of humanity. Holden could represent an expression of this distorted hyper-sensitivity for the welfare of the innocent. Holden could have been a healthy way to channel and defuse overwhelming emotions, expressing a self-destructive compulsion by creating a character to act out and resolve it.

*[Wikipedia]"Codependency is defined as a psychological condition or a relationship in which a person is controlled or manipulated by another who is affected with a pathological condition (typically narcissism or drug addiction); and in broader terms, it refers to the dependence on the needs of, or control of, another.[1] It also often involves placing a lower priority on one's own needs, while being excessively preoccupied with the needs of others.[2] Codependency can occur in any type of relationship, including family, work, friendship, and also romantic, peer or community relationships.[2] Codependency may also be characterized by denial, low self-esteem, excessive compliance, or control patterns.[2] Narcissists are considered to be natural magnets for the codependent."I also STRONGLY suspect that a major factor in the rambling structure and overall content of CiTR is that it was largely written while overseas during wartime. This had a lot to do with Salinger's exquisite loving attention to the details of setting and character. That he cherished his memories of home is clearly evident in the richness of this content.

Schoolteacher Archetypes in The Catcher in the Rye

The teachers we remember are the ones who were really good and really bad. With Mr. Spencer and Mr. Antolini, Salinger delivers archetypes of these two extremes.

Salinger brands Mr. Spencer into our memory: [Holden's visiting Spencer in his apartment. He's been summoned there by Spencer, his history teacher, after Spencer learned Holden was being expelled for poor academic performance. Spencer reads to Holden from one of his exams.]

"Dear Mr. Spencer. That is all I know about the Egyptians. I can’t seem to get very interested in them although your lectures are very interesting. It is all right with me if you flunk me though as I am flunking everything else except English anyway. Respectfully yours, Holden Caulfield."

He put my goddam paper down then and looked at me like he’d just beaten hell out of me in ping-pong or something. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for reading me that crap out loud. I wouldn’t’ve read it out loud to him if he’d written it—I really wouldn’t. In the first place, I’d only written that damn note so that he wouldn’t feel too bad about flunking me.

“Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?” he said.

“No, sir! I certainly don’t,’ I said. I wished to hell he’d stop calling me “boy” all the time. 

...

"What would you have done in my place?" he said. "Tell the truth, boy."

Well, you could see he really felt pretty lousy about flunking me. So I shot the bull for a while. I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff. I told him how I would've done exactly the same thing if I'd been in his place, and how most people didn't appreciate how tough it is being a teacher. That kind of stuff. The old bull.

The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park Slouth. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondererd if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.

Holden has zoned out. Spencer is clueless about Holden's predicament, the crises he's going through. And all the teacher can think about is covering his ass and soothing his guilt at Holden's expense. He's kicking the boy while he's down instead of trying to understand. Some would call it tough love. I call it stupidity and incompetence.

Antolini, on the other hand, expresses empathy and offers Holden some very powerful advice.

A: "I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what kind...Are you listening to me?" [Remember, James Castle "fell" out of a window and Antolini picked up the body.]
..."It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. ...Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer." 
..."This fall I think you're riding for--it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who,at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave up before they even got started."
..."I don't want to scare you," he said, "but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause."
...'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.'"
..."you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them--if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."
..."educated and scholarly men, if they'r brilliant and creative to begin with--which, unfortunately, is rarely the case--tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end."
..."Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly." [Salinger explored and tried on a number of the world's religions and philosophies, including Yoga, Christian Science, Edgar Cayce and Scientology.]

One teacher kicks the boy while he's down; another tries to understand and help him. As archetypes, Spencer and Antolini have something to teach us. We've all seen them. Salinger's held up the mirror. Let's hope some teachers recognize their reflection.

It's clear the teacher wants to help Holden and gives him some inspiring advice, but if it's tainted by some animal lust to exploit the boy in a hyper-vulnerable state, then it's entirely different. But there's no compelling evidence of that. Stroking or patting Holden’s head is not a molestation, but it could have been an exploration for something further. Even today, a woman can stroke a boy's hair and people think she's being motherly. But let a man breathe on a child and it's interpreted differently.

It was taken that way by Holden, confusing and alarming him, but not traumatizing or Holden would not have kept the Stekel quote.

Here's  the text:
“I woke up all of a sudden. I don’t know what time it was or anything, but I woke up. I felt something on my head, some guy’s hand. Boy, it really scared hell out of me. What it was, it was Mr. Antolini’s hand. …he was sitting on the floor right next to the couch, in the dark and all, and he was sort of petting me or patting me on the goddam head. Boy, I’ll bet I jumped about a thousand feet.
‘What the hellya doing?’ I said.
‘Nothing! I’m simply sitting here, admiring—‘
‘What’re ya doing, anyway?’ I said over again. I didn’t know what the hell to say—I mean I was embarrassed as hell.
‘How ‘bout keeping your voice down? ‘m simply sitting here—‘
‘I have to go, anyway,” I said—boy, was I nervous! I started putting on my damn pants in the dark. I could hardly get them on I was so damn nervous. I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they’re always being pervert when I’m around.’”

Holden misjudges Antolini and runs away from the only person who has so far understood his crisis and is compassionate enough to try and help.

ORDINARY PEOPLE and THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

Scent of a Woman and Dead Poet Society are highly successful coming-of-age stories about prep school boys wrestling with how to become a man. The Summer of '42 covers the same topic with different characters and settings. These are all successful films, but none as endearing and enduring as The Catcher in the Rye and Ordinary People, both based on novels about a sixteen-year-old boy in crisis from witnessing the death of their brothers. The stories closely parallel each other, the main distinction that CITR is urban and OP takes place in the suburbs. Why does one sell millions more? Why did Ordinary People get made into an award winning feature film while The Catcher in the Rye has been left at the Hollywood alter for half a century?

The protagonists in The Catcher in the Rye and Ordinary People are the same age and have severe behavior problems and trouble at school. Both ended up in the care of a mental health professional. Conrad attempted suicide whereas Holden only contemplated it. Both boys were from intact upper middle class families. Both were well above average in intelligence. Neither felt they could talk to their parents about their problem and both sought sympathy and understanding outside family, including the company of female peer companions and emphasize the redemptive power of love.

Conrad is an updated suburban version of Holden.

OP is in some ways a more sophisticated and more complete treatment of the trials of a troubled teenage transition. It is a 360-degree view of Conrad that includes his family and extended family, his school friends, a fellow inmate from the mental hospital, his swim coach and his therapist. Salinger on the other hand, tortures us with three suffocating days inside the mind of the rude, confused, conflicted, sarcastic, arrogant and ultimately compassionate Holden, a torture to which many of us willingly and gratefully submit but are grateful to escape at the story's conclusion.

Some of us enjoy the intimacy of that ride. How many of us could withstand public scrutiny of our innermost thoughts (fears, anxieties, prejudices, sexual urges, the works) as Salinger so effectively accomplished with Holden? Of course much of it isn't going to be pretty; we self-censor our dark and whiny thoughts. In OP Conrad's troubled thoughts are hidden and his therapist has to probe them out. But because we're in Holden's head we can't avoid them. CATCHER is satisfying because it does in first-person what third-person cannot--gives us an uncensored version of the protagonist. Moment by moment.

OP is a more reserved presentation of Jarrett but satisfies because it does strike out in all directions, showing how Conrad's problems affect the lives of those around him and how these people are affecting him, good and bad. The story feels fuller, more complete.

So, OP is a more complete story but CATCHER sells millions more. Can the writing be that much better? Do so many more people care about the East Coast urban life than life in the Midwestern suburbs?

Or is it because academia is so taken with CATCHER? Teachers know that short books appeal to grade schoolers. There's a greater chance they'll actually read them instead of swallowing the Cliff Notes digest.

Or could it be that the award-winning movie of OP has stolen the book's thunder? "Why buy the book if you can see the film," potential readers say? No film version of CATCHER has been made nor will there be if Salinger's wishes are honored.

If I were a teacher I would assign CATCHER and give extra credit for watching the film version of OP and comparing them. More credit if Stand by Me, The Summer of '42, and Scent of a Woman are included.

Understanding The Catcher in the Rye

What we take away from a book is a function of who we are, the sum of our life experiences--our world view. After two readings thirty years apart and a great deal of study and analysis, here are my insights.

The teenage years are when we reject our parents and look for answers outside the family/extended family circle of comfort and trust. They've lied to us about Santa Claus and the Boogey Man; what else have they been lying about? We've begun noticing their flaws and started looking elsewhere for answers. We want to be prepared for life, for making our own decisions. The hypocrisy (phoniness) within our formerly godlike inner circle of family has discredited them. Who can we trust? Where are the answers? And so today we pick up books like Dianetics and Atlas Shrugged and Hunger Games.

What I've not seen replicated elsewhere in literature is the concentrated depth and breadth of The Catcher in the Rye's socio-cultural footprint. Through the protagonist/narrator's interactions with a host of minor characters we are treated to slice after relentless slice of the world of an upper middle-class New York City teenager's life during the early 1950s.

Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and Homer's The Odyssey do something similar, but they're not as intense because they cover much more real estate. Catcher is only 220 pages. Instead of the usual linear plot line, all three of these books treat us to the adventures of a journey. It's the trip that's important, not the destination or goal.

Salinger throws us scene after scene of Holden's urban life in a near kaleidoscopic array of snapshots--current and former teachers, current and former classmates, his sister, flashbacks to his brothers and parents, cab drivers, girlfriends and former girlfriends, a teenage prostitute, doormen, chance meetings with tourists, nuns and some kids at the museum. With each engagement we learn something about Holden and we learn something about his urban life. We go to movies, a play, the park, the museum and a carnival. We ride a bus, a train, then a series of cabs with him. And we end up in a "rest home" with him.

Due to the limitations of first-person point of view there's a sparseness of literary tools such as simile, metaphor, lyricism, etc., but the reader is forced to buy into the character so quickly that literary trimmings don't matter. Were Scott Fitzgerald the author, we would be treated to brilliant descriptions of the glittering city lights and rhythms of the street. But we are in Holden's head, and he is in too much of a panic to notice much beyond his immediate crisis. 

Holden's the kind of guy that, if you met him on a bus you'd wonder what's wrong with him. Some people would move away, but I'd sit next to him and engage him in conversation. I would be curious what's wrong.

In rereading the book last fall I discovered that Holden seemed to be suffering from PTSD stemming from the death of his brother and from witnessing the suicide of a schoolmate, James Castle, who bailed out of an upstairs dorm window wearing the sweater Holden loaned him. I began noticing the symptoms of PTSD: depression, poor concentration, attention deficit, crying, rage, lack of motivation, self-isolation, sleeplessness, hyper-vigilance, etc. I'm intimately familiar with these symptoms because my own childhood trauma. I live with that same feeling Holden has of needing to protect children. 

To me Catcher is less about teenaged coming-of-age angst and more about a kid struggling against the downward spiral of mental illness. Without professional help he was doomed to submerge, and did.

Holden was barely "holdin' on."

There's a lot of cultural and psychological meat in there: a) how boys interact with each other when living in close quarters, b) particularly when two have or are dating the same girl and one feels protective of her (Jane Gallagher), c) how a sensitive boy might behave because of a deep emotional wound (e.g., the trauma of losing a younger brother and from witnessing the suicide of a classmate and d) how that boy might become neurotically protective toward his younger sister and toward children in general because of c).

Most teenagers aren't mature enough to comprehend the psychological ramifications of what I've just described unless they've been prepared for it by a mature adult who does comprehend. And there are many adults who couldn't.

Indeed, most adults have psychological defenses that don't allow even them to comprehend what I've just described. It is either too abstract, too complicated or too scary. I suspect this is the main reason the book is so controversial. Most people don't get it because they can't afford to, unless someone points the way or they experience PTSD first-hand.

Until you've been stung by a bee, "bee sting" is an abstract notion.

A greater sense of Holden Caufield through JD Salinger can be found in the film Finding Forester, which is purported to be based on Salinger's life. The film leads us to conclude that Forster's reclusiveness is rooted in the trauma of losing his beloved brother in a car crash.

In World War II, Salinger participated in tne Normandy Landing and Battle of the Bulge and other combat where his fellow troops were decimiated. He was among the first Allied forces to visit a German concentration camp. He was hospitalized for "battle fatigue." He understood the long term effects of trauma.

In a 1953 interview with a high-school newspaper, Salinger said that the novel was "sort of" autobiographical: "My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book ...it was a great relief telling people about it."

When writing the book, Salinger wouldn't have had a clue about PTSD, as it wasn't even in the diagnostic manual (DSM) for psychologists until decades later. He was just writing what he felt, blasting his feelings onto paper. 

Many people see Salinger as a sort of literary genius because he sold 70 million copies of one book. I'm not saying he wasn't talented and educated; he had plenty of both going for him. I'm saying he leveraged his talent on top of some inner need to get this desperate crisis part of his life onto paper and out of his head.

A great segment of the literary world has understandably attributed Holden's PTSD symptoms to teenage angst, but this is a gross oversimplification. It's his masterfully presented array of symptoms that's largely responsible for the success of the book. It's too complicated or too sensitive for English teachers to talk about mental illness; so they focus on the simple and more obvious interpretation. These teachers are missing a phenomenal opportunity to reach kids who are in crisis or know someone who is.

Bearing in mind that we're talking about a fictional character,  no one can actually diagnose Holden, but I have plenty of experience with the condition. I can spot symptoms in an instant. For example, a hyper-vigilant person likes to sit where he can see the door and with his back to a wall. He/she glances around constantly instead of holding a steady gaze while in conversation. I went through the book and itemized instances of the symptoms. Give it a shot and see if you don't reach a similar conclusion.

By wanting to save others Holden was saving himself and did so, with Phoebe's help. I see the the carousel is a metaphor for the connectedness of humanity. We see ourselves in others.

He was traumatized by the death of his brother Allie, sensitizing him to the reality of unjust death and suffering. It was personal, not just something he read about or saw in a movie.

In it's worst form PTSD originates not from a single event but from repeated trauma taking place over a period of time, months and years, as in military combat. There is a compounding effect. It can drive people crazy, make them want to commit suicide. And they sometimes do. Holden reacted voilently, breaking every window in the garage and breaking his hand in the process.

Holden had plenty of time to anticipate his beloved Allie's demise because it took place over a period of months during which he watched him deteriorate as the cancer worked its grotesque way through Allie's body. And the trauma built up in compounded layers.

Holden was in this highly sensitized state when James Castle threw himself out a dorm window, and the shock of it was too much, putting Holden into an emotional tailspin.

Innocent children were dying and it upset him, but he wasn't obsessed over protecting children's innocence; he didn't know what was wrong. He was just groping for answers, trying to regain control over his emotions, his life. 

He was lonely, depressed, sick and run-down. He had crying spells. He didn't know why and no one had any answers. He didn't understand why he couldn't concentrate on his studies and be motivated to do schoolwork. He was so distracted he even left the fencing gear on the train. He was so hyper-sensitive he exploded at the sexually experienced Stradlater over a girl they had both dated.

Holden felt lost and out of control, and his love of Phoebe and hers for him redeemed him, pulling him back from the potential disaster of running away and got him home where he would be safe.

Labels like "teenage angst" and "PTSD" can be dismissive and do not relieve readers from the duty to probe for meaning. Whatever the cause, Holden is a highly sensitive boy who's suffering and searching for relief.

No matter how hard an author tries to imbue his or her work with what is to the author a very important and obvious message about the human condition, he or she may fail simply because a reader lacks the capacity to comprehend it or misconstrues the story's basic truths. The Grapes of Wrath, for instance, was (and still is) attacked by wealthy corporate agricultural interests in California who refuse to accept it. I've heard one actually say that Steinbeck exaggerated the plight of the workers in order to sell books. It's human nature to believe what you need to believe, despite countervailing evidence.

CITR obviously meant something unusual to those two young men who had copies of the book when one killed John Lennon and the other shot President Reagan. Perhaps this meant they were looking for answers. Their value systems were running amok, and Holden's angst resonated with their sense of being lost and unable to cope with the phoniness of life.

Atlas Shrugged give a simple solution to all decisions, do only what is in your self interest. But that's in direct conflict what we are taught by most religions in the Judeo-Christian world, to do unto others as you would have done unto you and love thy neighbor as thyself. People who haven't yet learned to reconcile self interest with the common good can be thrown into mental conflict and feel angst. Maybe this is why some people don't like Holden/CITR; it doesn't offer answers. It just describes how it feels to be lost. It reminds them too much of themselves.

All that said, if you can enjoy Holden just as he is, without analyzing "every grey hair" (as someone put it) then by all means do so. But in case you want to go deeper, well here it is.

Update-The John Green Videos on Youtube:

Green is good, but he tends to regurgitate academia. Go straight to the book and pay attention to how it speaks to you. Wait a few years, then reread it. You'll be amazed at how the book seems to change. But it will be you that changes.

I don't agree, as Green alleges, that Holden was resisting adulthood. He embraced it. He did adult things, drinking and going to nightclubs and stage performances. He seems proud that he has a streak of grey hair and can pass for an adult. Seeking the company of a prostitute is adult behavior. He sought out adult company and conversation on the train and at the nightclub and with the nuns. He joked with kids at the museum. He was comfortable and confident with both children and adults. 

Green misinterprets Holden's comment at the museum that some things should  never change. Holden was talking about that deja vu feeling you get when you go to some familiar place after being away, like when you go away to college and return to the drive-in where you used to cruise. Or you visit the neighborhood you grew up in after moving away.

The diorama with the bare breasted squaw was a landmark for Holden as it is many New Yorkers to this day. It's like in Breakfast at Tiffany's when Holly Golightly goes to hang out in front of Tiffany's in the wee hours of the morning to cure "the mean reds." It was a place that made her feel secure.

We all have our favorite landmarks. That's what Holden was getting at. And yet Green cites it as evidence that Holden was resisting change, resisting maturity. It is a matter of interpretation.

Holden wanted to run away to a cabin in the woods. That' where Salinger lived, and died. Phoebe pulled him back from making what could have been a bad mistake with a lifetime of consequences. That's redemption, an adult concept.

Misjudging Mr. Antolini (from The Catcher in the Rye)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R66eQL..."

I just watched a John Green video (see link above) interpreting The Catcher in the Rye. It has some pretty good analysis. A little on the frenetic side, but decent overall given how much is wedged into the narrow timeframe.

But I've got an issue with describing the apartment scene with Mr. Antolini as a sexual come-on. It's irritating to think that a man can't pat a kid on the head without having it blown out of proportion. A woman can stroke a boy's hair and it's fine. But let a man breathe on a kid and the world comes down on him. That's rotten. Men care about children, and they can be just as loving and nurturing as a woman. More than many that I've seen, short of breast feeding, and plenty of women don't breastfeed.

I think Holden's reaction was way over the top. We know how unreliable he is.

In that scene, Holden pushed away the only person who had recognized his panic, who expressed empathy and concern and gave him great advice and a place to crash.

Remember, it was Antolini who was there when James Castle committed suicide at another prep school Holden attended before Pencey. Antolini covered the bloody corpse with his coat and carried it away, proof that he was a compassionate man. Patting Holden on the head is hardly a gay pass when he knew Holden as well as he did. Like a doofus, Holden overreacts and leaves.

What I'm saying to the guy who made the video is: don't blame Antolini for Holden's touchiness.

Nevertheless, Holden took it the way he did and rejected a valid and valuable adult source of solace and consolation, not to mention world class advice. There's a lesson in this: Sometimes we misinterpret good intentions out of mistrust and are the worse for it.

The teenage years are when we begin questioning or rejecting our parents' world view and look for answers outside the family and extended family circle of comfort and trust. They've lied to us about Santa Claus and the Boogey Man; what else have they been lying about? We've begun noticing their flaws and started looking elsewhere for answers. We want to be prepared for life, for making our own decisions. The hypocrisy (phoniness) within our formerly godlike inner circle of family has discredited them. Who can we trust? Where are the answers?

And so we pick up books like Lord of the Flies, Dianetics,  Atlas Shrugged and Hunger Games.

This teenage crisis period of searching is brilliantly rendered by Salinger in the character of Holden Caulfield.

Flash forward in the novel to where Holden is in the rest home, reflecting on Antolini's quote of Wilhelm Stekel, The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. Holden kept Antolini's handwritten quote.  It's doubtful that he would have kept it if he hadn't resolved his concerns about Antolini.

So what if someone is gay? That doesn't mean he/she's a pedophile or that you can't trust what he/she says. Crapolla! Holden would say.  One of my best teachers was overtly effeminate and he never made a pass at anyone that I'm aware of.

I like to think that Salinger would be a lot like Mr. Antolini.

Who Taught Salinger to Write?

It's debatable the degree to which anyone can actually be taught to write, but according to one source Salinger blossomed while taking Whit Burnett's writing class at Columbia University. Publicly, Salinger has given credit to The New Yorker for teaching him to write by virtue of their mountains of rejections. But someone had to teach him the fundamentals, and I maintain that was Whit Burnett. Following is a quote from Fiction Writer's Handbook, by Hallie and Whit Burnett.

"...there was one dark-eyed, thoughtful young man who sat through one semester of a class in writing without taking noes, seemingly not listening, looking out the window. A week or so before the semester ended, he suddenly came to life. He began to write. Several stories seemed to come from his typewriter at once, and most of these were published. That young man was J.D. Salinger, apparently indulging in purposeful reverie,'..."

Like all of us, J.D. Salinger had to start somewhere. He sat in a classroom, as we all have.  He paid attention even if it didn't look that way. He put his pants on one leg at a time, as we all do. (But his shoes will be hard to fill.)

Hallie and Whit Burnetts' little guidebook for fiction writers is still in print:  http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Writers-Handbook-Hallie-Burnett/dp/0062731696/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1365019314&sr=8-2&keywords=fiction+writers+handbook

My copy, purchased in 1989,  is falling apart from age and use. I recommend it, as did Norman Mailer. Here's an excerpt from his Preface:

"Fiction Writer's Handbook is wise and comprehensive and surprisingly full of touches of lore. It hints of one's craft. A beginner at writing can sleep with this book. There is enthusiasm in the pages. Its author, after all, has lived with the idea of writing for the larger part of her life, and that is probably a disappearing culture. Not many can be left in that small world of a few writers and teachers and editors who believed there were not many vocations more honored than writing, nor many occupations more interesting than to encourage the talent of a young writer. 
...a lot of us had the luck to meet and be helped by that small group of editors and writers and teachers who also thought it was important to be a writer. ...One of that group was a very modest man who had a beautiful white goatee by the time I met him. I was still eighteen and wholly embarrassed by my inability to speak a single interesting word to him, and he was shy and embarrassed by his inability to draw me out. We had lunch together...the man with whom I was at lunch was a legend. And his magazine, Story, was its own legend, and young writers in the late thirties and the years of the Second World War used to dream of appearing in its pages... The man's name, of course, is Whit Burnett..."

Everyone who writes can close his/er eyes and see a crowd of people who inspired them or helped in an important way to acquire the tools to write well. Some of these are dead writers and schoolteachers. Some are still with us, published writers, writing group peers, teachers, friends.

You know you appreciate them. Remind them now and then. Let them bask in the glow of your well-deserved gratitude.

First Thoughts About Blogging Salinger

 I became a slow and reluctant fan of JD Salinger after first reading The Catcher in the Rye in college, 1964. I was intrigued by the writing but not the spoiled intellectual Holden. I read Franny and Zooey and Nine Stories and still nothing really zinged but the writing quality. Then fifty years later I reread Catcher and was impressed by the novel's concentrated depth and emotional punch. Zing! It was clear Salinger and I had something in common other than PTSD in how to view the world.

I have engaged extensively in discussions on Salinger's life and publications at Goodreads.com. Some of them will be posted here along with new insights and questions. I want to know more, and will make available what I learn.

I hope you do the same. Feel free to comment. Share your thoughts. What have you learned? What do you want to know? Perhaps together we can discover some useful knowledge about writing. And about life.

What I post here will sometimes seem like I am defending JD Salinger, but my main interest is to understand him and through him his writing. Salinger would not like that, for he stated more than once that what matters is what is on the page and only that. I agree, but not entirely. Insights about someone's work are contaminated by the life experience of each reader and cause confusion Knowing something about the author can prevent some of this.

People who suffer from traumatic nervous illness often are permanently impaired. I say this as one who has PTSD from years of childhood trauma that included torture and beatings in addition to serial abandonment and severe neglect. I have had years of therapy and medication. For me to be functioning at all in society is a small miracle. I raised two daughters in a dysfunctional marriage, sticking with it for nearly twenty years before the plug was pulled on me. I wasn't a rotten father, but I fell short of my own ideals due to a late life nervous breakdown. Both girls, young women now, are doing well in life despite my shortcomings and we have good relationships. 

The personal experience provided here is part of my credentials to speak on the subject of PTSD. I am not professionally trained but I know about the subject from having lived it nearly all my life and from having read books, gone to workshops and through informed observation of those I know and have known personally who were traumatized, some in my presence.

Let us be clear; there is trauma and there is TRAUMA. The simplest and easiest to treat form of PTSD arises from a single event. The most difficult form to treat is serial trauma, like in combat, month after month, year after year. The consequences of that are impossible to erase, but they can be mitigated to varying degrees depending on the quality and length of treatment.

I do not know how much counseling Salinger had after the war, but he would have found it frustratingly difficult to find a therapist who could keep up with him intellectually. How does one trust even a therapist with the horrors? Because once they are "out there" they can hurt again, re-traumatizing the patient. Salinger's writing may have indeed been his therapy. It has been extremely effective for me, but having a capable therapist was invaluable as well.

Salinger had a limited relationship with his kids. He provided well for them. He was physically on the premises even if he locked himself away for long periods. He was an imperfect father, but he didn't abandon them entirely.

People will fault Salinger for breaking off his relationship with Joyce Maynard over whether to have more children. Couples often break up over children. Better that than to bring an unwanted child into the world. To this I can attest from having lived in an orphanage with dozens of examples.

Having children is an issue that should be discussed early in a relationship. I don't fault him for stepping up and making that difficult decision. He probably informed her the very minute he made it, which is admirable. It allowed her to get on with her life sooner, despite the pain she seems to continue to struggle with, judging from her interviews and writings. My sympathies to her and to anyone negatively affected by secondhand PTSD.

It is important to be mindful that people like JD Salinger experience the traumatic consequences of going to war so that others don't have to and to protect and preserve the way of life we value highly. There are long term consequences of this heroism, to the combatant and to those around them.