Revisiting J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

My daughter is reading The Catcher in the Rye in 10th grade English this year, so I thought I’d pick it up again— the years have dulled my memory, and I wanted to revisit this classic, a book which some have labeled the first ever Young Adult novel.

Published in 1951, the troubled adolescent voice of Holden Caulfield still rings true all these years later. Sure, the teenage vernacular has changed and changed again in the intervening years, but Holden still has a resoundingly authentic voice that surely must be one of the secrets to the novel’s seemingly eternal relevance and longevity.

In spite of his impatience and immaturity, it’s Holden’s interactions with people—Ackley, Spencer, the nuns at the lunch counter, old Sally, even Mr. Antolini, that lend his character further depth and humanity. But it is his relationship with his little sister Phoebe that is so real and so touching that I don’t think the novel would have been nearly so powerful without her. The image of her dragging a suitcase to the steps of the Natural History Museum, ready to follow her brother on his western adventure, is a poignant scene that certainly must count as the emotional cornerstone of the book.

Why has The Catcher in the Rye become the cultural icon that it is today? Consider the quote below, in which Holden describes the familiar but unchanging nature of the displays in the Natural History Museum:

The best thing [...] in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you’d be so much older or anything. It wouldn’t be that exactly. You’d just be different, that’s all. pp157-158

Rereading this novel all these years later, it strikes me that The Catcher in the Rye is as totemic as the exhibits in the museum. It is ageless. It is universal. The appreciation and interpretation of the novel, however, like the exhibits, depends on experiences, shifting perspectives, one’s stage of life. Revisit The Catcher in the Rye. The only thing that’s different is you.

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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