Holden Caulfield Can Kiss My Ass

I tried.  I mean I really really tried. Here's what I can pinpoint was already working against me:

• I am not, nor was I ever a 16 year old boy.  I didn't understand them when I was a 16 year old girl and I most certainly do not understand them now.
• I appear to have stolen my copy from my 10th grade English class.  That class was a terrible experience.  Worse than you could possibly imagine.  So perhaps I was jinxed by the physical reminder of that shitty year.
• Because I was reading my 10th grade copy, the pages were covered with pencil markings.  My teacher had the class make a People, Places, and Things list for every book we read.  It's exactly what it sounds like: a list in three parts of every single person, place, or thing that is introduced throughout the course of the novel.  I can't even talk about how much I hated this.  Anyway, that was really distracting.
• My copy is missing a page.  And looking back on my reading experience of the past few days, that page held the key to understanding the entire novel. 

Now, I know what I'm about to say probably won’t be popular.  I’m ok with that...

I have one major overlying issue.  The novel’s title, the one thing Holden can picture himself doing and being for the rest of his life, is incorrect.  It comes from Holden not correctly remembering a poem.  Perhaps that is supposed to be part of an overlying theme but I don’t see it.

Ok, on to Holden.  First of all, he spends the entire novel whining.  Everything and everyone is phony.  Nobody is interesting enough to hold his attention.  There is something wrong with everything.  And don't think I missed the underlying issue, because I didn't.  I get that Holden is at the precipice of adulthood and that terrifies him.  I understand that he feels adulthood corrupts people and takes away their innocence.  Holden is terrified of becoming one of the same phonies he is so quick to judge.  I get it.  I'm just so over him whining about his terrible existence. Puh-leeeez.

Secondly, and connected to my first problem, is that we as the reader have to endure his endless diatribe on adult society all for nothing.  There’s no payout in the end.  The novel ends and he is no closer to understanding his own world-view as he was in the beginning.  Holden is so far from understanding what’s going on in his own head that he’s in a mental institution in California!  I don’t know what to do with this novel, where to place it.  It is clearly not a coming-of-age story because Holden does not overcome anything in the end.  Instead he has a breakdown.  Again, I feel like I read the entire novel all for nothing.

            Also, Holden has a serious problem with follow-through.  He gets an idea to do something then suddenly isn’t in the mood anymore.  It ultimately becomes too predictable as a characteristic to be anything but frustrating.  He lacks conviction.  Either that or he is not only a terrific liar to everyone else, he is also great at lying to himself.  If that is the case, which it very easily could be, then Holden has thrown away the last shred of credibility he has with the reader.  We already have to call into question his motives, his sanity, and his tendency to exaggerate; the only thing he has left is that we as the reader assume he would at least tell himself the truth.  But then again, maybe not.

          One last, strictly personal, issue.  Holden hated A Farewell to Arms.  Not only hated it, but completely misunderstood it.  And by the way, it is not a difficult story to understand.  It’s as simple as they come.

Here’s some stuff I did like…

Somewhere near the middle of the story, Holden goes into the Natural History Museum.  He discusses at length how much he always loved going there as a child because nothing inside ever changed.  The exhibits were always the same; it is the visitor who has changed.  As I was reading that passage I remember being struck as a teenager at the sentences describing the various ways a person could be different that day.  Holden says something to the effect of, maybe you’d just seen one of those puddles in the street with a gasoline rainbow in it.  And seeing that alone changes you when you enter the museum and view the never-changing exhibits.  As an adult I can relate to his desire that certain things in our lives should remain exactly as they are; that we should be able to encase them like the exhibits in a museum. 

This quote: “If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the ‘Fuck you’ signs in the world.  It’s impossible.”

I especially appreciate Holden’s ambiguous future.  He has yet to succumb to adulthood, but seems to understand that he cannot remain a child.  He is supposed to attend school in the fall, but because he has yet to accept the adult world, it is unclear if he will be any more successful at this school than at the previous.  So here’s what I think… Near the end of the flashback, Holden has an extended fantasy of going west; of hitch-hiking completely across the country.  I would like to think he checks out of the sanitarium and hitches a ride north to San Francisco where he meets up with Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty.  I would like to think Holden found a way to stay removed from the materialism and conformity he despises so much.  I would like to think of Holden as a beat.  At least that way we are at peace.

Next up, The Great Gatsby!