J.D. Salinger

So, as I'm sure you are aware, J.D. Salinger (most famous as author of The Catcher in the Rye) died today at the age of 91. I just wanted to do a very quick and very improvised blog about the novel he is most famous for.

The reason why I think The Catcher in the Rye is such an amazing novel (and I think it is - it's my favourite and I don't care how conventionally adolescent that makes me) is because it is an uncensored look at teenage emotion. Holden swears and thinks out sex, he lies for no reason and has more angst than you can shake a stick at. But he also craves some kind, any kind of connection and wishes that he could protect others from losing the innocence he feels he has already lost.

In order to illustrate why The Catcher in the Rye had such a profound affect on me, I am going to show a few quotes which, I feel, speak directly to what I find and have found being a teenager to be like.

'I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.'
So, something you may not know about me is I lie. A lot. Not big things - I don't have a secret husband or anything. But I have, on occasion, pretended to like things other people like because they're the people around or said I've read books I haven't amoung other small things. I think the thing about being a teenager is that lying is just quite easy - easier sometimes that admitting things that really no one cares about. I mean, who cares if I haven't seen the episode of Futurama you have? Because by admitting I haven't, that is one more connection we don't share, and no one likes to feel like the only one not in on the joke.

'What really knocks me out is a book, when you're all done reading it, you wished the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.'
This has happened to me more times than I can count. I don't know if this is specifically about being young or just being human. I think the best art of any kind is art which you think you might have created with the same set of skills - music about love just like the love you know, books which say something, even really small, which is what you've been thinking alone for so long and so a connection is created between you and the person who wrote it: shared experience. The same things we have in common with our friends.

'When I really worry about something, I don't just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don't go. I'm too worried to go. I don't want to interrupt my worrying to go.'
Now my friends will tell you, I'm a worrier. I worry about important stuff (exams, leaving home, general communication with normal people) and not important stuff (paying for things, ringing people's houses, offending car drivers when I take too long to cross the street). And all my worrying becomes like another person who follows me around and stops me doing anything. So it might be insignificant what I worry about but how I worry is not insignificant.

I could do this forever but I'm going to stop. Basically, this novel is my book which knocks me out. The first book I ever read which made me cry because it was saying exactly how I felt. A novel that consistently reminds me of how powerful and magically prose can be. A book which may not just be about adolesence but adulthood. And when I get there, I'll let you know.

J.D. Salinger: 1919-2010
'Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.'