“The Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger

I found this famous book in a local library a few days ago while attending the English Speaking Club there. Among all the controversy of recent days (Salinger suing the author of an unauthorized sequel of the book), I was naturally curious. Having read the book, I’m even more curious, and the main question I keep asking myself is, why is the book so famous and praised?

The book is written as a narrative. The narrator – Holden Caulfield – is a 16 year old just kicked out of yet another school and delaying the moment when he will have to tell his parents about it. So instead of coming home straight away, he wanders around New York.

The trouble with Holden is, though, he is too good at getting himself into a mess and at turning people against himself. He is supposed to behave childishly, but in fact he behaves too much like an adult, but a stupid adult. He quarrels with people, so he has to leave a hotel too soon and continue wandering without a place to go. He believes himself to be old enough to drink, though he is already foolish enough when he is sober. And he keeps telling us about his adventures.

I think Holden is supposed to sound stupid too, but he doesn’t. He does stupid things, but he sounds like an intelligent person, but one with a certain mental disorder, which makes him act the way he does. His main emotions are dislike and depression. He dislikes people, places, music, shows – everything he encounters, except, perhaps, his little sister Phoebe, a lovely, intelligent girl of ten. He keeps saying, “it’s depressing” about nearly everything.

And he also gives an impression of a very vulnerable person. We know he’s going to get himself into a mess long before he actually does. It’s like he is not going to make it to the end of the book alive.

The book is written in a completely unique writing style. I wouldn’t even call it a “writing” style at all, because books are not generally written this way. Teenagers talk in this manner to one another, that’s true – not the uneducated teenagers, but those who have got an education, but feel shy about it. It’s not exactly ungrammatical, but gives an impression of being ungrammatical, and it’s full of jargon and swearing.

If not for a few funny episodes, I would have probably put the book aside half-way through it. I’m not a depressed teenager, after all, so why should I bother? But I’ve finished it. Perhaps, I was just curious what would happen to this fool Holden on the next page. But when he was about to make the stupidest things of all and ruin his life altogether – just because he felt like it – his smart little sister saved him from it. A guy who thought himself old enough to drink and to invite a prostitute to his room needed help from a child to keep himself from a ruin.

I think teenagers like the book and think it “deep”. At 16, many feel like life is not worth it, so they like every book and every movie that talks about teenage depressions. They’ll understand Holden no doubt – but thing is, he takes it too far. I must admit Salinger knows a lot about psychology of young people, but I have to say the book bored me to death nevertheless. Having reviewed it, I’ll now take it back to the library without re-reading it. “Just in no mood for it”, as Holden would say. Or, rather, it’s just not in my line.