the catcher in the rye

"Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind."

tw: racism, homophobia, suicide, alcohol consumption, smoking, gun violence

but i do want to acknowledge that there are other good components of the catcher in the rye aside from my own personal experience. this book doesn't really have a plot, and is entirely driven by holden's thoughts, impulses, and actions. with that being said, salinger plays to his strengths of a character driven story. while implementation of streamline of consciousness contributed to holden as an unreliable narrator, it also allowed a gateway into his thought process, providing a deeper level of characterization for the reader. 

however, streamline of consciousness has its pros and its cons. one of the cons is that i hate holden, but it's because i'm getting to know some of his deeper, most inner thoughts that that is the case. holden is unlikable and that's the point. his character is practically transparent. as a reader, salinger lets me see right through him. in all honesty, if someone bared witness to all of my unfiltered thoughts during a manic episode, people would probably dislike me as well. holden is flawed in the same way that everyone is, except his thoughts are being read through an air horn. so in that sense, he's very relatable.

but that doesn't mean that i didn't find salinger's narrative style or holden's characterization annoying, because i did. having to read a rich privileged white boy's absolute loathing for everything and everyone got really repetitive. i hate a lot of things too, but not to the extent where i become a homophobic misogynistic racist that antagonizes people for just living. although i get the stigmatism surrounding mental illness in the 1950s, holden had the resources to get the help that he required which created a whole other level of frustration for me while reading.

through the catcher in the rye, salinger has created this terrible, yet raw, character who struggles within the limbo of adolescence that is capable of leaving readers both enamored and exasperated. the duality is honestly impressive.