J.D. Salinger and "Catcher"

J.D. Salinger died a few weeks ago at 91, which prompted me to pick up that tattered copy of Catcher in the Rye that had been sitting around. Honestly, I think I was the only person in the world who hadn't read it. (As a writer, it was shameful.) The book was WAY too racy and suggestive for my small town Iowa high school to have on the freshman English reading list, but I finally got to it.

Some of it was fun, enjoyable, funny, and I was rooting for Holden Caulfield, the jock-hating teen outcast who'd just been kicked out of prep school. "I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot." But really, really, I didn't see what was so great about the novel.

Sure, it expressed the teenage angst that many high school kids could identify with, and yes, the voice was crystal clear and believable, but over and over I kept thinking, "This whole passage, or this whole chapter would be chopped to death by any editor or agent today." It meanders, and goes on tangents that editors and agents would have no patience for today.

As I read it I kept wondering 'What in here would make someone want to kill John Lennon?' What was so damn profound? I never found it. Maybe I'm dense.

A writer friend of mine agreed, saying, "The New Yorker crowned Salinger a genius, for some reason, and he could do no wrong after that."

But maybe that is what makes a great novel great: it doesn't follow the rules. Like Miller in Tropic of Cancer it departs from accepted forms and rambles on. And on, and on, pounding the point home.

Sure, I was amused, even laughing out loud at his first use of the word "gorgeous" in referring to a sixty-five year old balding bellboy saying, "Anyway, what a gorgeous job for a guy around sixty-five years old." I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. But later in the book he used "gorgeous" 7-8 times so it just became part of the vernacular of the narrator, watering down the impact of the first use of the word, although I can certainly see that Salinger was doing what teens do: grab a word and use it over and over.

It's like that with some words that writers get hung up on. I remember proofreading a friend's manuscript -- a daunting task, since he held a PhD in English -- and finding the beautiful use of the word "pale." Pale is a great word. But then I noticed he'd used it 30+ times in the book, and it lessened the impact of the few, select good uses of it, and certainly had to be cut. Only then he died at 48 and never got any of his books published.

I suppose that's what drives me to publish books rather rapidly, and some say, imprudently. It's this creeping fear that death will cut off my work and I want it to go on record. And if I live long enough, I'll go back and make it better, or if I'm dead maybe some editor will clean it up, but at least it's out there. I mean, there are all sorts of "writers" out there who are great at critiquing everyone else, but they never get anything really done.

I did, however, notice and pay attention to the little tiny nuances of Salinger's Catcher, where he uses italics on a word or part of a word in the middle of dialogue, which brings it to life with its emphasis. It's how people talk. So don't think I didn't notice, J.D.

But when I look at the writing itself, it's not near what Miller did, or Fitzgerald or Hemingway (both of which he mocks in the book), or many others.

I read where Salinger befriended the editor of the New Yorker, that they were quite close and both recluses. And maybe that's what really makes a difference -- who you know.