A Further Perspective
The Bizarre Mystique of Jerry Salinger
What is it about otherwise careful critics and writers?
Okay, I remember a few little things about The Catcher in the Rye from my adolescence many years ago — who doesn’t? — but what I recall most is getting bogged down in a very boring story about halfway through.
I lived in New York and could not escape the cultish atmosphere that kept literary superstars in ink. With each new droplet of prose from J.D. (Jerry) Salinger, readers of The New Yorker held their breath. A book became a major news story.
Plowing through other people’s prose has always been one of my strengths but I stumbled again on about page 25 of Franny and Zooey, and even sooner in “Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters.”
And in 1965, when his short story “Hapworth 16, 1924” appeared in The New Yorker, the critical eyebrows of Gotham were raised in collective consternation. Wrote Janet Malcolm in a famous New York Review of Books essay, “It seemed to confirm the growing critical consensus that Salinger was going to hell in a handbasket.”
Franny and Zooey (F&Z) brought barbs from Alfred Kazin, Mary McCarthy, Joan Didion, and John Updike.
Although Malcolm’s essay came down in defense of Salinger, she conveyed the F&Z reception in spades: “I don’t know of any other case where literary characters have aroused such animosity, and where a writer of fiction has been so severely censured for failing to understand the offensiveness of his creations,” she wrote.
I was relieved that nothing further came from the New Hampshire recluse but occasional reports of bizarre behavior. It saved me from striving vainly to keep up with trendier friends.
Joyce Maynard, one of the few outsiders to be invited in, wrote a book about her trials with the New Hampshire hermit, At Home in the World. After living with Salinger for less than a year, she was abruptly told to get out. She was 18, he was 53. She wrote that she has spent the rest of her life wondering what she did wrong.
So when Jerry died recently at 91, I was astonished to see he could still do it — he provoked a torrent of praise and grief from otherwise careful critics and writers.
Fortunately I now live in France and could escape the immediate fuss. Distance brings focus.
Looking again at Salinger’s only novel worthy of the name, I feel vindicated. Catcher reads like a period piece from the 1950s, and, if it still sells to grownups, it appeals to their inner 15-year-old. That ranks it one step above a pretty good children’s book.
A well-read friend put it this way: “If it were published today it wouldn’t make a ripple.”
Catcher protagonist Holden Caulfield’s experiences, wrote one critic, dramatize the “despoliation of childhood innocence and integrity by insensitive, superficial adults.” This strikes a chord with most adolescents and has ensured a long life for the book on high school reading lists. A literary reputation, however, that rests largely on a single title, raises questions.
Lacking any proof that he locked his brilliant later novels in a safe somewhere, he simply does not compare with the varied and prolific output of writers such as Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates.
The outpouring at his death seems to come from a combination of nostalgia for the 1950s, combined with an intense desire to conform to literary convention and compassion for a man apparently suffering from a monumental writer’s block.
A shame, really, for maybe he would have improved.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (39) | Leave a comment
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Steve| 2.10.10 @ 8:02AM
For a more insightful introspective on what teenage angst is, just listen/read the lyrics of Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen." It is much quicker (and the tune is quite catchy) than waiting for Amazon to send you "Catcher."
Alan Brooks| 2.10.10 @ 9:18AM
Whenever I think of Holden (named after the actor's surname) the moniker 'Little Orphan Anarchist' comes to mind.
Would much rather re-read Tom Sawyer & Adventures of Huck Finn.
Alan Brooks| 2.10.10 @ 8:44AM
Salinger's '50s was when America dumbed down (the Beats); the '60s- '70s was when it bottomed out (the hippies).
Let's hope so. Today's anarchist is tomorrow's boring old f*rt.
Alan Brooks| 2.11.10 @ 12:54AM
The rot set in circa 1958, or so-- not 1965.
PCC| 2.10.10 @ 8:49AM
In Holden Cauldfield, Salinger created one of the most pure, clear and powerful voices in all of American fiction.
Sarah| 2.10.10 @ 11:26AM
Oh please. How about on the most pure pieces of tripe in all of American fiction? Such a callow youth, worthy of no praise. I wanted to smack him at every turn.
Stuart Koehl| 2.10.10 @ 8:48PM
Most fairly intelligent American teens today loathe Holden Caulfield, find him whiny and pretentious (or worse, "Emo" and only wade through the book because it has been put on the required reading list by education professors who worshipped this drivel when they were pimply-faced nerds.
Barbara B| 2.10.10 @ 8:56AM
I'm glad I'm not the only one who found 'The Catcher In the Rye' boring. I thought it was jusr me... It is an overhyped piece of 'literature', IMO.
Alan Brooks| 2.10.10 @ 9:11AM
"In Holden Cauldfield, Salinger created one of the most pure, clear and powerful voices in all of American fiction. "
Purely inane
Clearly a burn-out
Undeserving of power
Now we Know why conservatives are leery of 'empowerment'.
Empowering WHOM exactly?
"Empowering' to do what?
cuban pete| 2.10.10 @ 9:29AM
"he does not compare with the varied and prolific output....." I would include Cheever in that line up.
All the Best
j Clark| 2.11.10 @ 2:09PM
I agree...particularly when you consider the short stories. In any event, Falconer and The Wapshot Chronicles are far better than anything Salinger ever wrote.
tj| 2.10.10 @ 9:43AM
Give me Nathaniel West or Flannery O'Connor over Jerry S. any day.
Leon| 2.10.10 @ 11:16AM
Joyce Carol Oates is a prime example of an author who should write less.
At least Salinger was sometimes readable.
Markey| 2.10.10 @ 11:19AM
Leibniz probably couldn't get published today.
I remember not liking the book at all. I still don't really care what happens in N.Y.
Just guessing, but looking at Maynard from that era, I'd say Salinger probably continued to write for his own enjoyment, and burned the pages in the stove before he left the room.
Web Gallagher| 2.10.10 @ 1:40PM
Yes, it's amazing "he can still do it." That is, generate praise and the occassional vitriol (oft-mentioned directed at the Glass children during their Wise Child tenure) from those who work day in and day out with waning hopes of distinction, like the author of this article and many subsequent commentors. So glad to hear that this "well-read" friend of yours you look to claims Catcher would hardly make a ripple. Surely there's no doubt he has little knowledge of the influence of Catcher and the fact it sells 250K copies a year. Again, he need not worry as he'll never make that kind of impact in his life. And no, his reputation does not hinge on one piece of work. His was recognized as a master of the short story years before the publication of his novel. Again, if you have to be schooled via a comment on a website like this, then you are clearly out of your depth when discussing literature.
Roy| 2.10.10 @ 3:57PM
Roth, Bellow, Updike, and Joyce Carol Oates. Not names I see grouped every day.
Mattrhorn| 2.10.10 @ 4:55PM
I liked the book and character because he was a miserable snot. Sarah, you nailed it with the word callow. The book to me was not a rebellion against the adults, but a look into the mind of a slacker kid that would probably be consumed by his own resentment of the real world.
WAKE UP| 2.10.10 @ 10:52PM
The most UNDER-rated American author is still Nelson Algren.
Alan Brooks| 2.11.10 @ 12:50AM
Salinger could write, but 'Catcher' was about an extremely limited subject: a burn-out.
You can go to a homeless shelter and get a dozen burnout stories just as interesting-- from people with more experience than Holden. In 1951 it was novel; today it is nothing.
henry| 2.11.10 @ 2:58AM
Rossini said that there are only two types of music: good and bad. Bad music is boring.
Same goes for literature.
Joseph Harriss | 2.11.10 @ 5:07AM
Johnson's juicy critique of Salinger is spot-on, as the Brits say, in underlining once again the debilitating dangers of faddism in our culture.
As to who is the most under-rated writer in America, my vote goes to Red Smith.
ExPat| 2.11.10 @ 9:05AM
Although growing up in the fifties and sixties, I never read it. I can't say that I want to now.
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Tucci78| 2.14.10 @ 5:40PM
Hm. Not having been forced to read anything by Salinger at the academic equivalent of gunpoint either in high school or college, I was free to come at Catcher in the Rye on my own, and I found it to be a pretty horrible stinkeroo. Self-centered adolescent angst was of no interest when I was myself a teenager (much more interested in Heinlein's characters and their situations, to be perfectly frank) and looking forward to the possibility that I'd be in uniform and humping ammunition hither and yon in Southeast Asia before I'd be old enough to vote.
Seemed silly at that time to focus on the "troubles" of a Holden Caulfield when like the rest of the youngsters I knew, I was looking forward to a year or more sidestepping punji sticks, ducking incoming mortar rounds, and generally trying not to get killed while doing my bit to help LBJ play "Cops of the World" in yet another foreign hell-hole.
Honestly, I do not understand how Salinger - or his work - found any connection at all with anything resembling a large population of Americans in the years since "Catcher in the Rye" first saw publication.
That it has nothing whatsoever to do with the concerns, the hopes, and the dreams of most of his countrymen had to have been plain to Salinger if to none of the critics extolling his works.
I suspect he sought his self-imposed exile to get away from the soul-destroying confrontation with this fact every time he caught some mainstream literary critic slavering over his sneakers.
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