The Catcher in the Rye

[ST, Jan 16 (2006)]

[...] Meanwhile, these last days I've been finally able to finish the reading of Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. It's been a long reading even though the novel is actually pretty short. But the intrinsic superficiality of these summer days have prevented me from spending time in any other higher achievements than just lying as a lizard in the sun on the beach, sleeping siestas and walking up and down the promenade back in Benicasim. All in all I have enjoyed the book. I have added this "all in all" because I don't think I really like it fully. The story is not really all that elaborate. Some people, some famous authors, claim that this novel has been overestimated. And the people in favour and against it are split in pretty much equal halves. Half their readers love it, half hate it. Of course, being the story a sad story is an important point for making the book closer to my liking. Sad stories are far more interesting than happy ones. And that was very enjoyable in the book. But I haven't liked the somewhat self-righteous distinctive attitude of the main character, a bit like the one in Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, as far as I remember. Both of these characters are losers living in a world of winners, but both of them - each one in his own style - have solid arguments to believe they are the only ones in the right while the rest of the world is wrong, the others - system, society - are to blame for the pitiful and sorrowful lives the main characters in these two novels are condemned to live, lives of pathetic arrogance, so to speak. This veiled (or not quite so) message of superiority is however what both, gives perfect sense to the novel and makes it hard to fully appreciate, by placing the main character in an uncomfortable position to support or to value or to understand, a character probably drawn from the pool of frustrated bitterness that (especially) any young person - and, sure enough, any young writer - experiences in that particular period of time - in his or her youth. It's also worth realizing the curious coincidence that both authors, Kennedy Toole and Salinger, did not write (essentially) anything else in their lives (at all or, at least, worth reading).

[Salinger passed away on January 27, 2010]