J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [113]
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What readers encountered within the covers of The Catcher in the Rye was often life-changing. It would also alter the path of American culture and help define its psyche for generations. From the novel’s opening line, Salinger draws the reader into the peculiar unrestrained reality of Holden Caulfield, whose meandering thoughts, emotions, and memories populate the most completely stream-of-consciousness experience offered by American literature. The disordered nature of Holden’s narration is evident from the first page. Its opening sentence of sixty-three words and first paragraph running to more than a page defied literary convention and alerted readers that they had embarked upon a unique experience.
For all of its unconventionality, The Catcher in the Rye carries on a literary tradition begun by Charles Dickens and welded to American culture by Mark Twain.* As a successor to David Copperfield and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye continues an observation of mankind as seen through the lens of an adolescent and rendered in a language true to the narrator’s location and age. The repetitious slang of the New York street was attacked by some critics who failed to recognize the subtle innuendos veiled within the phrases.
The influences of other writers can also be sensed in the novel and evoke Salinger’s notion that he had accepted a literary inheritance from Ernest Hemingway in Paris in 1944. The voice of Holden Caulfield is descended from the narration of Hemingway’s 1923 story “My Old Man,” which was itself influenced by Hemingway’s mentor, Sherwood Anderson, and in particular by Anderson’s 1920 story “I Want to Know Why,” in essence binding together three generations of great American authors.
Holden’s story is told from a hospital in California. His tale covers the events that have resulted in his hospitalization and occurred during a three-day period the previous December. His account begins on a Saturday afternoon at his boarding school, Pencey Prep, in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Having failed every class but English, Holden has been asked by the school’s administration not to return after the Christmas holiday. The setting of the opening scene establishes Holden as an outcast. He is alone on top of Thomson Hill, separated from his peers, watching them from afar while presenting a monologue that expresses his alienation and disgust with the phony world around him. From this first scene, readers realize that Holden Caulfield is a disturbed young man.
Holden then introduces a variety of classmates and teachers, among them the pathetic Robert Ackley and Holden’s self-absorbed roommate, Ward Stradlater. Stradlater has a date with Jane Gallagher, a childhood friend of Holden whose innocence Holden has come to idealize.
Holden Caulfield is a character of contradictions. Even his physical description displays the opposites that make up his personality. At sixteen, he is clearly caught between adolescence and adulthood, with a tumult of conflicting emotions. The most prominent of Holden’s contradictions involves his condemnation of “phoniness,” which he rails against while indulging in fabrication and pretense, going as far as to call himself “the biggest liar.” Such attitudes sometimes annoy readers, who, looking for a character with qualities that are easily identifiable, find fault in Holden’s apparent hypocrisy. His contradictions serve a number of purposes. They portray his inconsistencies and lend reality to his character, which is lifelike in its complexity. They also define him as a typical adolescent. On another level, Holden’s contradictions serve to mirror the balance in which The Catcher in the Rye is constructed.
Before Stradlater leaves for his date with Jane Gallagher, he pressures Holden into writing an essay for him. Holden chooses to write a description of a poem-strewn baseball glove once owned by