Some call him the original
sullen teenager.
Since his debut in 1951,
Holden Caulfield — the funny, complex, wry protagonist of J.D. Salinger's
classic The Catcher in the Rye — has given voice to generations of
teenagers caught between childhood and the adult world.
One of the most censored books
in recent U.S. history, The Catcher in the Rye is now a staple of many
high school and college curricula. It's the coming-of-age story of 16-year-old
Caulfield, who has flunked out of his prep school and is disillusioned with the
world.
'Afraid
of Growing Up'
"The problem with Holden
is that to him, everyone after a while seems phony," says Tobias Wolff,
author of novels including Old School and the memoir This Boy's Life.
"He's afraid of growing up really, and the self-consciousness that enters
into our lives, into our sense of ourselves and forces us to perform in public
— he sees that and hates it. He's terrified of change."
Alienated and sad, Caulfield
spends two days in New York City where he searches for truth and ruminates
about the adult world. Caulfield's witty humor has a darkness to it, set
against the devastating death of his younger brother, Allie, from leukemia.
After Allie's death, Caulfield becomes fiercely protective of his little
sister, Phoebe, who he sees as a paragon of innocence. Though New York is
festive for the holidays, Caulfield seems terrified that he'll share his
brother's fate.
Re-Thinking
a Classic Character
Rereading the novel as an
adult, Wolff says that Caulfield's innate sadness is much more apparent to him
than it was when he first read it at 15.
"When you're young ...
it's subversive and you've got someone on your side who can spell the whole war
out better than you've been able to do it, and who's given all your jaundiced
visions of the adult world perfect articulation," Wolff says. "And,
of course, you're going to lose that later on as you become one of those people
on whom that relentless adolescent gaze is fixed."
Stephanie Savage, executive
producer of the television show Gossip Girl says Caulfield was living on
the cusp of an explosion in teen culture — just before Elvis, James Dean and
rock 'n' roll.
"You see that in the book
when you can either go to the carousel in Central Park, or you can choose the
Wicker Bar. You can have a skating date, or you can have a prostitute come up
to your hotel room. There's really not that sense of teen culture that there is
now," Savage says.
Ultimately, Caulfield is a mirror
into Salinger himself, Wolff says. The famously reclusive author shuns public
attention and media interviews, and published infrequently after writing Catcher
in the Rye. In one scene in the book, Caulfield fantasizes about playing
the piano well — a skill he'd never share with the public, but rather save for
himself by playing in a closet. Salinger, Wolff says, "does sort of play
his piano in a closet now."
Andrea Seabrook spoke with
Wolff and Savage about Caulfield's lasting legacy in American literature.
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