I always wanted to read this book and finally got around to it. It’s a very quick read and I finished it in two nights, even going back to read certain parts that struck me as interesting or seemed significantly consequential. I still haven’t decided if I love it or not, but I know I didn’t hate it. I'm not sure how I feel yet!
The author J.D. Salinger definitely has a specific writing style, which quickly became predictable, and that’s not a bad thing. I felt as if I myself could mold my mind into Holden’s (the main character) and write an entire chapter from the thought process of this boy. Often times when the character would say something he felt strongly about he would add a “really” in there somewhere after the statement. Such as, "I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can." He also uses many definite words such as “always” or “never” in his thoughts. Such as, “People never notice anything” and “People always think somethings all true.” "Catholics are always trying to figure out if you're Catholic." It’s funny though, because he really has a point there. I liked how this helped you bond with Holden’s personality and you can get an idea of how a character views life right from the very start.
So here are some positives on the book:
There were certain parts in the book where I felt compelled to reread because I just knew there was something special about them, the first one is where he finally decides to leave Pencey college in the middle of the night (having already been kicked out) and a quarrel with his roommate finally made him get off his ass and walk out. “When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down that goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don't know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, "Sleep tight, ya morons!" I'll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out. Some stupid guy had thrown peanut shells all over the stairs, and I damn near broke my crazy neck.” I found the irony of his cockiness towards leaving and the fact that he almost tumbled his way out the door to be humorous. Another favorite is "You ought to go to a boy's school sometimes. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together."
That made me laugh for sure.
Holden also has certain thoughts about girls and sex, which if you think deeply enough about you sort of feel what kind of a guy he is. He just hasn’t found himself and he has these bits of insecurity, although he acts like somewhat of a know-it-all when he speaks. While he thinks he’s sexy and suave, he still has that nervous edge which makes me uncomfortable, because I have met boys like him... Someone who sees themselves as a sex maniac, and yet Holden was still a virgin. A few things he said about girls that I found to be particularly interesting were:
“If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.”
“Girls. You never know what they're going to think.”
“I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.”
“Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away. Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it, though, the same week I made it - the same night, as a matter of fact.”
“I wouldn't mind being pretty good at that stuff. Half the time, if you really want to know the truth, when I'm horsing around with a girl, I have a helluva lot of trouble just finding what I'm looking for, for God's sake, if you know what I mean. Take this girl that I just missed having sexual intercourse with, that I told you about. It took me about an hour to just get her goddam brassière off. By the time I did get it off, she was about ready to spit in my eye.”
“She was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls, if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hands all the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something. Jane was different. We'd get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we'd start holding hands, and we won't quit till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.”
I couldn’t decide if Holden was a really deep thinker who at times over analyzed things and had to throw negativity around to boost his ego, or if he was a bi-polar disaster teetering on a cliff built of ADHD and depression. It could swing both ways. At times he seems to be content in life and yet he feels safety in knowing that there’s an atomic bomb invented and hopes to one day sit on top of it if there is ever another war. The kid is all over the place. I still couldn’t put the book down because I was dying to know what happened to him, the problem is, I am still dying to know what happened to him!
On to the negatives:
Ugh. I hate to do this because at times, I’m a fan of not knowing how things turn out and leaving it up to the reader to decide what happened, but honestly? There were so many unanswered questions building up in my head, that I hoped at least some of them would be answered!
First of all, he speaks of “old Jane” from back in the day. They had a deep friendship/love when they were younger and he got enraged with jealousy when he found out his arrogant roommate had a date with her. This build up of anger eventually caused a fist fight in the dorm and drove Holden to get the hell out of Pencey without a clue of where he was going. Ok, so I’m a sucker for a good love story! This Jane girl peaked my interest obviously. Holden and her used to play checkers on her front porch and she would always keep all of her kings in the back row. Just because she wanted to. She liked the way they looked all lined up in the back. Holden requested that his roommate ask her one simple question that night, which is “Did she still keep all of her kings in the back row?” His roommate didn’t ask her that question and it drove Holden crazy. Old Jane kept popping up in his mind throughout the entire novel. It agonized the hell out of me. He was always battling this desire to call her. He’d sit and think about it for an hour. He’d sit in a phone booth forever and never end up calling and making excuses on why he didn't. It tortured me because I wanted to know if there was a love there. Were they meant to be? How would she respond to his phone call? Most importantly, did she still keep all of her the kings in the back row? The world will never know and it drives me crazy.
Also, he constantly asks this question to anyone and everyone in the novel about the ducks in central park, like this: “I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.” He asks this question to his roommates, cab drivers, bar tenders, anyone he gets in contact with would get hit with this question. Everyone gets annoyed with it and usually responds by “how the hell should I know!” or “why do you care?” It drove Holden nuts not getting a correct answer, and eventually it drove me nuts too because it kept coming up! I still don’t know where the hell the ducks go and if someone could tell me, I’d feel so much better!
Then there’s an old teacher of his he visits. They have some smokes and drinks and pretty good conversation, his teacher hands him a piece of paper that says, “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to die humbly for one.” This a remarkable piece of knowledge and I automatically liked this character. Holden crashed on this man’s couch and woke up in the night to this man’s hand sort of patting his head. He panicked and thought he was being hit on or something and bolted out of there. The reader never will know if this man had bad or good intentions or what really happened that night. I liked this old teacher of his and I really wanted to know if he was good or bad. Ugh, drives me nuts.
Finally, I really really wanted to know how Holden turned out. How did he finally figure out his life and get his shit together? Did he ever call Jane or figure out where the damn ducks go when the pond freezes? These unanswered questions pick at my brain. The book was like one of those relationships you have with a guy where everything is going along well, you’re growing to know each other and to accept the flaws and eventually gain trust as a couple and suddenly the relationship ends and you’re not sure why, but you never truly get any closure, so you’re always left wondering what could have happened or try to put the pieces back together in your head. Then again, some relationships don’t need closure, because you enjoyed the ride enough and looking back on the memories you can just take it for what it was. That is how this book played out for me, I still want to read it again though because I think there’s a lot of hidden things that are only intended to be picked up the second or third time around.
One of the most monumental lines in the entire book for me was the last line. “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
Think about it...
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