I remember the first time I read Catcher in the Rye. I was a freshman in high school. I couldn’t put the story down. In fact, my World History teacher repeatedly had to tell me to put my book away in class. She even referred to me as Holden a few times, but I had connected to the story in a way that I had never felt before - the high school truant who could see through all the phoniness in the world. As a scrawny kid who got picked on a lot, Holden’s character resonated with me deeply. I wasn’t the only one perceiving the world as it actually was. It was while reading this book that I decided the two things I wanted to be known for were my honesty and my empathy.
Holden and many other Salinger characters also felt a deep guilt for ever feeling happy which I can personally relate to. This line from Catcher in the Rye captures this perfectly. “Oh, God, if I’m anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy." That line has stuck with me since the first time I read it.
I am not going to write about Salinger’s life and I am not going to pretend to objective. A good obituary can be found in the New York Times here and, for diversity, The Washington Post here. (I prefer the New York Times article.) Instead, I want to share with you the impact his writing had on me and how he shaped my life. Of course, Catcher in the Rye is a great piece of literature and for a while that’s all I really knew of him. Thanks to my junior English class, I was exposed to what I consider to be an underrated section of literature – the short story. At the end of my junior year of high school, we had to pick a short story author, write a thesis paper on two or three of his/her short stories and relate them to events in the author’s life. There was a lottery to determine who got what author, no duplicates, and I remember being worried I would not get Salinger. Of course Updike, Hemmingway, and all of the other great authors of the world were on the list, but I connected with Salinger. I didn’t understand the connection at the time - I just remember wanting my paper to be on him.
Luckily, I got my choice. Inspired by my assignment, I read everything he ever wrote, several biographies, and any article or review I could possibly find. Reading other people’s reviews was always interesting. People who dismissed Salinger seemed so out of touch, like they really didn’t understand that the world can be a dark, harsh place. And then I’d read reviews that fawned over Salinger - reviewers were trying as hard as possible to be the first one on the wagon. I realize that a huge part of the literary world is reviewing works of other writers, but in a way it seemed to reek of the phoniness that Holden detests so strongly.
The two short stories of the nine in the aptly named collection Nine Stories that I wrote about were “For Esmé – With Love and Squalor” and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” Both were about a young soldier in the battlefield trying to find salvation while relating the impact that their experiences had on them to anyone that would listen. In both stories, the men end up writing correspondence letters with young girls. Though, this may seem weird on the surface, I think it makes total sense. A child’s ability to have empathy vastly surpasses that of an adult. You can see it on a baby’s face when it hears another baby start to cry. Even Holden, as sarcastic and turned off by the world around him as he was, was extremely sensitive, as well as empathic to the people he encountered. True empathy is something that most people lose very quickly as they mature. They become walled off and callous.
If a person was to try and relate to the rawest, most profound emotions that can be felt, a child would be the person to communicate with. I’m not talking about specific details, but just the sense of profound and deep sadness or futility. Children don’t have the “sophistication” of labeling all these emotions as sadness or depression or whatever. They also don’t have the experiences in their life to try to compare these emotions to something they felt once. This, to me, was the genius of Salinger. He understood this pureness and wrote about it. Maybe Salinger himself never lost his childlike empathy. Sometimes the most empathic, sensitive people have to shut themselves off from the entire world in order to survive. Or maybe he was just aware enough to realize what it was that he had lost.
Children feel everything in the purest form. They have no context to fit everything into like pieces of a puzzle. They don’t feel the need to have an answer or solution or response. They just empathize. That is why I felt so personally touched by the works of Salinger. I felt that indescribable, almost physical but still ethereal slug to the stomach today when I found out he passed away. I feel profound sadness that there has been a serious loss in the world. I just hope that we aren’t losing the better ones of us faster than they are being replaced. Rest in peace J.D. Salinger. You let me know that not all are blind to the world as it truly is.
