J.D. Estrada's Reviews > The Catcher in the Rye

Boy, I read this goddam book and what can I say? It’s not a prince, but it’s alright. Putting aside how distracting I found Salinger’s spelling of height (heighth), I find myself reading another classic and finding a mixed bag of reactions. If you ever want to understand what teen angst feels, tastes, and smells like, this is a masterpiece. But that’s what this is, a book about feelings, about emotions, about sensations, about the confusion that is being a teen. It feels all very real because I remember being a teen, having that lack of motivation (though never to the level of Holden) and doing random things while fantasizing about all the things I could do, or would do, or should have done, but never did. In that sense, the book is spot on and I definitely see why it’s recommended reading for highschoolers. Even to this day, the descriptions hold true albeit with some variations. In regards to my experiences as a teen, I could relate to the cigarettes and alcohol, although not to the hookers.

As an emotional piece, it is almost poetic at times but as a novel, I have my reservations. Here’s the thing, when you pull back enough, the book is really only about feelings and some miscellaneous experiences. Some people might even suggest it’s a book about nothing, and to a certain degree, I could understand that reaction. Plotwise a highschooler gets kicked out of another high school, he loses fencing equipment on the subway, and he doesn’t care about anything. He has conversations with two roommates, makes a couple of phone calls, flees to New York, almost sleeps with a prostitute, tries to get drinks at a couple of bars where he’s not given, until he finds one where he is, he has a date which ends up brilliantly (insert sarcasm), he visits his sister before implementing his plan of running away to the West, calls up an old professor who is sweet on him, sees his sister again, and he ends up not running away. I skipped a conversation on the train, a conversation with another professor, and some other details, but in this paragraph I’ve sort of summarized all that happens in the book. Near the end, Holden confesses he enjoys when some people don’t get to the point in the hurry and digress… and this book is all about that. Digressing in that aimless way typical of a teen who has potential but zero motivation, who says everything sucks, and everyone’s a phony, and knows everything, but knows nothing, but really knows everything.

It’s an interesting read, but I don’t consider it canon in my life. It’s not something that hit me like a ton a bricks, but maybe that’s because I survived my teen years and they are two decades in my past. As I read, it felt familiar, but it didn’t shake me like it did so many people and I can’t say I’m itching to read it again, although I’m happy I read it. It’s like teen years, it was an interesting experience, but not the top choice of part of my life I’d like to revisit, which might be the difference between loving this book, enjoying it, or hating it.