My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence: An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Author’s Apology” (1920)
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, what colleges I attended, how long I’ve been a teacher, and all that résumé kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. I’ll just tell you about all the funny stuff that happened to me after I started teaching The Catcher in the Rye.
Six years ago, when I joined the English department at my current school, J.D. Salinger’s novel was required reading for all sophomores. Since then, I’ve learned a lot from teaching the book. For example, while writing the first paragraph of this essay, I realized that I didn’t even have to look at the first page of the novel to parody the voice of Salinger’s famous protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Like Jay Gatsby, Philip Marlowe, and a few other characters from novels I’ve read multiple times, Holden has joined the chorus of fictional voices that exist in my head. But I don’t want to talk about that.
What I do want to talk about is how people respond when I tell them that I teach Salinger’s famous book. Although most either remember liking The Catcher in the Rye or admit to never reading it, I have learned that, for some, the mere mention of the title can provoke a visceral reaction. In fact, more than a few have viewed it as a prime opportunity to tell me how much they absolutely hated the book.
Usually, they each start off by complaining about how their bad old English teacher forced them to read The Catcher in the Rye in high school. The way they tell it, you’d think it happened at gunpoint, as the novel apparently remains a source of legitimate trauma, a harrowing experience they wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy. And yet, upon hearing that I teach the book in my classroom, these long-suffering victims seem to truly relish the opportunity for vengeance. They delight in telling me that The Catcher in the Rye sucks or that Salinger was a creep in real life or that Holden Caulfield is an irritating poster boy for white privilege. These are just a sample of the many critiques I’ve heard firsthand.
Whatever their individual reasons, it’s clear that they don’t like the novel. What isn’t clear is why they want me to know all about it. After all, I wasn’t their teacher, so I can’t apologize for poor pedagogy. And I sure as hell didn’t write the damn thing, so what do they want from me? An apology? A refund?
The first time something like this happened, I was taken aback, not just because the moment was oddly confrontational but also because I had been operating under the impression that the book was a beloved classic. After all, upon release in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye was selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club and garnered positive reviews from critics at The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Time magazine, all hailing Salinger as an exciting new voice in American literature. By the 1960s, his 16-year-old narrator had become an important symbol for an entire generation. According to Salinger, the 2013 biography by David Shields and Shane Salerno, The Catcher in the Rye “was selling 250,000 copies a year and was being taught at 275 American colleges” only ten years after its initial release (268). By 2013, the total number had exploded to more than 65 million, with an estimated more than 500,000 copies still being purchased each year (xiii). For all intents and purposes, The Catcher in the Rye exemplifies the epigraph that opens this essay—it’s a book that spoke not only to the youth of its time but to generations of readers, critics, and teachers ever after.
Of course, I was also well aware that The Catcher in the Rye had many detractors, long before I began receiving unsolicited feedback. Even back in 1951, The New Republic declared that “The book as a whole is disappointing,” whereas the Christian Science Monitor warned that Salinger’s novel “is not fit for children to read,” both reviews setting the stage for the backlash to come. Within two years of its publication, the book was banned in several schools and libraries. In 1960, a teacher in my home state of Oklahoma was fired (although later rehired) for assigning the novel, and in the years to follow, The Catcher in the Rye has faced censorship in school districts all across the country. Curiously, it somehow became—for a time, anyway—one of the most frequently challenged books in American schools while also one of the most commonly taught. In fact, in the case of the latter point, that’s how most Americans first encounter The Catcher in the Rye; it’s compulsory reading in high school. For some, that’s the problem.
To be clear, the people who tell me they hate The Catcher in the Rye don’t exactly fit the profile of torch-wielding fanatics. Many are friends, acquaintances, and colleagues—all of them reasonable, intelligent adults. Nobody you’d see at a book burning. They just have strong opinions.
A few years after I began getting these in-person complaints, I happened to read poet Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings. In her critically acclaimed 2020 book of essays, Hong briefly discusses The Catcher in the Rye, thoughtfully encapsulating the legitimate ire of seemingly all those who hate the book:
My ninth-grade teacher told us that we would all fall in love with Catcher in the Rye. The elusive maroon cover added to its mystique. I kept waiting to fall in love with Salinger’s cramped, desultory writing until I was annoyed. Holden Caulfield was just some rich prep school kid who cursed like an old man, spent money like water, and took taxis everywhere. He was an entitled asshole who was as supercilious as the classmates he calls ‘phony.’ (69)
Nothing Hong says about Holden here is demonstrably false. And had I read The Catcher in the Rye as a teenager, it’s possible I would’ve felt the same way. After all, I’m a half-Chinese, half-white son of an oilfield worker and a nurse. I went to public school in rural Oklahoma and attended state university on scholarship. Unlike Holden, my formative years were pockmarked by racist taunts; hell, I didn’t get a chance to visit New York City until I was in my 30s. The kind of privilege that Holden is able to access would be entirely unfamiliar—and unavailable—to my teenage self.
Hong’s teenage criticisms of Salinger’s novel have support from educators, too. Back in 2009, The New York Times published an article by culture reporter Jennifer Schuessler suggesting that the book was no longer connecting with teenagers. As one teacher put it, “I had a lot of students comment, ‘I can’t really feel bad for this rich kid with a weekend free in New York City.’” With all that’s been happening globally in the last four years, it wouldn’t be surprising if kids today had an even dimmer view of Holden’s plight.
To tell the truth, I didn’t grow up with The Catcher in the Rye, so it’s not a book I view through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. In fact, I didn’t read it until college and not even as part of a required English course. I just randomly bought it one weekend from the now-defunct Hastings Entertainment store in Stillwater, Oklahoma. I remember liking it, but the novel must have made such a minimal impression on me that I didn’t read it again until I landed my current job almost two decades later. Even now, I wouldn’t say that it’s my all-time favorite book. It may not even be in the top ten.
However, when I joined the sophomore English team, the course head assured me that Salinger’s novel was very popular among students. He wasn’t kidding. When filling out course evaluations at the end of each year, my students have overwhelmingly voted it number one as the text they found most personally meaningful. I can’t tell you how many times former students—boys and girls alike—have reported, completely unprompted, that the novel was their favorite of everything we read in my class.
Is it because of where I teach? Possibly, but I’m not so sure. From afar, the private school where I work might bear a passing resemblance to Holden’s Pencey Prep, but the demographics are dramatically different: my students are predominantly nonwhite and/or multiracial—often a mix of Asian, Pacific Islander, and/or European ancestry. It’s a coeducational school located in Hawai‘i attended by local, continental, and international students of varying class backgrounds, not a cloistered all-white, all-male, all-East Coast school like Pencey Prep. Make of that what you will.
Is it because of how I teach? Maybe. Unlike Cathy Park Hong’s ninth-grade teacher, I’ve never once told the students that they are going to love the novel—or anything else that we read. It’s a fool’s errand. Don’t get me wrong, I used to be the kind of guy in college who said, “You gotta read/watch this!” I was an evangelist for Evil Dead II, Hong Kong cinema, and Kurt Russell movies. To this day, I love niche things like Twin Peaks, Kamen Rider, and hardboiled detective fiction, but I don’t proselytize anymore. At a certain age, I just stopped expecting everyone to share my interests.
And yet, interest is exactly what this novel generates in my classroom. Every academic quarter, I make a printout of the seating chart so I can keep track of class participation. By the end of The Catcher in the Rye, the entire page is filled with notations, as even students who’ve been quiet all year suddenly find their voices. They may not all love the book, but they do seem to love talking about it, which is a godsend for any teacher. What’s even better is that they often have something truly meaningful to say. Times may change but what it feels like to be a teenager does not.
Most of the classic texts we read in high school center on the problems facing full-grown adults. The few prominent literary works that focus on the struggles of youth are often told from the perspective of a more mature and eloquent narrator looking back on their childhood. But The Catcher in the Rye is different. It deals with the adult world through the eyes and voice of a teenager who is ill-equipped to understand it. In the eyes of my 15-year-old students, I think The Catcher in the Rye offers a compelling difference.
To me, the many complaints I’ve heard about Holden Caulfield are actually the strengths of the novel. The character is notoriously inconsistent, even hypocritical in his views. And yet, for someone who thinks constantly about the past, Holden is not someone prone to self-examination. While embarking on numerous tangents that reveal more about himself than he intends, the character seems perpetually on the verge of an epiphany. But just as Holden approaches an important realization or an uncomfortable truth about himself, he promptly changes the subject with a single word: “Anyway.”
There’s a pivotal moment in the novel when Holden, desperate for the slightest spark of human connection, meets up with a former classmate, Carl Luce. Despite his best intentions, Holden behaves poorly, ultimately prompting Carl to reiterate his earlier advice to visit a psychoanalyst. Holden is anxious about the idea, but Carl emphasizes what he sees as the primary benefit of therapy: “For one thing, he’d help you to recognize the patterns of your mind” (164). Not coincidentally, this is exactly how my English class approaches Holden’s unreliable narration.
From the very beginning, Salinger’s novel asks you to pay attention to Holden and to identify patterns in his behavior—patterns that he does not recognize and cannot seem to escape. By having my students analyze such an obviously flawed character, my hope is that they will also examine their own flaws, albeit at a safe remove. I ask them to take the same hypercritical lens they place upon the novel’s protagonist and turn it back on themselves. After all, Holden is the hero of his own story, just as we all are heroes in our own.
At the same time, I try to model empathy. Whether the students like or dislike Holden, it’s important to remember that as judgmental as the character is, he has been deeply traumatized by the death of his younger brother, Allie. On top of that, he’s haunted by the memory of James Castle, a classmate at a previous school who died by suicide rather than compromise his principles. And if those two things weren’t enough, there’s even the implication that Holden is a victim of sexual abuse. There are dark depths to Holden Caulfield, and throughout the novel, he thinks constantly of self-harm and death. Yes, he’s a spoiled rich kid, as his detractors would argue. But Holden’s behavior serves as a stark reminder that money doesn’t always bring happiness, and depression doesn’t just magically go away.
In our post-Columbine era of school shootings, The Catcher in the Rye also provides a relevant venue to discuss a specifically American problem. It’s no secret that the novel has been linked to several notoriously violent acts in the latter part of the 20th century. Mark David Chapman, the man who fatally shot John Lennon, strongly identified with Holden Caulfield, even going so far as to read a passage from the novel at his sentencing. Robert John Bardo, the stalker who killed actress Rebecca Schaeffer, brought along a red paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye on the day that he shot her. And guess what was found among the possessions of John Hinckley Jr., the attempted assassin of President Ronald Reagan? I think you know.
Thanks to these three high-profile crimes, The Catcher in the Rye seems inextricably connected to gun violence. And it’s not just something that exists outside the text. One scene from the novel, in particular, seems to crystallize this disturbing association, especially for contemporary readers. It occurs early in The Catcher in the Rye, when a classmate named Ackley makes a remark about the peculiarity of Holden’s red hunting hat:
“Up home we wear a hat like that to shoot deer in, for Chrissake,” he said. “That’s a deer shooting hat.”
“Like hell it is.” I took it off and looked at it. I sort of closed one eye, like I was taking aim at it. “This is a people shooting hat,” I said. “I shoot people in this hat” (26).
Holden does not elaborate further on what he means, and Ackley drops the subject. It’s an unsettling moment for most students, as Holden’s behavior sets off immediate and obvious red flags: at face value, he seems like prime school shooter material. In truth, Holden’s sniping is wholly verbal and largely limited to private judgments of others; whatever fantasies of violence come to mind more often center on his own death than anyone else’s. And unlike the orchestrators of the tragedies at Sandy Hook and Uvalde, Holden wants to preserve the innocence of children, not destroy it. Still, the novel’s darker legacy raises the question of whether literature is truly dangerous, and its depiction of Holden’s feelings of grief, guilt, and depression allows for an honest discussion about mental health issues and the necessity of seeking help.
I understand the knee-jerk disdain that some people feel for Holden, but I also think he’s worthy of grace. Throughout the novel, Holden’s sometimes perceptive, oftentimes misguided views about the world suggest that he is a very confused young man. But even if he is wrong about a great many things, Holden is not irredeemable. He is complicated and contradictory, as many of us were as teenagers, and as many of us still are.
Today’s teenagers are under more pressure than ever, and they have been born into a world dominated by screens. And yet, the very technology that was meant to bring us together instead seems to be only driving us farther apart. Social media has become an arena for rumor-mongering and bullying, contributing heavily to feelings of anxiety and depression among teens. Heavily filtered and carefully curated photos give an increasingly distorted view of reality, a standard of beauty that no teen could possibly live up to. And more recently, with the advent of ChatGPT and its AI brethren, the temptation of plagiarism has grown exponentially, as cheating becomes virtually undetectable—and worse, unprovable. Through the paradoxical coexistence of Holden’s instinctual hatred for phonies and his own propensity for lying, The Catcher in the Rye continually asks whether it is even possible to live a truly authentic life, a question that continues to resonate today.
Ultimately, the novel is about living. It is about living with grief, which has become all the more meaningful after the global tragedy of COVID-19. And it is about living with disappointment, which is now a daily reality as institutions crumble around us, authority figures let us down, and sage answers seem few and far between. It is also about putting childish things away while never losing your childlike wonder for the world. In the end, Holden chooses life when death previously seemed like the only viable solution to his problems. The ending leaves Holden to an uncertain fate, and, for some, it is anticlimactic. Yes, “nothing happens” to Holden at the end of the novel, but in my experience, nothing can be a truly beautiful thing. Holden lives another day. And that is something. Whether you love the novel or hate it or feel somewhere in between, I see value in The Catcher in the Rye—it can be a phenomenal educational tool if used well.
Of course, you could argue that nothing I’ve said about the novel was J.D. Salinger’s intention. I don’t think it matters. It doesn’t matter what Salinger meant or what he was really like as a person or why the novel was a favorite of the man who killed John Lennon. But it also doesn’t matter that the novel has been beloved by generations of readers or has sold a bazillion copies worldwide.
All that really matters is that if approached in a thoughtful way, The Catcher in the Rye just might make a student feel a little less alone in this great, big world. And isn’t that the point of literature? Of art in general?
I can’t help but think of the moment when Holden muses on the qualities of a good novel, as it captures a feeling universal to all who love to read:
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though. (22)
In life, that feeling may not happen very often, but when it does, it can be revelatory, even life-changing. Reading is an inherently solitary, intimate act, a shared exchange between author and reader. This mental link defies the laws of physics, traversing both time and space in an instant, transcending even an author’s death. When you read, the voice in your head is both the author’s and yours—a feeling of connection that even the best and brightest works from the realms of cinema, television, and the theater cannot wholly reproduce. It’s this same feeling of connection that Holden Caulfield seeks throughout the novel—to understand and to truly be understood. And isn’t that what we all want in life?
Anyway, that’s why I teach The Catcher in the Rye.
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