The recent demise of reclusive author J.D. Salinger has spawned numerous obituaries in the media. Most of them focus on his literary /cultural impact as the creator of Holden Caulfield, a character widely believed to have appealed to the youthful alienation experienced by several generations of young readers. Is Holden Caulfield a universal, timeless youth icon? Do today's youngsters feel the same way about him as their parents did? May be not. Writing in the Smart Set more than six months ago, author and blogger Morgan Meis speculated that the world has changed as has the young reader's opinion of Salinger's anti-hero.
I'm for the kids. It’s crazy not to be. Are you, dear reader, mighty Atlas, going to hold the world in place and keep it from changing into something new? One lesson of all hitherto existing human history is that the kids have the advantage in the long run. This is a function of time and finitude. The only real wisdom comes in realizing that the kids of today will get their comeuppance with the swift passing of a decade or so. They, too, will wake up one day to find themselves representatives of what was, instead of what shall be. The kids keep on coming.
We learned recently (from a New York Times articleby Jennifer Schuessler) that Holden Caulfield, the anti-hero of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, has lost his appeal among the teenage crowd. This came without fair warning. No pimply representative of the Millennials stepped forward to cushion the blow. Instead, we are informed by Barbara Feinberg — "who has observed numerous class discussions of 'Catcher'" — that a 15-year-old boy from Long Island has said, "Oh, we all hated Holden in my class. We just wanted to tell him, ‘Shut up and take your Prozac.’"
It is easy to respond defensively and with contempt. People don't like to have their heroes snubbed, especially when the snubbing comes from some little punk from Long Island whose fingers are surely rubbed raw from constant tweeting, texting, gaming, and masturbation. We (shall we define 'we' as that part of the population over 30?) find subtle ways to undercut the legions of cheeky hormone machines. Trying to explain the sudden disdain for Mr. Caulfield, a cultural critic by the name of Mr. Dickstein says,
The skepticism, the belief in the purity of the soul against the tawdry, trashy culture plays very well in the counterculture and post-counterculture generation. [Today], I wouldn’t say we have a more gullible youth culture, but it may be more of a joining or togetherness culture.
Indeed, Mr. Dickstein would never say that we have a more gullible youth culture now than in his time, except that he just did. Such are the sneaky tactics of the older generations in the face of youthful boldness.
I asked my co-bloggers if any of them had anything to say about Salinger or Holden Caulfield. No one did. Two of the younger authors, Joe and Andrew (both students of English lit) responded as follows:
Joe: [at] the moment I can't think of anything non-snarky to say, and I feel it might be (1) unwarranted and (2) unkind to the recently deceased.
Andrew: I'm not the biggest Salinger fan. I recently read Frank Portman's high school novel "King Dork," which rages against the institutionalization of Holden Caulfield as a nonconformist icon — the book asks, how can he be a nonconformist icon if every third-rate hack of a teacher presents him as such? Which is the point the Onion piece* was making..
Of all the articles in the media I have come across on Salinger recently, this essay by Meis written before the author's death, struck me as the most insightful. I myself read Catcher early enough before I was jaded by the worldliness of adulthood, probably in my latish teens. My reaction to it was a bit like the cheeky hormone machines of today although I didn't know Prozac. But in my case it may have been more of a cultural thing. I was a young girl in India in a different milieu inhabited by very different quality of angst.
Meis on Rye ends with this:
But the original lines have nothing to do with "catching." There is no catcher in the rye. In the Robert Burns poem it is "meeting" instead of "catching." If a body meeta body comin' through the rye. And that meeting leads directly to kissin'. That Salinger turned "meeting" into "catching," turned basic human interaction into paranoia and fear, is no fault of J.D. Salinger. Holden Caulfield spoke to three generations because alienation was real. It still is real. But not in the same way. There's a twist to the story that we are still trying fully to grasp. The kids are working on new metaphors. They have their own archetypes to construct. If that means saying goodbye to Holden Caulfield then so be it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he makes his eventual return, resurrected by the kids of the kids somewhere down the line when somebody has had a little too much of the phonies.
Where are the phonies? Are they from the past or will they rear their heads in the future? Meis is looking down the road for them and their inevitable hypocrisy. The Onion* seems to think that some are here, right now, lamenting the passing of an icon, whose cultural / spiritual half life may not be as lengthy as they had once believed. [link to the Onion via Sujatha]
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