Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye: Holden Caulfield’s Wish
- Meri Utkovska
- Jan 1, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 16
73 years ago, when the world was still licking the fresh wounds World War Two had so generously given, and humanity seemed to have suffered enough, J.D. Salinger wrote The Catcher in the Rye.
Like all great writing, it spoke from the deepest parts of the human experience, to those same parts that the human experience often holds in silence - and by doing so, gave voice to our shared loneliness, angst, and innocence.
73 years later, the world has not yet learned that, even though children have to, eventually, leave the golden, wind-swaying arms of the rye field, they still need a field to be children in.
As our planet starts her new, undiscovered yet ubiquitous path around the sun, hope - that only good will come to us - colours the smoke of sky-high fireworks, long-due hugs, and drunken eyes.
And, even though it might be a fickle little thing, hope is what keeps us watering that rye field.
On Salinger’s birthday, we remember the beautiful conversation between The Catcher in the Rye’s hero, Holden Caulfield and his beloved little sister, Phoebe.
“Daddy’s going to kill you. He’s going to kill you,” she said. I wasn’t listening, though. I was thinking about something else -- something crazy. “You know what I’d like to be?” I said. “You know what I’d like to be. I mean if I had my goddam choice?” “What? Stop swearing.” “You know that song ‘If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye’? I’d like--” “It’s ‘If a body meet a body coming through the rye!’ ” old Phoebe said. “It’s a poem. By Robert Burns.” “I know it’s a poem by Robert Burns.” She was right, though. It is “If a body meet a body coming through the rye.” I didn’t know it then, though. “I thought it was ‘If a body catch a body,’ ” I said. “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around -- nobody big, I mean -- except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff -- I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.” Old Phoebe didn’t say anything for a long time. Then, when she said something, all she said was, “Daddy’s going to kill you.”
More like this:
Get the first edition of the book (pictured above) at Whitmore Rare Books.
About J.D. Salinger
Born on January 1st, 1919, in Manhattan, New York, Jerome David Salinger was an American author best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye.
A son to a Jewish father and a Christian mother, Salinger grew up in New York City, like The Catcher in the Rye's hero, Holden Caulfield.
He spent a brief period at New York and Columbia universities, and after that, devoted himself entirely to writing. Salinger’s stories began to appear in periodicals in 1940, and, after returning from service in the U.S. Army (1942–46), he became increasingly associated with The New Yorker magazine.
The New Yorker published most of his stories, with many of them making use of his wartime experiences: “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948) concerns the suicide of the sensitive, despairing veteran Seymour Glass, and “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” (1950) describes a U.S. soldier’s poignant encounter with two British children.
Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, and major critical and popular recognition followed. He became a recluse and emphatically declined when asked for the rights to adapt the novel for Broadway or Hollywood.
The last work Salinger published during his lifetime was a novella titled Hapworth 16, 1924, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1965.
He died on January 27th, 2010 (aged 91), in New Hampshire.
More Books by J.D. Salinger
Franny and Zooey
(paperback)
Description
courtesy of Bookshop.org
"Perhaps the best book by the foremost stylist of his generation" (New York Times), J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey collects two works of fiction about the Glass family originally published in The New Yorker.
"Everything everybody does is so--I don't know--not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and--sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much, only in a different way."
A novel in two halves, Franny and Zooey brilliantly captures the emotional strains and traumas of entering adulthood. It is a gleaming example of the wit, precision, and poignancy that have made J. D. Salinger one of America's most beloved writers.
Product Details
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Publish Date: May 01, 1991
Pages: 176
Language: English
TypeBook: Paperback
EAN/UPC: 9780316769495
Dimensions: 6.7 X 4.1 X 0.5 inches | 0.2 pounds BISAC Categories: Popular Fiction, Literary Fiction
Nine Stories
(paperback)
Description
courtesy of Bookshop.org
The "original, first-rate, serious, and beautiful" short fiction (New York Times Book Review) that introduced J. D. Salinger to American readers in the years after World War II, including "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and the first appearance of Salinger's fictional Glass family.
Nine exceptional stories from one of the great literary voices of the twentieth century. Witty, urbane, and frequently affecting, Nine Stories sits alongside Salinger's very best work--a treasure that will be passed down for many generations to come.
The stories:
A Perfect Day for Bananafish
Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut
Just Before the War with the Eskimos
The Laughing Man
Down at the Dinghy
For Esmé--with Love and Squalor
Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes
De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period
Teddy
Product Details
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Publish Date: May 01, 1991
Pages: 208
Language: English
TypeBook: Paperback
EAN/UPC: 9780316769501
Dimensions: 6.7 X 4.1 X 0.6 inches | 0.2 pounds
BISAC Categories: Popular Fiction, Literary Fiction
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour
(paperback)
Description
courtesy of Bookshop.org
The last book-length work of fiction by J. D. Salinger, published in his lifetime, collects two novellas about "one of the liveliest, funniest, most fully realised families in all fiction" (New York Times).
These two novellas, set seventeen years apart, are both concerned with Seymour Glass--the eldest son of J. D. Salinger's fictional Glass family--as recalled by his closest brother, Buddy.
"He was a great many things to a great many people while he lived, and virtually all things to his brothers and sisters in our somewhat outsized family. Surely he was all real things to us: our blue-striped unicorn, our double-lensed burning glass, our consultant genius, our portable conscience, our supercargo, and our one full poet..."
Product Details
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Publish Date: May 01, 1991
Pages: 176
Language: English
TypeBook: Paperback
EAN/UPC: 9780316769518
Dimensions: 6.8 X 4.2 X 0.6 inches | 0.2 pounds
BISAC Categories: Popular Fiction, Literary Fiction
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