WHAT’S THE STORY?
DEEMED to be the archetypal coming-of-age novel, one of the world’s biggest-selling and most famous novels is now a septuagenarian, reaching the ripe old age of 70.
The Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger was published on July 16, 1951, and was an immediate success that went to become a true literary phenomenon. It was a huge bestseller – some 65 million copies have been sold and nowadays it is selling a million per year worldwide – and massively influential, not least because of the controversy that has surrounded the book over the ensuing seven decades.
The misadventures and musings of its protagonist Holden Caulfield have inspired and mystified generations of teenagers, for whom reading The Catcher In The Rye has become something of a rite of passage.
WHAT’S THE SCOTTISH LINK?
WE at The National don’t always have to put a kilt on something – except Italian football managers – but in this case it’s justified as Salinger had Scottish ancestry on his mother’s side.
Like John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men, Salinger also took his inspiration from a Burns poem.
The title of the book comes from Caulfield mishearing the words of Burns as sung by a little boy. This passage has Holden telling his little sister Phoebe all about it: “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.”
WHO WAS SALINGER?
JEROME David Salinger was born the son of a Jewish cheese merchant, Sol, in New York on January 1, 1919, his grandfather Simon having been a rabbi who became a doctor – he is the basis of Holden Caulfield’s grandfather in the book.
Salinger was always known as “Sonny” to his family who indulged his rebelliousness as it was a family trait. He was enrolled in a private school and then the Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania.
He edited class newspapers and began writing short stories before going to New York University in 1936. He dropped out in his freshman year and, encouraged by his father, went to Europe to learn the meat import business but came home hurriedly when Germany moved into Austria.
He took several jobs and enrolled in writing classes, one of them run by Whit Burnett, editor of Story magazine who encouraged his ambition to become a writer. The war interrupted and Salinger served in the US Army seeing action on D-Day and in the Battle of the Bulge. He took time out to meet his hero Ernest Hemingway, then a war correspondent, before being one of the American liberators of Kaufering IV, a sub-camp of Dachau concentration camp, and then suffering combat stress, what we would now recognise as post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result.
Speaking German and French, he volunteered for the Denazification programme in Germany where he married Sylvia Welter – the marriage lasted less than a year.
Before going off to the forces Salinger had submitted a story to the New Yorker called Slight Rebellion Off Madison, featuring the character Holden Caulfield. The magazine eventually published it in 1946 and Salinger’s writing career began to flourish.
Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn even bought one of his stories, Uncle Wiggily In Connecticut, and remade it as A Foolish Heart. It bombed and Salinger vowed never to have his work filmed again.
He had also ha a relationship with Oona O’Neill, daughter of the playwright Eugene, but it ended when she went off to marry Charlie Chaplin. Later in life Salinger would have a string of relationships with young women.
Then came The Catcher in the Rye, with Caulfield being a thinly disguised Salinger. It made Salinger comfortable financially and having embraced Buddhism and Hinduism, and other religions later, he became a virtual recluse in New Hampshire with his second wife Claire and two daughters.
It is believed that he wrote as many as 15 novels and many more stories but published only a few short stories, though his third wife Colette and their son Matt are pledged to publish all of them eventually.
WHY WAS THE BOOK SO CONTROVERSIAL?
IF you have not already read it, then do yourself a favour and get hold of a copy. It will seem tame in these internet gross-out days, but it is very much worth reading.
Its increasing notoriety affected Salinger who hid away from the public and press. The criticism was mostly because of the bad language and the sexual frankness which was too much for many people in 1950s America. Even as late as the 1970s it was being banned in some schools.
Caulfield’s idiosyncratic view of life, his cynicism and disgust for “phonies” such as his own brother who becomes a screenwriter in Hollywood, made him the iconic anti-hero for teenagers. The irony being that Salinger set out to write adult fiction. Its fame has been double-edged. For all the condemnations it is regularly voted a favourite novel by many people.
WHY HAVE WE NEVER SEEN A FILM VERSION?
IT wasn’t for want of trying. Everyone from Steven Spielberg to Leonard DiCaprio has wanted to make a film. Salinger and subsequently his last wife and son have always refused, citing that early experience with Goldwyn. Salinger died at the age of 91 in 2010, but his greatest work will be read for centuries.
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