Written 2020 or 2021
Aaron -- I think he said Holden overanalyzes everything. I said I liked it but I didn't know why, it didn't have a plot. Aaron said the plot is he's in the asylum... We talked about it in the computer lab, must have been 8th grade. I expected it would be about Lennon's murder.
I think I read it twice -- 8th grade and 9th? I recall laughing aloud and much when some man caresses him while he's sleeping...? I recall the football game, the old eye at the club, a carousel, "phony",... graffiti at the school
Sometimes he overgeneralizes (obvious) and sometimes he's exceedingly specific ("you don't even care if a girl keeps her kings in the back row")
I have finished now. Why didn't I own this book?? I may have been afraid of it. It was mystical to me -- it had mystical power and presence, originally. I forgot about it for years, or feared it! It makes little rational sense I kept such distance. I was afraid -- like afraid to rewatch Synecdoche, or hear Bob, but this is even deeper-recessed. This is 8th and 9th grade, Aaron who left me, the very first rumors of higher intelligence, emotion, awareness -- which all felt mystical, like new frightening powerful alien forms of being. I was transforming, and Catcher represented this new alien power. It was contact with alien being. So I feared and revered the book. I blocked it out. Shame.
Imperative is his attempt at preserving childlike purity, innocence, authenticity, goodness. Kids are "nice" to him. Quaint changeless things are "nice". I'm not sure whether this comes first, or second to another imperative: Allie. He wants to save Allie from dying, and/or aging. He's afraid of the world aging, changing, complicating, withering? Children, purity, Allie, changelessness, authenticity, innocence
He never contacts Jane in the book, though he seems to love her. He's afraid she's changed and corrupted?
Greatest offenses: "fuck you" at an elementary school to corrupt/age kids; Stradlater corrupting/aging Jane through sex -- these are his most violent moments. Stradlater probably offends his ideas of purity, youth, immutability, more than Jane. It may take till the last "I wasn't in the mood to give Jane a buzz" for readers to realize Jane herself is not the important theme in that narrative.
Children are not phonies -- children are authentic, interesting, pure,... Why does he hate phonies? Not as much as he hates impurity though. Phonies annoy him. He does hate them though. But then he might miss them... or is that just more authentic folk? (Stradlater, Ackley, Maurice)...
A carousel goes around repeatedly forever, and it symbolizes youth. If Phoebe goes on it, then she's still young, and will be forever. But she won't be.
The book frightened me because it represented an alien, higher form of consciousness, which I knew not but could just see. Now Holden is immature in many ways -- though still very profound. He's emotional -- an extremely sensitive emotional soul. But his instincts are penetrating, in human behavior especially. Like Bill...
Holden loves Allie, Phoebe as a child, Jane as a child, the museum when he was a child... I think he doesn't enter the museum for the same reason he doesn't call Jane: he's gotten cynical about any purity and job left. It may only be preserved in his memory now, and he fears that extinction.
Stradlater challenges the memory of pure Jane, and Holden wants to kill him. Same with Phoebe trying to leave with Holden?
Is this book all about his preserving youth, purity, innocence? Why write this book so orbiting children? What was Salinger's fixation on children? -- So it's seemingly not a book about introversion, intellectuals, even phonies really. Children are more central. Or Allie?
I mostly thought phonies and introverted intellectual when I last read it. Now I think children, Allie, purity, innocence, authenticity.
Jane seems beautiful, but she has probably withered. Phoebe probably will. Allie would have.
Bill and Aaron were both sensitive overanalyzing types, spun internally.
I love this book. It is not only insightful in a kindred and exceptional mind, but powerful, interesting, and meaningful in my history. It stands beside Tolkien.
