I started writing this the day the J.D. Salinger died, almost a week ago. I'm not as moved as I was at the time, but I still think this is a share-worthy post.
For some reason, I am wrapped up in the loss of J. D. Salinger. Not that his passing was tragic—if you make it to 91 in good health and good spirits, you certainly have lived a blessed life.
And his personal life certainly wasn’t something to be emulated—the two significant relationships in his life were with women whom he convinced to drop out of college to live with him (22 and 18 years old at the time, respectively), and he was 36 and 53 when he met each of them. He was certainly not a model husband or companion, and he often refused to take his ailing children to the doctor.
But this same man produced what is possibly the most important book written by an American since World War II. Though that statement remains disputable, this one does not: The Catcher in the Rye is the reason for young adult fiction as we know it today.
Perhaps it’s not the reason for such blockbuster crazes as Twilight or Harry Potter, but I’m not interested in blockbuster crazes. I am interested in YA writers who write for love of their young adult audience, who create beautiful, relatable works in the hope that a teenager might feel a little less alone and a little more understood. Think John Green (Looking For Alaska, Paper Towns), Jerry Spinelli (Maniac Magee, Stargirl), Judy Blume (Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret), Maureen Johnson (13 Little Blue Envelopes), Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak, Catalyst) and Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower).
All of these works (and countless more in the YA genre) touch on extremely edgy content: peer pressure, illness, divorce, drugs, gangs, crime, violence, and sexuality. Speak and The Perks of Being a Wallflower explore rape and child abuse. Many of the central issues that are found in YA books are not pretty. But therein lies the strength and importance of the genre; it confronts these issues and how they affect young people. The authors tell heartbreaking and beautiful truths about the human spirit through the lens of a flawed, adolescent character enduring them.
And Salinger was the author who made that possible.
Before Catcher was published, the typical young adult novel was either a “high adventure” book, like Swiss Family Robinson or Treasure Island (which are certainly excellent books, but not necessarily relatable for the modern, teenaged reader) or some incarnation of the following formula: male heroes were diamonds in the rough; female heroines were smart and “ill-bred” (normally because she was an orphan), so that her development mostly involves being raised in a proper home by a stern lady or couple who teach her manners, until she becomes an (no longer exceptional) adult (Think Anne of Green Gables (which remains a favorite of mine) and Pollyanna.)
Salinger introduced the teenaged antihero, one that we do not aspire to be like or aspire to be with. Most of the adults in my young adult fiction class complained that Holden Caulfield was a whiney, obnoxious kid. He is flawed and insecure, and though he tries throughout to book to find some sort of outlet for what he is feeling, he has absolutely no idea how to deal with being that way.
Which, I would argue, is exactly how roughly 99.9998% of Americans have felt at one time or another in their young adult lives.
Holden does physically what many of us did metaphorically in our young adulthood; he wanders from place to place and person to person, seeking solace from his pain and confusion. In his depression, he ends up in the company of several prostitutes and in a few bars.
This is where many people take issue with Catcher, and YA literature in general; many feel that adult themes have no place in a book geared toward people somewhere between childhood and adulthood. I personally think that teenagers themselves oughtn’t to end up in the situations that pop up in current YA literature (using drugs, binge drinking, sleeping around, etc) because I don’t think it’s healthy or productive. But I do not object to those situations being written into YA books.
Why? There is no better way to illustrate the fact that the characters are caught in the tension between innocence and experience, lost, lonely, and certainly confused as to what they want and what they need. So they seek something, anything, to distract them from their interior anguish.
So for the many who dislike The Catcher in the Rye (although I posit that they don’t like it because they’ve misunderstood it), remember that we owe a very important division of modern literature to the indomitable Mr. Salinger. He gave us Holden Caulfield and forged a whole new dimension of literature, where many a young adult reader could take refuge.
Some of the ideas expressed herein are inspired by/paraphrases of statements made by John Green, an American young adult fiction author.
Works Cited
Green, John. Vlog Brothers. 22 Jul. 2008. 29 Jan. 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers
Green, John. Vlog Brothers. 02 Aug. 2008. 29 Jan. 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers
Green, John. Vlog Brothers. 26 Aug. 2008. 29 Jan. 2010
http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers.
*When you really like an author, especially one who keeps a video log, you feel really badly if you don’t cite his work!*
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