2013 Book #6: The Catcher In the Rye – Shelf it.
What is it about the classics that they start of as boring. Heck, the whole first three quarters of The Catcher In The Rye bored me out of my skull. I keep putting it down and reading something else. Such was the case with To Kill A Mockingbird which took me 9 months to finish. My writing buddy even called it the “Dry Rye” because so dry it was. This thin book took me six months to read!
But you know what? I never gave up on it. Why? Because I was curious and I persisted. And it just took me decades to finally buy this book. By the way, this book was a giftcard gift by a friend for my two boys. Which of course meant I had first dibs, right?
How many times have other writers quoted and referred to The Rye in their writings? Too many times if you ask me. My favourite Filipino columnist back in the 90s, Jessica Zafra, mention The Rye a number of times in her columns. Funny that, my high school teachers skipped telling us about this “coming of age” story, as it is apparent that other folk made book reports of The Rye in high school.
The main reason why this narrative will bore you out of your brain is the writing style. In my humble opinion, this book was written more for writers than for readers. It’s written in the first person. The protagonist is Holden Caulfield, a graduating high school student who keeps dropping out of schools. Every single thought that he thinks is described in the book at length. We all know that our thoughts are not exciting 24×7. That’s it. That’s why its boring. But a writer will tell you that this is the essence of writing. We all begin our lives as amateur writers by simply putting down our thoughts in paper. Every breath we take. What I had for breakfast this morning. How funny the man in the burgundy suit looks. How I need to brush my teeth right now!
Here’s a passage from the book that I enjoyed the most. Don’t give up on it…read it until the very end.
“Then I sat down on this bench. I could hardly get my breath, and I was still sweating like a bastard. I sat there, I guess, for about an hour. Finally, what I decided I’d do, I decided I’d go away. I decided I’d never go home again and I’d never go away to another school again. I decided I’d just see old Phoebe and sort of say good-by to her and all, and give her back her Christmas dough, and then I’d start hitchhiking my way out West. What I’d do, I figured, I’d go down to the Holland Tunnel and bum a ride, and then I’d bum another one, and another one, and another one, and in a few days I’d be somewhere out west where it was very pretty and sunny and where nobody’d know me and I’d get a job. I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people’s cars….I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody…and then I’d be through with having conversations for the rest of my life.” – page 198, The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger