Subject: catcher's glass
From: MR DANIEL C CAINE (ZKYX09A@prodigy.com)
Date: Fri Apr 18 1997 - 13:33:12 GMT
After lurking through a couple of digests, I'm finding it hard to see
a convenient place to latch onto this list. I've visited parts of
the list archives and am impressed by the sheer volume over such a
short time. The "bananafish" website is wonderful, even without
supplying many of JDS's words; I've learned a lot from it.
If introductions are de rigeur around here, I'll start by confiding
that I've been a JDS fan since the age of twelve, when out of idle
curiosity a grabbed a paperback from my parents' bookshelf and began
to turn its pages. The book was TCitR, and over the years since I've
reread it many times (often by the way of teaching high school). I
suppose one of its strong appeals originally was that I considered
it forbidden, what with all Holden's sour outlook and especially his
profanity, as if the author and I were engaged in some sort of
conspiracy. (That paperback-- God, I wish I still had it!-- pictured
Holden on the front cover, wearing his red hunting hat. The blurb
said something like, "You may love this book , or you may hate it.
It may make you laugh or make you cry. But you will never forget
it!" How true!)
Today I value it for many reasons: its vibrant characterizations,
especially of Jane Gallagher, who never actually appears; its
wonderful interconnectedness and general craftsmanship; its
ambiguities in the final chapters. I'm sure I could go on. I read
"Nine Stories" in my university years, but only recently have I gone
one with "F&Z" and "Raise High." Currently, I'm in my final ascent
to the summit via "Seymour" (and it's no express train, either).
Anyway, a couple of remarks in re "Catcher": during a recent
epiphany, it seemed to me that I had been overlooking a motif of some
importance. "See more glass," said little Sybil Carpenter, and I did
just that: the window through which Holden decides not to throw a
snowball; the museum displays in their glass cases; the broken garage
windowpanes at the Caulfield summer home; visions through windows at
the Edmont hotel; Phoebe's lie about Holden's cigarette... Hell, I
dunno. Its one thing to dwell within one's childhood, but another
entirely to keep it hermetically sealed, under glass as it were.
At Borders recently I found a Twayne paperback of Sanford Pinsker's
"The Catcher in the Rye: Innocence Under Pressure." It was a good
read, and I'm largely in agreement with it. I'm not sure about its
premises concerning the 1950s; in fact, I think the novel has more to
do with Rousseau than with any of JDS's contemporaries. I would have
liked Mr. Pinsker to probe a little deeper into Jane, Holden's sexual
fears, Antolini, and the silent scene of Holden, Phoebe (asleep) in
DB's room. Anyone else have comments about this book?
--Dan
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