Re: long ago...
Brendan McKennedy (suburbantourist@hotmail.com)
Sun, 11 Jan 1998 23:59:47 -0800 (PST)
> Holden's world is surely that of an America triumphant in
> the immediate aftermath of the war, enjoying a boom & not
> yet gripped by the nightmare of a Russian bomb coming in
> through the sky. His dismay is with the values of the adults
> he sees around him - the materialism & phoniness that
> eventually corrupts all humanity, not just the body politic.
Indeed...the only mention Holden makes of anything political
(that I've ever noticed) is his brief bit about the Bomb. He
says he's glad it was invented, and if they ever want to use
it again, he'll volunteer to sit right on top of it. Oh yes,
and just before that, he condemns D.B.'s hypocrisy about the
war and the "Art" it subsequently produced.
But suppose Catcher had been written last year? Now that America
is a veteran political entity, do you think Holden would address
that facet of his society? I'm not sure, myself. I've thought
a lot about the sort of immortal currency of Catcher--since I
first read it and Related To It in 1991, and since teenagers by
the boatload are still reading it and Relating To It. I don't
think the book would be very different had it been written last
year. I've only been to New York twice--and only the last time,
a couple of months ago, did I actually walk up around the Central
Park East and see the kinds of places where the Glasses and
Caulfields were living. They were exactly as I had imagined.
I don't know, what do you all think? Would Catcher be very
different now? Would modern politics invade Holden's stream-
of-consciousness? Or would he remain as (perhaps willingly)
ignorant of the political world today as he was in the late
Forties?
Because really, Hitler or Stalin or Castro or Saddam Hussein
(whatever your pleasure), the menace has always been there,
and I think it always will. In Tom Robbins' novel "Even
Cowgirls Get the Blues", any time anyone turns on a radio
or television, he mentions the International Scene, which
is "Deperate as usual".
Brendan
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