Re: Ages
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Tue, 27 Oct 1998 18:25:21 +1100
> I'm 46 but there are lots of times I feel like Holden. Maybe my wife is
> right about me not growing up, maybe I teach and read the catecher too
A spelling error I know ... but quite a Freudian one, don't you think? I
read that as `Catechism' (: The Catechism in the Rye. I've heard a lot of
people (myself included) carry it frequently upon their person like some
people hold a bible, to dip into when instant wisdom is required ...
> .so I get bitter or sad sometimes and yet the teacher in me
> will never let me stop wanting to be a catcher in the rye...
That comment has reawakened something in me that I only felt the very first
time I read TCIR - you know, when you were initially trying to see where
all the threads are going to lead to? It was the part where Holden is
telling the little boys in the Egyptian tomb the same things that were in
his English composition. It struck me straight away, I thought it was so
obvious all of a sudden and I expected it was going to be revealed as the
whole meaning of the book - *Holden is meant to be a teacher*! It seemed
all to make sense then - he cannot be a student because he is an innate
teacher; that is what he is meant to do. It's strange, it's barely occured
to me since then. But I guess, like you say, that a teacher (a *good*
teacher) is a kind of formalised catcher in the rye. Which is why Holden is
so distraught when Holden's own personal `Catcher' - Mr Antolini - betrays
him. And, having been a teacher of sorts myself, I realise the satisfaction
of being such a `catcher' and the intense disappointment when students
willingly jump over that cliff themselves (especially as my own brother is
one such student. Boy I wish he had a teacher like you, Will - although my
family and I have long since given up anyone drilling any sense into him.
He is more Holden than Holden is, right down to the .)
This is what I love about Salinger (I'm noticing the same thing about
Katherine Mansfield, a fascinating writer who I've been reading lately). On
first look, you think `Well ... what on earth was the significance of all
that?'. Their stories have a very smooth surface - you can't see the
machinery like you can in some other writers. And then you look closer, and
closer ... it's like a fractal, the further you go into it the more
fascinating detail you realise. This is the sort of thing genius is all
about. This is the reason people are *still* writing essays about Hamlet.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
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