If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye

Deb’s Tuesday Prompt this week is tempting b/c it’s something I don’t think I’ve written about before: my favorite book.

Not surprising, I know. Nor is it original.

I feel about my favorite book the way I feel about my favorite movie (Gone With the Wind). Sure, it’s the favorite of a lot of people and often a favorite just b/c it’s an easy choice. Everyone knows what book/film you’re talking about. You can enjoy them on a surface level and never delve deeply enough to pick up the nuances of the art, which is absolutely fine and enough reason to pick them as favorites. But for an obsessive re-reader and re-watcher, like me, the piece has to hold up under repeated scrutiny. It has to offer something new with every experience. As the audience (me) changes, the work has to hold new meaning and new perspective. And every time I think, “Is this really my favorite?” and I experience them again, the answer always turns out to be “yes.”

As far as The Catcher In the Rye goes, my introduction to the book was the same as most every American’s: high school AP English. We had a slew of books to read, about one a month with more time given for longer pieces (like An American Tragedy). Our first assignment was in September (this is 1988) and our first book was The Catcher In the Rye. Our teacher, who was the father of a friend of mine already in college, said we needed to have our parents’ permission to read it. Everyone perked up. Now, kids, this was the old days before busybodies decreed that they had the right to veto every literature choice made by teacher. Nor did we have any kind of permission slip. We had “the honor system,” which meant we had to go home, ask and report the answer. If a parent objected, the student would simply be given another book and a separate test (but would still be in class during chapter discussions, etc.).

Ah, the 80s. So anyway…

I went home, my scarlet-covered book clutched in my eager little hand, and I asked Flora if I was allowed to read it. She shrugged. Her theory was that if it was assigned reading, it was assigned reading. So that night I opened the well-worn copy and started reading. Two days later, I was done. And I read it again and again and again until test time. I actively participated in all the discussions (as did a lot of my class).

And I never read any other books that year. I became a Cliffs Notes convert, even sharing my notes with the boy in front of me — the only boy I reeeeally liked in my entire school*. Cliffs Notes: The English Major’s friend. Our class geek chastized us for using the notes and then we both got a higher score on the essay test than he did. Ass.

I had to give back my copy of TCitR after our assignment. My freshman year in college, I hung out quite a bit with DM2. Somehow we found transportation to a local bookstore and, while browsing, I saw that scarlet cover. I said, “Oh! I love this book!” Not having much money, the idea of buying a book was a little foreign. But I had to have it so I paid my $3.95 and I read it and read it and read it.

When I found out they were going to stop printing the scarlet-cover version, I was gobsmacked. TCitR w/o a red cover? But… how? Why? Ugh! And the cover was/is precarious on my precious edition. So one year, for Christmas, Hawk got me the hardcover edition w/ the carousel horse cover.

I have never read it.

When it’s time for me to get a fix, I turn to my little scarlet-cover paperback, which I keep separate from all my other books — in my bedside table drawer (don’t worry; I have three drawers — one just for batteries, so the legend goes). I just can’t imagine reading another edition, although I’m going to have to in order to preserve my cover.

Why do I like it? You can look at my son’s birth certificate to answer that question. It’s all about the narrator. It’s the character, the consistency, the voice, the language… it’s that the narrative is so completely entwined in the narrator. Is it the most compelling story in the world? No. Is Holden a perfect character? Well, it depends on your point of view. I think he’s about as perfect a narrator as you can get. Salinger lets us see Holden’s flaws and strengths by letting us decode what we’re being shown versus what Holden, well, holds back. He’s funny. He’s candid. He’s cynical. He’s contemporary to his own time and to mine. Reading the story as an adult, I see so much more and feel so much more about him than I did when I first read it at 16.

Naming my son “Holden” wasn’t a flippant choice. Since the lawsuit, I’ve had the question come up about where his name came from. Some people assume I got it off “As The World Turns” (a fine Holden, no doubt, and one I knew before Holden Caulfield). One interviewer said it sounded like an “old money” name. I guess it does.

But most people know the reference of his name. And I told Hawk before we even had kids that I got dibs on the first boy’s name. I said I didn’t care if it was a first or a middle name but he’d be a Holden. Hawk was fine with that. That he chose the name “Zoe” for our daughter was a coincidence. I’ve only had one or two people say, upon hearing the kids’ names, “Wow. Big Salinger fans?” But Zooey is a dude. Still…

I have a couple of quick notes about the name “Holden.” In The Good Girl, the Jennifer Aniston character asks the Jake Gyllenhaal character what he’s reading. “Catcher in the Rye… I’m named after it.” She says, “What’s your name? Catcher?” I don’t think there’s any reference to his name in Chasing Amy so I won’t bring up Holden McNeil. He didn’t even have the “What’s a Nubian?” line.

So that’s kinda-sorta the story of my favorite book, even though it’s more about the ways the book has manifested in my life than about the book itself. That it has become an inextricable part of my life speaks to why it’s my favorite more than any simple explanation could.

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* When our class was assigned An American Tragedy, the jock crowd (of which he was kind of a part) was trying desperately to find out the movie based on the book. Being the film buff I am, I knew (A Place In The Sun) but I wouldn’t confess, not even to Cute Boy.