Date: 2023-09-16 Pages: 234 Have you ever heard of this book? I think it's relatively underground: a total classic in the making in my opinion. Admittedly, much of what I want to say has already been said in a more lyrical, interesting, and eloquent manner somewhere on the internet. I am also a bit self-disappointed that the first time I read The Catcher in the Rye wasn't earlier in my life — perhaps I could have benefitted more. These things aside, three thoughts keep pulsing in my mind: 1. When I was 15/16, I was in a bizarrely similar position to Holden Caulfield. I had money of my own for the first time and I had no life direction. Various forces — newfound freedom with pandemic restrictions lifting, newly narrowed goals, a lot of self-questioning around whether those goals were mine or exogenous — were combining in an ephemeral, faceless, colourful swirl that kept building & building & building in me. While I'm not sure I'm better at this now — I'd like to think I am — that summer was the first time I was also left, for the most part, alone, without a clear group of friends (thanks, pandemic) or purpose (the summer before the summer you apply for college — a highly confusing time). I spent the summer going around Toronto trying to make relationships and buy things I didn't need, maybe just to stop the loneliness. I'm still quite unhappy with that summer. Time (and selective memory loss, I'm sure) has reduced the wince whenever I think about how recklessly I would look for a motivation that could define my life in weird media corners of the internet; in social media; in other people. Yet for the steep price of a lot of wasted time wandering around, a lot of confusion with myself, a lot of heated arguments with those I love, and literally spending all of the money I had earned (much like Holden) I got some of the building blocks for the life that I now live & am very happy with. I met my (now) best friend, I learned to strike up a conversation with complete strangers, and I started to feel the importance of trying to do big, insane, self-imposed challenges. I also learned to be slightly better with money. Getting this practice in at that time of life was extremely, extremely, extremely painful. But two years later, when I had to do pushups in the Boston airport for the scholarship that changed my life, or approach Leslie David Baker at 5am in the Raleigh airport, or try and figure out what Stanford was like without any structured programming, or move to a new country by myself, or even write college essays, I felt a weird sense of gratitude for the absolute stupidity that guided my past self. I hope (it might be weird to hope for a character) that Holden at 18, or even Holden a few months later, has also reaped the fruits of his painful growth — that he has seen the value of other people, that he's found a way to live on his own terms, that he's made mistakes he doesn't need to make again. There are a lot of worse times to go through that first bizarre, uncomfortable period of life than 12, or 15. 2. Maybe another part of me hates the above self-comparison. It still feels, well, narcissistic. Self-relating to every book I've read seems a bit Barnum statement-esque (Holden Caulfield spent a lot of money wandering around a big city? Salinger must have been writing to me!) 2a. As a supplement to the above point — Holden Caulfield goes through things that I have never experienced. I don't want to liken the semi-existential thought of a 15 year old to some incredibly real and serious difficulties that Holden goes through. 3. There's this reddit comment on the book that says: "He's lost and scared. And in that context, his parents putting him into a psych hospital for a year for getting lost and scared one weekend, really tells us about the environment in which he lives. He doesn't even understand the concept of nurturing well enough to vocalize that is what he wants to give and receive. He's fumbling for those terms, but the best he can come up with is the idea of not letting children fall off a cliff" [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/5ihpl8/just_finished_catcher_in_the_rye_what_am_i_missing/db8bpy6/). I didn't grow up in that environment — and I think the worst thing I did that summer was push away the people who did care about me, and create a self-imposed circumstance more akin — but still very dissimilar — to Holden Caulfield's conditions. My high school English teacher told me that I was a little old for the first reading of Holden Caulfield, but not for the second or third or fourth or fifth (and so on). While this second reading was somber — and painful at times — I'm keen to see what it has set up, years down the line.