The first time I read J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, I was in high school. I remembered it, among the many other books we were forced to read as an adolescent, but mainly because the "main guy thought everyone was a phony."
The second time I stumbled upon the book was on a movie set. I had recently moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, about a year after my graduation. "The Chester Story" was the first film I worked on as a bona fide Production Assistant. I was told specifically to take care of the star of our film, Teri Hatcher (post-Superman and pre-Desperate Housewives). This sometimes meant convincing the manager of a restaurant to please, pretty please, turn on the oven in the kitchen you have closed, and cook a dry, broiled, unseasoned piece of chicken for someone very important. Other days, I would entertain her daughter, Emerson, and when we had hours of downtime, Teri would challenge me to a game of Boggle on the back porch of a stranger's house. Despite the fact that these tasks seemed trivial and meaningless, especially in regards to the rest of the work that is done on a film set, I convinced myself that I was important. That fending off autograph hungry fans was absolutely necessary to the art of great film making.
One humid afternoon when we were shooting in a house on the edge of the Intercoastal Waterway, I wandered into one of the owner's many bedrooms to find a small bookcase by the doorway. While scanning the titles of the dusty mix of paperbacks and hardcovers, The Catcher in the Rye stood upright looking straight at me, almost asking me to pick it up. I glanced over my shoulder to see if any of the crew was watching me, because I so badly wanted to take it. It was a small and disheveled copy, so I delicately flipped through it's pages looking for Mr. Caulfield. I hope all of you have, at one point in your life, taken the time to smell the pages of an old book. The scent is so strong that it feels like it almost carried history along with it. I'd say that I'd wish they'd make it into a perfume, but honestly, I kind of like forgetting the smell and then being reminded of it when I browse through a used bookstore or garage sale.
Anyways, I lied to myself, and everyone else that asked about where I got my new book, by explaining that the Prop Master agreed I could have Salinger's masterpiece. This time when I read the words, I fell in love Holden Caulfield. Every opinion, every secret, every hate and desire he shared with me, made complete sense to a person having just left a sheltering hometown. I even found myself to hate phonies too, actually. Whatever I felt, was for this fictional character, a person that wasn't real in my life or anybody else's. Standing in the filtered light of a film set, I saw Holden and Mandy as one in the same.
Progressing through my early twenties, I read and reread Catcher a handful of times. The reason being, I was lost. There was so much I didn't understand, and plenty of reasons why I hated society like our hero did. Or, like I thought he did...
About 7 years later, I was assigned to read the book again, in one of my literature classes at Syracuse University. After almost a decade of relocating from place to place, city to city, I had made the decision to hunker down and get my degree. Ironically, I chose to come full circle, and finish it in my hometown. Since the last time I visited Holden, much had transpired and changed. I had my heart broken a couple of times, I had decided on a career, changed my mind, and decided again. I had lost friends, and gained new ones. I saw parts of Europe, and experienced different cultures. I went from hating myself, to liking who I was, and finally understanding the real Mandy Howard. In other words, I had grown up.
So when my professor sparked a debate in class about whether or not Caulfield was "depressed" or not, I was one of the only few that had his back. While this may have been the result of an obvious age gap between me and the rest of my classmates, I argued in his behalf so well that at the very least, I am sure I got at least one person to change their mind. I proposed that maybe our hero actually loved society. That he saw them in the most brightest of lights, that maybe only he, could really appreciate people- both good and bad aspects of them, because he listened and saw them more clearly than any of us do. I believe, like Holden, that we should expect the best from each other. And like this character, I am also hypersensitive to life, and easily disappointed by other people. Does this mean I am depressed? No. Rather, maybe it means that I feel everything, and see you all as vividly as I can smell the lingering scent of life on the pages of an old book.
During this class, I also found that since the first time I read The Catcher in the Rye, that I began to appreciate someone even more than the character I so desperately defended. J.D. Salinger, in the progression of life and time, had become an inspiration to me. As my eyes darted around the classroom, following each student that presented their opinion, I thought to myself, "Congrats Salinger, you have succeeded." After all is said and done, this is the sign of a good book. If a writer can entice people to think, to argue, to debate, and to think again, then he has pretty much done his job. Decades after he wrote it, people are still wondering aloud if Holden Caulfield should have gone to a psychiatric hospital or not.
For this reason, I thank you Mr. Salinger. Thank you for keeping us guessing, and forcing us to think. You have set an almost unreachable bar for writers everywhere. I can only hope that one day, a lost soul stumbles upon my book and finds some comforting answers on the pages I have written.
No comments:
Post a Comment