catcher in the rye. again.

so, i just finished reading j.d. salinger's catcher in the rye. this is a book that i've read, oh, maybe 4, now 5 times. i first read it when i was in high school. even though it was required reading, i loved it. but i didn't "get" his angst. i didn't "get" his anger. i didn't understand how or why anyone would flunk out of school. especially not why they would do it repeatedly. holden was my peer, but he felt like a stranger more than a friend. holden was that kid who smoked by the lockers and who i looked at with curiousity--but not with understanding.

then i read the book a few more times when i was in grad school. it was a lovely change of pace from my steady diet of renaissance and early american lit. and, to be truthful, i hardly even thought about what i was reading. i just read it. and i was glad it was in a modern font and that it used language in it that was pretty much like my own. i liked phoebe.

having just read it again, i found that it broke my heart in all sorts of new ways. i realized that i am twice holden's age. a sobering realization. and i realized that holden and i probably had more in common when i first read the book than i could recognize then. he rebeled. i pleased. but, in effect, we were both in search of our more authentic selves. and i think that search, which was terrifying then, is compelling and encouraging to me now. holden knows things. he knows that we encounter a lot of "phonies" in this life. he knows that he wants to be comfortable in his own skin. he knows that some guys are dopey--but he also knows that maybe, just maybe, they are also terrific whistlers. and, more than anything, holden knows that sometimes we can all be madmen (or women). sometimes we know what we know, we know what we value, we know what we want to be--and we mess it up anyway. madmen.