pedantic nuthatch

Prompted by the text of last year's Six Degrees of Separation, I'm re-reading The Catcher in the Rye (Paul delivers a monologue about the novel that he later admits was lifted from someone else's graduation speech). This time around, what I'm struck by is how self-unaware Holden is most of the time, comically so.

"Why not? Why the hell not?"

"Stop screaming at me, please," she said. Which was crap, because I wasn't even screaming at her. (chap. 17)

This is sort of a treat for the adults reading the book, in the same way that a kids' animated movie slips in topical references.

But I suspect what has made the book such a cult favorite is how skillfully Salinger captures Holden's anomie, in still-resonant language that is hardly dated after almost 60 years.

What made it worse, it was so quiet and lonesome out, even though it was Saturday night. I didn't see hardly anybody on the street. Now and then you just saw a man and a girl crossing a street, with their arms around each other's waists and all, or a bunch of hoodlumy-looking guys and their dates, all of them laughing like hyenas at something you could bet wasn't funny. New York's terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you so lonesome and depressed. (chap. 12)