I'm listening to the National Public Radio on Remembering JD Salinger.
As obvious as Hemingway, Salinger, to me, is on the other side of the spectrum. Same damn spectrum. Same damn spectrum that I now deem guilty pleasures.
A sixteen year old just read the last few lines of Catcher in the Rye, and I found myself annoyed by his affectation. If Holden heard the way he'd read it out exaggeratedly, he would've called him a phony.
But anyway, I finished Catcher in the Rye again last night. Since I'd read it the first time as a younger cub, I'd grown to really detest that specific book (which is why I was always so surprised when I found myself enjoying Salinger's other works of literature). But I gave it another shot, and I'm biting my tongue. Endlessly, I vilified how unlikable and downright annoying Holden Caulfield's character was. I hated the way he talked. The way he shat on everything. The way he moaned and denounced everything he encountered. All his observations (I felt) were a denigration to appease his bitterness. I hated him. Mind that I was in high school when I first read this. I'm now twenty-two years old, and after last night, I regret to admit this, but I hold this book very close. Still a guilty pleasure but finally, the book spoke to me. I even found myself near tears. As far as I'm concerned, we read books and watch movies and listen to music in hopes to find ourselves in it. To connect with the ideas and characters and experiences and the poetry. But we are also too hopeful to want to see ourselves in all likable characters. In characters who possess exceptional traits or experience exceptional things. But Caulfield is the exact opposite. He's everything we don't admire in ourselves. When I began to read it again the second time, I felt the same irritation I felt when I first read it. And I realized that it's really just a reminiscence of how I felt before. But when I started to pay attention and read unbiased and open-mindedly, that's when I wove a connection. That's when I related. The things he said about people and felt about people were all things that I know I've claimed before. He was as sardonic as I am now. Refer to every single one of my little entries here and that'll give you enough evidence as to how I find Caulfield so fucking relatable. He was a lonely guy looking for someone to talk to, but everyone he encountered was too preoccupied with being tedious and self-involved. The self-involvement about people that he explicitly enunciated was an exact reflection on himself. His denouncement of them didn't take away from the fact that he was also self-involved. In the same way that I'm so arrogant and reserved and judgmental, I am also just as much of a narcissist as anybody else whom I've disparaged. Take the selfies and the tweets of the people I follow and how I so openly belittle them. After my slander, I go on here and type out my own issues. Everything about me, no matter how evident the self-loathing, is entirely self-absorbed. Narcissist at heart. Crying about not knowing how to be a person. I'm not a tree. I'm not a squirrel. I'm not a dog or a cat or spider. I'm a person, and I don't know how to be. That's my fucking problem. (And also bad bitches).
Give it a read, if you haven't. Or don't. Just don't be a phony about it.
