Catcher In The Wry

by Dennis Green

J.D. Salinger’s first book, published in 1951, and set in 1949, Catcher in the Rye, changed my life. I was 12 years old when I found it at the corner liquor store bookrack in paperback, and read it. Holden Caulfield, the sad teenaged boy, saw right through the American Dream, saw it for what it was, “a bunch of phonies,” and was the harbinger of change that intensified in a few short years, with the coming of the Beats, Brando and James Dean.

Salinger died just the other day, so all this work of his comes into focus, as an obituary sometimes does. His short stories, such as “A Perfect Day for Banana Fish,” also broke new ground, and were his best format in many ways.

America, in the few short years after World War Two, began to experience a cultural shift of enormous proportions. The A-Bomb, the Cold War, the imminent Korean Police Action, a materialism prompted in part by the returning war veterans, the G.I. Bill for education and housing, a new kind of prosperity.

Father Knows Best and Leave It To Beaver appeared to represent that domesticated America, but on the sly, the writers of one of those shows snuck in lines like, “I think you were a little hard on the Beaver last night, Ward!” Beaver Cleaver. Get it? Got it? Good!

So the subversion of all those button-down values was already at work. Before long, Soupy Sales and Pinkie Lee were even making fun of the kid’s show format, and “Miss Nancy” at KTVU, Channel 2, in Jack London Square was a very rowdy gal indeed. “I see you’ve got your big red heart on,” she said to one costumed newsman at a Valentine’s Day Party at the station.

So the undercurrent was already underway, in a subterranean sense at least, when Salinger’s book came out, and there is Holden wandering the streets of Manhattan in his strange woodsman’s hat, looking for something authentic, even some music that he can enjoy. But there is not yet any rock ‘n’ roll, he doesn’t stumble into any juke jazz joint, and his quest will go largely unanswered.

He talks wistfully about saving the younger children, being a “catcher in the rye,” who snags the kids before they can dance or wander off the cliffs of life and into a deadened adult life of Puritan domesticity. In a few years, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, The Lonely Crowd, Games People Play and other studies will confirm his suspicions that the placid surface of the Fifties concealed a swamp filled with leeches, alligators and water moccasins.

Holden’s discontent was infectious, and it led to a virtual epidemic of rebellion in the Sixties. But his cynicism didn’t contaminate that uprising, which was surprisingly idealistic, positive and hopeful. The Old America simply became irrelevant. We didn’t care about it enough to worry that it would come back to bite us in the butt.

If, as they say, the cynic is just a disappointed romantic, then the Day of the Cynic is here. Very few of us expect things to get much better anymore, or care to put our faith in politicians, or think corruption will be ended anytime soon. “Don’t follow leaders/watch the parking meters!” Holden knew it all along. And so did Dylan.

©2010 Dennis Green