Does ‘Catcher’ still belong on the list?
By Marjorie Kehe | 08.27.08
With the first day of school just a week away, it’s a good time to raise these questions: What should today’s kids be reading? And specifically, as Anne Trubek asks in Good Magazine, does J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” still belong on today’s reading lists?
Trubek concludes that it does not. Times have changed, she argues, the world has moved on, and so should reading lists. She offers at least a half dozen alternatives, from “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson to “Anywhere But Here” by Mona Simpson.
The world has changed, indeed. And when I think back to my 10th-grade required reading list, there are a few books I would definitely vote to jettison. For instance, much to the disappointment of my English-teacher father, I could never quite cotton to either “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles or “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding.
Not that my lack of enthusiasm had much impact. As far as I know (and I’m not even going to say how many years have since elapsed) the 10th-graders in my high school alma mater still read both these books. (And “Catcher” as well, I’m assuming.)
But in the case of “Catcher,” I’m going to have to speak a word in its defense. Some years ago, I was asked to tutor a failing English student at a New York City high school. Gary was a smart kid. Smart enough to squeak through most of his classes without even trying.
But English was different. It bored him so utterly that he seemed incapable of making even the slightest effort. The books, he told me, all seemed so pointless. Reading to him was just an alternate form of torture. Even facing the threat of failure, he simply couldn’t make himself do it.
Then we came to “Catcher.”
“Oh, I LOVED this,” I told him. He looked at me with deep suspicion. After all, hadn’t I said the same thing about Charles Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities“?
“I’ll read it again with you,” I told him. I stopped at the first bookstore I saw on my way home that night and eagerly pulled it off the shelf. And yet, I hadn’t looked at “Catcher” in years and, I must admit, I wondered if it would have anything to say to me now.
It did. In fact, once I opened it I couldn’t put it down. If anything, it seemed amazingly more wonderful to the adult me than it had to the 15-year-old – and I loved it as a teen.
But even more remarkable was Gary’s reaction. The next time we met he pulled his copy out and I could see the pages were rifled. He’d actually been reading it!
He dropped into his chair, his slump a few inches less pronounced than usual. “I didn’t know they wrote books like this,” he told me. “Like what?” I asked him. “You know, like about real stuff like this, about the kind of things that people really think about,” he said.
We spent the tutoring session talking about the “phonies” that Holden (and Gary, it turns out) so detested. The next day Gary had to write an in-class essay on the book and got his first A ever in English. He finished the book and even went on to read most of the next one (”Maggie: A Girl of the Streets” by Stephen Crane – a book Gary judged to be markedly inferior to “Catcher” but having once gotten the idea of reading he now seemed capable of making at least some sort of an effort.)
And he passed English. True story.
So here’s my answer. Of course it’s good to rough those lists up once in a while. Trabek is right, time moves on and so does the world. But sometimes a classic remains a classic. And “Catcher,” it seems to me, is one of those.
What do you think? What should/shouldn’t they read in schools these days? And what’s your vote on “Catcher”?
Comments
2. Nikolai | 08.27.08
I agree with Chuck. “Catcher” is a great book. My pick for new addition? “American Born Chinese” by Gene Luen Yang. Some other timeless themes are explored (assimilation, identity), but in a new format.
3. cynthia | 08.27.08
Classics are classics for a reason, I stay stick with them.Canons do change but we need to be very clear about why a book is being jettisoned and another one added.
4. JIm Benciveng | 08.27.08
I taught high school English for 8 years in the ’70s. I would not and did not teach “Catcher.”(I did discuss it routinely with students who read it on their own.) It’s a book meant for adults about youth, not for young people trying to work through being young. For an English teacher trying to motivate students to read it is the psychological equivalent of a driver’s ed teacher showing car wrecks and maimed bodies to promote safe driving.
Like beat poetry the treatment of adolescent themes in Catcher are limited in scope, so immediate and “relevant” as to be locked in a narrow, specific cultural period. Good art does more than that. For 30 years English teachers who choose Catcher level themselves down in the vain attempt to be “approachable,” or “hip,” or “understanding in the eyes of their students. Ultimately, kids will see through that. Given that young people read so little teachers need to treat every text they give students as the precious, priceless thought adventure a student might only get from school.
There are so many other texts. Of course Shakespeare, and more Shakespeare. But Catcher does not hold a candle to a book like “Things Fall Apart,” by Chinua Achebe, with its original insights about universal human nature (and echoes from “MacBeth.”)
Just tell kids Catcher has a lot of dirty words in it and most will read it anyway. Then you can talk wtih them about it in addition to the great literature they’ve been exposed in class.
5. Danny | 08.27.08
I really appreciate this post. I was a very similar student to this Gary. Passing classes was not difficult in a public school, but my high school English curriculum was either the perfect combination or poorly chosen books, poor teachers, or both. Nothing seemed to get me interested in the subject. As you phrased it, “Then [I] came to ‘Catcher.’” The world has changed, but how different is the teenager? The language was (and is) somewhat dated, the settings old, but there is an undeniable connection between Joe/Jane Teenager and Holden Caulfield.
Admittedly, I have not introduced myself to those proclaiming that “the world has moved on”. (Your link, by the way, does not appear to go to the article you’re referencing. Is this the correct one instead: http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Stimuli/anne_trubek_on_why_we_shouldnt_still_be_learning_catcher_in_the_rye ?). Perhaps these skeptics had an experience similar to mine. Catcher, still my favorite book when I reflect on my past education, did not withstand the test of time. Having re-read it most of a decade after my first time, it did not speak to me with the same intensity it did during my first reading. Someone with such an experience, reviewing the book at this stage of their life (or later), may believe that it has become irrelevant or dated. However, they are no longer teenagers. *Their* world may have moved on, but the high schooler being introduced to Holden for the first time is just entering the world.
Unfortunately, Mr. Benciveng, I could not disagree with your analysis more. Kids may see through phoniness, but I can assure you, Holden was the most “real” thing to me that I was ever asked to read during my high school education. “Dirty words” in available media are not particularly enticing anymore. Have you turned on a popular radio station recently? Many popular songs are more than just arguably pornographic. The appeal of Holden is not the language, it just makes it slightly easier for a skeptical student to immerse themselves. Marjorie’s mention of Dickens seems particularly appropriate, as many English classes offer a side-by-side comparison of the introductory paragraphs of “Catcher in the Rye” and “Oliver Twist”. At least in my high school, Catcher was overwhelmingly considered more relevant by the student body.
Thank you, Marjorie, for you defense of this book and its rightful label: a classic.
6. Danny | 08.27.08
Sorry, quick–but important– correction: I meant “David Copperfield,” not “Oliver Twist.” That’s bound to cost me some credibility…
7. Herb | 08.28.08
When I taught Catcher in the Rye (ten years ago), I was afraid I would screw it up for my students. I couldn’t figure out how to elicit their responses without my selection of topics. Finally, I hit on the idea of telling them they could make up their own tests, within the guidelines of the tests I had given them on other books.
So, they had to pick ten quotes, and tell why those quotes were important to what was happening in the novel. And they had to choose essays on topics they thought were worth exploring.
In over thirty years of teaching, I had never had so much fun reading tests. Those students did themselves proud.
We also wrote scripts for scenes for the movie of Catcher in the Rye, and voted on the scene we wanted to tape. We cast the scene and put it on. Those students may have had a better time elsewhere that year, but I doubt it. I know I had a wonderful time, watching that class laugh, and talk about the scene and the book.
It would be a shame not to assign Catcher in the Rye.
8. Eric Drummond Smith | 08.28.08
I never had to read Catcher in high school - the year I ordinarily would have read it I ended up taking an international literature class. That said, I intentionally picked it up the summer after I graduated - and, despite being something of a “classics hound,” I have to say I not only didn’t particularly enjoy it, but I wasn’t even impressed with it. For a years after that I was convinced that maybe my mood just wasn’t correct, or that I just wasn’t in the right place in life to read it. So, a couple of years ago (just about 12 years after I finished high school) I picked up another copy and read through it again. Again, I wasn’t impressed with it as a book - it has some tremendous scenes, but I just never felt like it came together into a single important work. Honestly, I really just don’t see why it s considered a great work. That said, I would definitely defend A Separate Peace’s place in high school, and I’d also argue for the inclusion of a few other books - I would agree with Mr. Benciveng on Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, but I’d add Denise Giardina’s Storming Heaven, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, and Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay to name a few.
9. Ken | 08.28.08
I remember a few years back the Monitor ran a story on the dilemma high school teachers in Los Angeles had on finding books for their students to read. Their classes was so diversified that it was hard for them to find characters that they thought their students could identify with. Any novels with white characters were to be avoided. However, one teacher decided to go against the norm and had his class read Catcher in the Rye. To his amazement his students, non-whte and almost all from poor families, loved the book. Even though they had different backgrounds, they said what they could identify with was the angst of Holden Caulfield.
Sometimes the students know more than their teachers and administrators.
10. Ken | 08.28.08
I remember a few years back the Monitor ran a story on the dilemma high school teachers in Los Angeles had on finding books for their students to read. Their classes was so diversified that it was hard for them to find characters that they thought their students could identify with. Any novels with white characters were to be avoided. However, one teacher decided to go against the norm and had his class read Catcher in the Rye. To his amazement his students, non-whte and almost all from poor families, loved the book. Even though they had different backgrounds, they said what they could identify with was the angst of Holden Caulfield.
Sometimes the students know more than their teachers and administrators.
11. Caitlin | 09.02.08
I read Catcher in the Rye in one sitting. Not because I enjoyed the book. Not because I felt I could identify with Holden Caulfield. Because I needed to be able to discuss it during class, and the book was too painful to read slowly. It might apply to those Trench Coat Mafia types, but for the rest of the normal, well-adjusted, high school students (and there are plenty of those), it’s as tedious as Beowulf. (Sorry, Mr. Reid)
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1. Chuck | 08.27.08
I agree. Catcher is one of those books that speaks so clearly to someone entering their teenage years. The themes Salinger explores in Catcher are timeless — alienation, fear and dealing with a new world of adults — and students benefit from exposure to them.