the first time i read The Catcher in the Rye was Honors English my senior year in high school. i sped through the book racing against Rob, the boy that i adored more than all others. we had some sort of bet going on who could finish first. i can’t remember the bet and i don’t think i remembered much of the book. what i do remember is that somehow i ended up keeping the copy of Catcher that i read in high school. ok, i actually didn’t remember that. but when i pulled my copy of the shelf as part of RP 2005, i giggled to see the top and sides stamped with Blaine High School. sorry BHS, i owe you a copy of Catcher.

the second time i read The Catcher in the Rye i was a senior in college, it was winter break. i can’t remember what possessed me to pick it up again, but i do remember scrawling all sorts of Holden quotes all over the Keith Haring planner sister #2 had gotten me for christmas.

so, i think, this is the third time i’ve read Catcher. this time it broke my heart. in the past i’m sure, though i can’t seem to clearly remember, that i saw Holden Caufield as some sort of anti-hero. some kid fighting the phoniness of the entire world, someone trying to desperately to stay true to himself against all those who would have him become some phony adult. now, i see just how desperately lonely Holden is, how he longs for some sort of connection with someone and at the same time drives everyone away. Holden’s just some mixed up kid who doesn’t know what the hell is going wrong with him and can’t seem to figure out how to make it all right.

i loved this book more now than i did any of the other times i’ve read it. as a writer it was fun to read. Salinger gave Holden such a wonderfully strong voice that you could anticipate what Holden was going to say before he even said it. my most favorite part of the whole book is probably the slang for the day. i don’t think i ever realized that ‘a flit’ was slang for a homosexual. somehow that totally passed me by the first two times i read the book.