<em>The Catcher in the Rye</em> Is for Girls Too

· The Atlantic

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Around the time I turned 15, I was convinced that the only person who really got me was a 17-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield. Although Holden is fictional, the protagonist of J. D. Salinger’s classic novel The Catcher in the Rye felt three-dimensional to me. Yet in the 75 years since the book’s publication, he has been flattened by pop culture into a character Salinger didn’t create: an irritatingly male, misanthropic whiner. I think this depiction is unfair, and my colleague Lily Meyer agrees with me. Holden represents “a case against nihilism and a vision of a gentler sort of manhood,” she wrote this week in The Atlantic. He’s someone teenage boys can learn from, Meyer suggests; I know from experience that he has something to teach teenage girls too.

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To be fair to his haters, Holden is fairly down on everyone he encounters. In his view, the boys at his school are phonies, as are pretty much all of the adults he knows. But Holden is not heedlessly pushing the world away. He’s struggling with the knowledge that the values society is supposed to reward—honesty, most of all—are not what actually help people get ahead in life. He’s grieving the loss of his brother Allie, who died of leukemia. He feels betrayed by his parents, who shipped him off to a military school several states away from home. When he puts his trust in a beloved teacher, his confidence is betrayed. He watches as boys his age learn how to manipulate girls, how to quash negative emotions, how to lie and use hypocrisy to come out on top. Holden hates it all.

As a similarly confused and unhappy teenager, I found in Holden—as I wrote in a ninth-grade assignment—“someone who is not quite a role model, but surely a relatable figure.” Finally, one person was reacting in a way that may not have been exactly mature or ideal, but at least felt appropriate for the tumult and distress of adolescence. The great secret of Catcher, though—what gets lost in its reputation—is that Holden’s attitude is itself phony. He’s a tender kid who famously worries about the ducks in cold, icy Central Park, and who adores and hopes to protect his little sister, Phoebe. His indifferent attitude is just a self-protective persona he’s trying on. As a 21st-century girl, I had an entirely different set of stressors, but it helped to see, even through fiction, that not every boy around me was satisfied by simply obsessing over sports or bragging about sex. Holden was an important reminder that on the inside, no teenager was exactly who they were pretending to be.

That year, I’d been employing defense mechanisms similar to Holden’s—until I encountered Catcher’s final lesson, which is that his armor can’t block out his pain and fear. He has a breakdown, and although Salinger is too subtle a writer to give his book a tidy ending, Holden ends up more comfortable with the idea that we all have to grow up. Revisiting the novel 15 years later, I’m moved by the sense that life is very long. I’m no longer Holden’s peer, and I feel almost maternal toward him. He’d never listen—and neither would my teenage self—but I want to tell him, with the benefit of hindsight, that he won’t be stuck feeling this way forever.

Illustration by Jonelle Afurong / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

The Wisdom of Holden Caulfield

By Lily Meyer

Beneath all the alienation, The Catcher in the Rye, which turns 75 this year, has a surprisingly hopeful—and ethical—outlook.

Read the full article.

What to Read

A Woman’s Game: The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Women’s Soccer, by Suzanne Wrack

In 2019, the U.S. women’s national soccer team—a charismatic, politically active group that had openly feuded with President Donald Trump—took the pitch for the World Cup final against the Netherlands, and came out as heroic winners. America was watching: The match represented a modern pinnacle of popularity for the women’s game in the U.S. and globally. Wrack’s comprehensive history of women’s soccer begins in the early 20th century, when it was so popular that England’s Football Association, claiming that the sport was “unsuitable for females,” actually banned women from playing for more than five decades. The book then continues to the present day, when the game has reached new heights. Wrack is straightforward in her storytelling, but she’s clear about what the act of play truly means. Victory isn’t the only thing on the line: Women playing elite soccer defy those who attempt to belittle their accomplishments—something the USWNT, who took constant heat from Trump, understands vividly. — Will Leitch

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The Demon Next Door

By Stephanie McCrummen

“[Southland’s] owner was Lisa Misosky, and she was chatting with customers one afternoon when she found out that people in town were accusing her of demonic activity, and not in a metaphorical way.”

Read the full article.

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