I’m officially embarking on my personal lit challenge to read several of the significant books from both the recent and distant past and then write up some of my thoughts. The Catcher in the Rye is first on my list. Until now, I had never read it, and I would always shrink with embarrassment whenever a reference to it came up. It feels great to be among the millions who have read this gem, and now I can contribute my own observations.
Before the First Drink
If you want to know the truth, I think Holden Caulfield is an alcoholic; that’s his problem. Teen angst is one thing, but when it’s combined with alcoholism, Holden Caulfields are what you get. For anyone out there who believes alcoholics are toothless bums sleeping in their own urine in dark alleyways or on bus benches, think again. That depiction is the end of the line for some alcoholics, not all, but it must be understood that the beginning of the line usually looks much different. Recognizing the disease in kids is tough because their behavior can so easily be dismissed as normal adolescence — children bumbling and stumbling into maturity. The signals are subtle, but what tipped me off about Holden were his endless resentments and delusions. Alcoholics have a particular kink in their systems. That kink causes both alcohol cravings and a habit of mind that savors resentments stewed in a sense of superiority. On top of that is a constant undercurrent of doubt, giving rise to the phrase “egomaniac with an inferiority complex,” often used to describe alcoholics. In The Catcher in the Rye, don’t be fooled, or charmed, by the multitude of digressive incidents that obfuscate the real deal, which is alcoholism.
It’s impossible to know where J.D. Salinger stood on this subject. Was there a conscious intention to craft this character that brilliantly portrays the nuanced behaviors of alcoholics, or did he luck into a direct hit? I’m going to say he knew what he was doing.
Let me just jump right in at the title. Forget that noble crap about catching children in a field of Rye before they plunge off “some crazy cliff.” The original poem, “Comin Throu’ The Rye,” was writen by Robert Burns in 1782. Like most poems, it can be read on many levels, but the most commonly accepted interpretations include sloppy, surreptitious, drunken sex with a peasant girl — where complicity is questionable. Rye is understood to represent rye whiskey. Holden is an unreliable narrator, but he tells us that English is his best subject, and we can clearly see he’s sex-obsessed, so it’s hard to believe he misunderstood the poem’s allusions. Dressing up bad ideas with good motives is nothing new in the world of addiction. The author, by way of the narrator, pretzels the poems sexual vise into the virtuous act of rescuing innocent children. Holden’s contorting the words of that poem to meet his psychological needs is subconscious but telling. His perceptions are keen but can’t always be trusted. His perceptions can be flawed. Why can his perceptions be flawed? One big reason is because he’s alcoholic. If anybody is headed over a crazy edge, it’s Holden, and, like it or not, he’s going to have to be his own catcher. It’s called taking inventory.
What did J.D. Salinger know of Alcoholics Anonymous? I think it’s interesting that a very famous article by Jack Alexander appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, just four years before excerpts from this book began appearing in magazines. The Jack Alexander piece was titled “Alcoholics Anonymous,” and it’s credited with launching worldwide awareness of AA’s method for recovery from alcoholism. Prior to the 1941 article, AA membership had grown to about 2000 since its inception in 1935. By the end of 1941, following the article’s publication, AA’s membership skyrocketed to around 8000. It’s hard to overstate the impact that this one article had in households across the country.
Salinger wouldn’t want to be too obvious, surely, but there are several scenes in The Catcher in the Rye where Holden’s attention is drawn to magazines. On page 9, Holden’s history teacher throws an Atlantic Monthly at the boy. Page 16 has Holden confessing to his proclivity for lying and he gives the example that when he goes out buying magazines he might just tell a person he’s going to the opera instead. On page 53 he says how he sometimes buys four magazines at a time. On page 124 an actual Saturday Evening Post is referenced. And on page 195 he’s concerned about a couple of health articles he’s read in a magazine he just picked up off a bench in Grand Central Station. With all of that fictionalized magazine reading going on, it doesn’t feel like a huge stretch that the author may have been aware of one of the most widely read articles ever printed in The Saturday Evening Post. Oh, and by the way, a P.O. Box at Grand Central Station is the mailing address for all AA related inquiries.
Alcoholics can be very complicated people, and Salinger’s Holden is a great example of just how knotty they can get. Holden is young, which buys him a lot of the slack he needs because on the surface he’s a chronic-malcontent, self-righteous, socially inept, paranoid, delusional, deceitful, narcissistic, insecure, mildly suicidal, inappropriate bonehead. In other words, he’s an untreated alcoholic.
Looking at some of his drinking history confirms my diagnosis of alcoholism. Because Holden is five years under the legal drinking age, I believe his limited consumption is mostly because of access, not preference. He’s not just aware, he’s hyper-aware of all the drinking that’s going on around him, even when he himself cannot procure a drink. Examples of that preoccupation are evidenced in Jane Gallagher’s father being described, accurately no doubt, as a “booze hound.” Two of the three tourists from Seattle are apparently committing a drinking faux pas by ordering Tom Collinses in December; the third is putting away bourbons and water. Carl Luce is having dry martinis. Mr. Antolini is loaded off highballs, Holden even taking note of how many ice cubes go in the drink. That’s an alcohol fixation. Another suspicious detail is Holden’s preference for scotch and water, a stout combination that implies serious drinking. There was a red-flag incident when he was at The Whooton School when he and another boy drank a pint of scotch in the school’s chapel. On his ice-skating date with old Sally Hayes, he orders liquor for himself and Coke for her. Holden knows from an untold number of previous experiences that he will be served alcohol at Ernie’s Piano Bar in Greenwich Village. Holden doesn’t go so far as to beg people to drink with him, but he gets pretty close to it. Mrs. Morrow (the fellow-student’s mother on the train,) two different cab drivers, Faith Cavendish (the supposed good-time gal,) and the stage entertainers all rebuffed his invitations. Technically, drinking in a bar is not drinking alone, but if you are getting shit-faced at a table all by yourself, you’re drinking alone. And just because Holden claims to have great drinking capacity, that doesn’t exempt him from the disease. In fact, resistance to the effects of alcohol can be a symptom of alcoholism just as much as intolerance can be.
John Hopkins University compiled a list of twenty questions to help evaluate a potential alcoholic, such as: Do you drink alone? Do you turn to lower companions and inferior environments when drinking? Does your drinking make you careless of your family’s welfare? Is drinking making your home-life unhappy? Is your drinking effecting your reputation? The questionnaire suggests that if you answer yes to any one of the twenty questions, the potential for alcoholism exists; yes to three or more, you are definitely an alcoholic. It’s a rare sixteen-year old who can consider the questionnaire seriously and honestly, most adults can’t handle it either. But Holden is no dummy, so there’s hope.
Getting back to The Saturday Evening Post article and where it bumps up against The Catcher in the Rye. The article starts with three men in a psych ward, two ex-problem drinkers visiting one patient. Holden is telling his story from inside a residential psychotherapy center but he’s without friend or visitor. The sober two give testimonials that include how they confounded doctors, family, friends, and relatives for years. Holden is certainly confounding. The men in the article tell the patient how they would be willing to drop everything if it would help truly sober him up. Mr. Antolini extends a similar offer, but it falls flat because he himself is drunk and has questionable boundaries. Jack Alexander tells how members of Alcoholics Anonymous recognize that it takes one to know one, so they “do not pursue or coddle a malingering prospect, and they know the strange tricks of the alcoholic as a reformed swindler knows the art of bamboozling.” Caulfield is one shifty dude, often in the same breath he’ll state two completely contrary points of view: he likes and hates, he feels good then bad, he’s happy then sad.
Jack Alexander also observes, “By nature touchy and suspicious, the alcoholic likes to be left alone to work out his puzzle, and he has a convenient way of ignoring the tragedy which he inflicts meanwhile upon those who are close to him.” Holden is not ready to accept responsibility for where he finds himself. When he wraps up his narrative with, “Don’t ever tell anybody anything,” it’s tragic. That kind of secrecy and isolation keeps alcoholics sick. But Holden’s follow-up statement and concluding remark sparks a glimmer of hope, “If you do, you start missing everybody.” There is a chance that Holden could find his way out of the lonely, irresponsible, shortsighted, self-punishing, indignant, cowardly, abusive morass he finds himself in. Mr. Antolini foreshadows this possibility on page 189 when he tells Holden that many men throughout history have struggled with moral and spiritual dilemmas, but it’s the educated ones that can tell of those struggles in the most stimulating ways. He says, “Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you.” That’s so AA. AA literature is filled with stories of personal triumph over the physical and psychological ravages of alcoholism.
Why does it matter that Holden Caulfield is seen as an alcoholic? Because there is help for alcoholics and because more often then not, the message of The Catcher in the Rye is that misery is cool, which it’s not. Intelligence, humor, emotional acumen, physical health and so much more are inexorably diminished over the trajectory of alcoholism while disdain and disillusionment grow. Halting and reversing this course is possible, and the earlier the better. Holden, like so many alcoholics is uncannily perceptive, but it’s what he does with those perceptions that will make him or break him. Understanding the disease of alcoholism and recognizing the stilting effects it has on a developing mind are the first steps toward correction. But ultimately, that’s an inside job. The person must want to catch him or herself first. Until then, these Holden Caulfields of the world just kill me.
Click on these references to open them, and then click again on the next screen.
Robert Burns’ Comin Thro The Rye
Jack Alexander article in the Saturday Evening Post
20 questions by John Hopkins University
Any thoughts you care to share with me? Holden Caulfield? The Catcher in the Rye? J.D. Salinger? Alcoholism? I’d love to hear from you. Have a great week, and I’ll post again next Friday.
Thank you for such an excellent review. I first read this book when I was 16 and found it magical. I did not know why. Some 25 years later I read it again and as an alcoholic I saw quite clearly all the things you describe.
Looking back now I can see why I fell in love in the book. I was Holden Caulfield. Sadly, for me at least, my illness remains untreated but searching for some background to my problems sure does help.
So thank you.
Chris, thank you for this post. I’m so glad it speaks to you. I’m rather stunned that you found it. Are you in the U.K.?
It’s never too late to step off the alcohol merry-go-round. Consider reading, or re-reading, the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I wish you the best.