Our winner: a life saver
Judging the entries to our recent “Lasting Impressions” contest was difficult,
to say the least. We received some true gems. But we had to choose. First prize went to Wayne Scheer; his entry is below. Karna Converse won second prize,
and Marty Carlock third. We hope to publish those essays in future issues of IRB. Our congratulations to all who sent us their efforts—you can write!
— Carter Jefferson, Editor
Bibliotherapy, or How The Catcher in the Rye Helped Saved My Parents a Fortune in Therapy Bills
By Wayne Scheer
At fifteen, my arms seemed to dangle from my shoulders like sails on a windy day and my voice covered the entire range of a Doo-Wop group in a single sentence. I suspected I thought about girls far more than they thought about me, while adults, in the form of my parents and teachers, acted certain they knew what was best for me and took every opportunity to tell me so. Self-conscious and frustrated, I found solace in shrugs, sneers and sarcasm. I would retreat to my room to read Mad Magazine and contemplate the absurdity of existence.
One day during lunch, Larry Mason, a classmate, loaned me his copy of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. I never returned it. In fact, nearly fifty years later, I still have his fifty-cent Signet edition with the picture of Holden Caulfield wearing his red hunting cap.
Had I written this essay as a teenager, I might have said the book saved my life. However, age has rendered me less dramatic. Still, I’m convinced surviving my teenage years would have been more difficult without Catcher. In Holden Caulfield, the novel’s sixteen-year-old protagonist, I found someone who expressed my self-righteous antipathy for everything phony and authoritarian. My parents, like his, had no clue what to do with me, although my father, like Holden’s, threatened military school. The girls who rejected me, I rationalized, were phonies like the book’s Sally Hayes, who walked a few steps in front of Holden to show off her cute butt. And my teachers, though often well meaning, were as ineffectual as Mr. Spencer, who smelled of Vicks VapoRub and couldn’t toss a magazine a couple of feet without its landing on the floor.
The book chronicled three days in Holden’s life, the period between learning he had flunked out of school and his parents finding out. Holden did what I only fantasized—he ran away, escaped to New York City. Things didn’t work out well for Holden. He was far too inhibited, insecure, and naïve to enjoy his newly found freedom. Still, I admired him. He wanted to be good, to do good, but his refusal to accept an imperfect world on its own terms made this impossible. My fifteen-year-old sensibility appreciated the nobility of his attempt to erase all the four-letter words written on walls before children saw them. Although he came to admit the futility of it all, I agreed when he observed how difficult it was to find peace in a corrupt society. “You may think there is,” he warned, “but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write ‘Fuck You’ right under your nose.” His sardonic humor meshed with my own.
I became obsessed with the novel and its author, and read whatever I could find about him. Another young author, John Updike, was mentioned and I read his novels and short stories, convinced Updike would never achieve Salinger’s greatness. The reviews also led me to Ring Lardner and William Saroyan, Thoreau, Twain, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The world of literature didn’t offer me instant protection from the turbulence of teenage angst; but in the short run it helped me withdraw deeper into myself and increased my social awkwardness. It also made me feel less alone by exposing me to the confusion of others as they attempted to survive in a world not of their making.
Like all works of literature, The Catcher in the Rye connected me to other writers and their creations. I learned how artists manipulate their personal demons, like a sculptor his clay, to create art for others to experience. Literature took me out of my world, and to a large extent I owe it to Salinger’s novel.
Catcher didn’t end happily. Holden suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. However, remaining true to himself, he refused to tell the doctors what they wanted to hear. “A lot of people,” he says, “especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I’m going to apply myself when I go back to school next September. It’s such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you’re going to do until you do it?”
As a teenager, I identified with that uncertainty in the future. Now that I’m older, I appreciate it even more.
Still, the book concluded with a hint of hope, something I don’t think I understood when I read it at fifteen. After criticizing whoever didn’t meet his standards—which included almost everyone in the book—he says, “About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody...” Holden didn’t hate. He wasn’t as antisocial as he appeared. He was just a confused kid who wanted to connect to others and find his place in the world, but didn’t know how.
What fifteen-year-old, or sixty-five-year-old, for that matter, couldn’t identify with that?
I came out of my teenage years thinking of myself as a reader and a writer, leading me to a teaching career. Holden searched in vain for a purpose and someone to share it with. His example motivated me to find direction and, eventually, someone with whom to share my life.
So maybe The Catcher in the Rye saved my life after all.
Wayne Scheer has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Web. His work has appeared in a variety of print and online venues, including The Christian Science Monitor, Notre Dame Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, flashquake, Flash Me Magazine, Smokelong Quarterly, Pindeldyboz, and Camroc Press Review. Revealing Moments, a collection of twenty-four flash stories, is available at http://www.pearnoir.com/thumbscrews.htm.
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