A book in my life

Alastair Best

Ihave read too few novels and most of them in the wrong order. I confess I would often rather read a writer's letters, memoirs, journals — journalism even than his fictions. When I admitted as much the other day to the proprietor of one of Curzon Street's leading book-shops his eye- brows rose to H. M. Bateman levels. And Yet, it seems to me, there is a strong case to be made for ephemera. Flaubert's letters,

Hemingway's journalism, Graham Greene's travel writing are to me preferable to their respective novels.

Nevertheless, when I examine the literary milestones in my life I find that most of them are works of fiction. A novel read under precisely the right circumstances can have a potent effect. I suppose Emma was about the most improving book I ever read; I felt my life changing gear as I turned its Pages. That devastatingly Mills and Roonish passage of self-discovery, in which It 'darted through her with the speed of an arrow that Mr Knightley must marry no one but herself', struck me at the time, I remember, like forked lightning. And just as I associate Emma with maturity — or what passes for it — so I couple The Cat- et in the Rye with the protracted agonies of adolescence.

J. D. Salinger's 'picaresque, and often appallingly funny novel' — I quote blurbs which have long since been removed at the self-effacing author's behest — was first urged on me in a Strasbourg cafe in 1959. Nowadays I am proof against books I ought to read'; but at the time I was fresh out of school and painfully conscious of the gaps in my education. It was a coup de J:oudre. Much of the book's attraction lay Inevitably in a tremendous sense of fellow- feeling with its narrator. I was a year older than Holden Caulfield. His pangs and Misgivings and confusions were also, to some extent, my own. But there was something more: Holden's charm, his ten- derness. Re-reading the book now I am even more impressed by the sweetness of his character than I was all those years ago. The Catcher in the Rye is a sort of odyssey. Using Holden's 'lousy vocabulary' ,with extraordinary skill, Salinger describes hero madman stuff' that happens to his 11,ero after his premature departure from r encey Prep. He tells of adventures and conversations in bars, hotel-rooms, taxi- cabs. There are plenty of sirens en route; even a cyclops, supplied by the repulsive 1131101P, Maurice ('he snapped his finger very Lard on my pyjamas; I won't tell you where he snapped it, but it hurt like hell') — but there is no real reconciliation at the end. olden's Penelope figure, Jane Gallaher back girl who always keeps her kings on the °ack row at draughts — remains tantalis-

ingly out of reach.

Apart from a brief epilogue, the book ends with Holden watching his sister on the merry-go-round in Central Park. The rain is pouring down. 'I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. I don't know why.

It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going round and round in her blue coat and all. God, I wish you could've been there.'

Holden leaves Pencey four days before the end of term, but in fact he has been ex-

pelled. In an early scene his history teacher, old • Spencer, administers a painful post- mortem — 'he handled my exam paper like it was a turd or something.'

Holden is forced to listen while his essay on the ancient Egyptians is read out to him.

'The Egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for various reasons. Modern science would still like to know what the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for in- numerable centuries. This interesting riddle is still quite a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century.' Towards the end of the book Holden runs into two small boys in the Smithsonian Museum.

"You know how the Egyptians buried their dead?" I asked one kid.

"Naa".

"Well you should. It's very interesting. They wrapped their faces up in these cloths that were treated with some secret chemical. That way they could be buried in their tombs for thousands of years and their faces wouldn't rot or anything. Nobody knows how to do it except the Egyptians.

Even modern science." ' It's amazing how far a little education — spread thin — will go. When The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951 the Times Literary Sup- plement accorded it a couple of paragraphs

of tepid approval, but entered the incredi- ble reservation that the work was too sub- jective. 'One would like to hear more of what Holden's parents and teachers think of him,' wrote the anonymous critic. I have long relished this piece of book-reviewing fatuity. For in fact it is always clear what Holden's mentors think. The trouble is that they, like old Spencer, are always handing out stale maxims of the 'life is a game, boy' variety. Holden's reflections on these threadbare homilies are pungent and to the

point. 'Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the right side where all the hot-shots

are, then it's a game all right — I'll admit

that. But if one gets on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then

what's a game about it? Nothing. No game.' This passage reveals two sides of Holden's character. His hatred of phoniness and also his compassion, border-

ing at times on sentimentality. Holden ex- ists on that other side. In wilder moments he regards himself as a bulwark between the lost world of innocence and the phoney world of adults. The very title of the book — based though it is on a typical Caulfield misapprehension — expresses this idea very well.'You know that song"If a body catch a body coming through the rye?" I'd like 'It's "If a body meet a body coming through the rye," old Phoebe said ...

'I thought it was "If a body catch a body," I said. Anyway I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're run- ning and they don't look where they're go- ing I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.'

Holden is still clinging to the vestiges of innocence ('I've had quite a few oppor- tunities to lose my virginity and all, but I've never got around to it yet') while. at the same time trying to penetrate the sophisticated world of adults. Although to some extent bemused by the grown-up milieu of sex, fast cars and night club enter- tainers, he pierces through its affectations with the mercilessly clear eyes of a child. Salinger is everywhere present in his novel; but never more so than when spearing the 'phoneys' and pinning them to the page.

There is, for example, Stradlater — a debased Steerforth figure — with this 'very sincere, Abraham Lincoln voice'; or Ernie the piano-player, who turns round on his stool and gives this 'very phoney, humble bow. Like as if he was a helluva humble guy besides being a terrific piano player'; or, my own favourite, the mean-spirited recluse, Ackley. 'I once sat next to Ackley at this

basketball game. We had a terrific guy on the team, Howie Coyle, that could sink

them from the middle of the floor... Ackley kept saying, the whole goddam game, that Coyle had a perfect build for basketball. God, how I hate that 'stuff.'

I know nothing of the circumstances in which The Catcher in the Rye was written. The book has been described as sprawling, but it is, in fact, nothing of the kind. There is a hard, almost classical structure underneath Holden's rambling narrative. The style, too, appears effortless; yet one wonders how much labour went into those artfully rough-hewn sentences. If The Cat- cher in the Rye is a classic then it is also a literary freak. For Salinger has produced nothing to equal it since.

Holden's definition of a good book is also mine. He liked a book that 'when you're all done reading it, you wish the author was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone.' Alas, Holden's creator cannot be smoked out. He is no Gore Vidal, old J. D. Salinger. You have to hand it to the crazy sonuvabitch. You really do.