The Catcher in the Rye

This is the favorite book of sociopaths everywhere; every disconnected, lonely, bullied kid: the Perks of Being a Wallflower of the fifties.

Mark Davis Chapman, who killed John Lennon (buzzkill) tried to legally change his name to Holden Caufield because of how strongly he identified with the narrator.

The first time I read this book, I was thirteen and starting my sophomore year, lonely in the way that the youngest person in high school typically is, and this book resonated with me.

I read it half a dozen times before I actually got it.

Serial killers and crazies love this book. It's a fact. During this story, nothing happens. The alternate title should be Holden Caufield Gets Lonelier and Lonelier.

He goes around, kicked out of school thinking about how "phony" everyone is and saying things make him "depressed as hell" every three words. At one point, he tries to pay a prostitute to talk to him. That's all he wants, and she goes back to tell her pimp that he's swindled her out of her time with no compensation. He proceeds to beat the crap out of him.

Many people call Holden unlikable; that he has earned his sorrow. I like that idea. There is a part of everyone that is "unlikable," and that part of us wants Holden to find a friend, even when he is prickly and abrasive and a jerk. Life is frequently "unlikable".

At the end, though, and this is what I figured out on reread thirty: At the end of this story, Holden has learned to communicate, connect with people. We know this, because we empathise with Holden. Because we feel for him, and he's told his story.

Serial killers and outsiders and people who can't connect, they empathise with him getting lonelier and lonelier, and his well intentioned love for his sister and getting beaten up by pimps, but they do not see the healing.