catcher in the rye as an almost 20 year old

I finished re-reading Catcher in the Rye last night, and it was so much of a different experience than it was the first time i read it in 10th grade. I gave that book a hell of a lot of respect because at several points in time, it had been banned from schools. My English teacher said that she went out of her way to get her hands on that book back when she was a kid because she was stuck in Catholic school, and she wanted to read it as much as they didn't want her to read it.

It hit me while reading yesterday that Holden isn't the guy I thought he was. He's a miserable bastard, and that this whole idea of a permanently angry kid is now more exhausting than it is refreshing. I guess when you're younger, you look at Holden and think how great it would be to be as big a pain as he is, because not everyone can sit there faulting everyone and everything all the time, all day. His character is kind of romantic because he seems to be that one real guy in a sea full of phonies, calling everyone out in his head because he's hopelessly cynical and he can't turn it off. And I guess that because he's 16 with this ridiculously precocious mind that rejects everything while everyone around him at Pencey Prep or whatever is absorbing it, he's got nowhere to spit it out. Back when I read it the first time, I think I decided that you had to be sitting outside of the ring to be able to do that. But now that I'm in college, and since I need a job after that, and since you need to be able to shoot the shit in an interview to get a job in the first place, I've struck a compromise with myself.

My deal is to call out those phonies in the narrative going on in my own head, say to myself what despicable people they really are. But I'm also going to play the game. You have to be phony to get where you want in the world. If you want a comfortable little life, you got to be able to shoot the shit in an interview, talk nice, play nice with bastards you hate, but think dirty in your head. I don't care if I come off as the biggest phony in the world on the outside, as long as I know that somewhere inside, I have a genuine set of feelings and contempt for the people and things that deserve it. It's because of this new outlook I've adopted that makes Holden such an annoying character. Holden's a smart kid. He should put his anger to good use, somehow. He's a kid now, but he's going to get tired and anxious of walking around alone when he gets older.

This new view I brought to Catcher in the Rye sort of parallels something Holden says nearing the end of the book while he's in the Museum of Natural History:

"You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way--I can't explain what I mean."

As I get older and fatter and more wrinkly and get a real job and maybe a family of my own and go through menopause and all that, Holden's going to remain the angsty little twit he's always been. I wonder if I'll feel completely different about him in a few years when I'm kissing corporate ass.