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Volume 2, Issue 22
October 12 - October 26, 2000 |
Book Review by Cecilia Johnson
When I was in high school, I guess I felt like most kids do. I was an angry kid living all by myself in a world of shit. And then I read The Catcher in the Rye. Here was the story of Holden Caulfield, the ultimate loner with a chip on his shoulder. Everything he did turned out wrong. He put his fist through glass windows when he got sad. He flunked out of one school after another. He didn't get along with his parents or his teachers. But most important of all, he didn't fit in.
Like many generations of readers, I found a true friend in Holden Caulfield. Here was a guy who really understood what it was like to be left on the outside, forever standing on the fringes of the world and looking in. From that day on, I developed a crush not only on Holden Caulfield but on his creator J. D. Salinger as well. All I wanted was to call up J. D. and talk to him because I knew he was the only guy in the world who could understand all the blistering torment of my teenage angst.
So when I heard about Dream Catcher (the autobiography of J. D. Salinger's daughter Margaret-- focusing on life with her famous writer-father), I couldn't wait to get ahold of the book about the man who'd created my best childhood friend.
What a lucky girl this Peggy Salinger was to have the real Holden Caulfield as her dad. Imagine having a parent who understood you!
Well, it turns out that Margaret wasn't such a lucky girl after all.
Not only did she have to spend many of her early years living in complete isolation in a cabin in the woods, but her father looked on her and her mother as financial and emotional leeches. The relationship between her father and mother soon dissolved into mutual loathing, and Margaret had to watch as both her mother and father began bringing home dates. If that wasn't bad enough, as soon as Peggy was a teenager (the same tumultuous age as Holden), her dad brought home girls that weren't much older than her. Even though J. D. railed against the evils of prep school in Catcher, he sent Margaret off to one of the most dehumanizing boarding schools on the east coast where Peggy was constantly abused by the headmistress. During all the times Peggy attempted to reach out to her dad for help (she had fights with alcoholism and severe depression), he turned her away.
When I was in high school (miserable in
adolescence like everybody else) it was
Holden Caulfield and J. D. Salinger who
comforted me. Years later I find out that
his own daughter couldn't seek the same
comfort from her dad. It's a sad day when
you discover that your childhood friends
aren't who you think they are and that
sometimes the fiction you create in your
own mind is better than reality. B+