Holden Caulfield, emo?
Tuesday, December 16, 2008 
One of the surreal things about speaking to groups of high school kids is hearing their interpretations of books I read when I was their age--that quaint, analog time when we all rode to school on our tyranadons, and prom king was whoever discovered fire.
Granted, there are the expected comments like, "Of Mice and Men, is so, like, boring?" and of course, "The Scarlet Letter just, kinda, like sucks." And to be honest, I had a hard time arguing to the contrary. But the one that really got me was, "The Catcher in the Rye was just about this lame emo kid..."
Holden Caulfield? Wearing skinny black jeans from the women's department at Sears and cutting himself. Preposterous! Sacrilege! And then I reread parts of the book. And lines like these kept popping out:
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
"People never believe you."
"All morons hate it when you call them a moron."
"Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad."
And then the clincher:
"I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor bastard."
You be the judge.
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Reader Comments (6)
Salinger was one of my gods when I was a kid. In the late eighties, the summer after 11th grade, my two best friends and I got in a car in upstate New York and drove north to Cornwall, New Hampshire intent on finding and speaking with him. It was our first road trip and at the time, it felt like the most important thing we'd ever do. No one had interviewed him in 30 years, but we were certain we'd be able to coax him out of his hermited existence and persuade him to answer our questions about life, and death, and Zen.
All we had to go on were a photo of his mailbox (which doesn't have a number) and a description of his house (he is, of course, unlisted). We stayed up all night the previous night planning exactly what we'd say as an opener to convince him to let us in. (It was some arcane question about the Fat Lady who appears at the end of Franny and Zooey).
We drove down every street we could find in that tiny New England town, two or three times. Many were just rough dirt. I remember having to stop the car completely when goats crossed in front of us. We never found JD's house, or at least we didn't know that we did. Late in the day when the sun started going down, we finally gave up. We picked up some sandwiches at the only store in town and headed out, devastated, but with the feeling that we somehow knew him better than we had, and that maybe that would be enough.
I loved Catcher in the Rye as well. I think every angst-tinged teen boy does. Maybe Holden was the anti-emo.
First off, emo is a type of music and only lately has it been promoted as a life style. Really the nick name emo derived from some moron who needed a quick way to stereotype all those "myspace kidzz" and their side bangs. & well, ya know, clearly they all must go home & cut themselves, so it fits...
The Catcher In The Rye is an obvious coming of age story, that most of the people who read it can relate to. I'm sure Salinger was aiming much more towards that then appearing as some dark and cool ass hole like Johnny Depp. He wrote this long before Good Charlotte was around, or skinny jeans were a necessity. The book is different, and depicts a life style a lot of people can relate to, but a lot of people cant.
So why put a bad name to someone who did a great job, and never meant for their work to be classified under something as demeaning and ignorant as "emo"?
Catcher In The Rye was original, and because the internet and generations have adopted a lifestyle that has not always been so capitalized does not mean literature should suffer for some kids in grade three with cell phones.
the entire word needs to be lost. its just pathetic, and usually only used as an insult. so if that is what people are aiming to do here, perhaps they should read the book & come up with an actually legitimate problem.
or something more original, I simply cant believe I am the only one tired of the whole "emo" out break?