“A Catcher In The Rye” Anniversary
America loves its anniversaries, even literary America. And yet there has been no discussion about the upcoming 70th anniversary of what is arguably the most important lost weekend in post-War American literature.
I’m speaking of the “The Catcher in the Rye,” the novel by J.D. Salinger that has enthralled generations of disaffected young men since the 1950s and inspired at least two assassination attempts (on Ronald Reagan and John Lennon).
The story depicts 72 hours in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield, who’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown after being expelled from his boarding school. Not wanting to face the music with his parents, Holden spends a long weekend wandering around New York City while musing on the “phoniness” of society.
Although Salinger’s theme of teen alienation is nearly universal, the novel is unusually particular and specific about its time and setting. In this respect it is similar to the peripatetic adventures of another lost soul: Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Like Bloom’s Dublin, Holden’s Manhattan is a very real place and his journey is easy to retrace even seventy years later. And just as the action in Ulysses can be identified as a specific date (June 16, 1904, otherwise known as “Bloomsday,”) so too can Holden’s weekend be traced to a precise moment in time: December 17-19, 1949.
All it takes to establish that date is a quick Google search. According to the novel, Holden and his erstwhile girlfriend Sally Hayes go to see a Broadway show featuring “the Lunts,” (i.e., the actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne). This must have been the now-forgotten “I Know My Love,” which ran on Broadway from November 2, 1949 to June 3, 1950. This narrows Holden’s weekend to December, 1949. A quick look at the calendar for that year shows that Friday, December 17 is almost certainly the night Holden leaves his prep school, Pencey, given that the previous Friday (the 9th) would have been too soon for the semester to be over.
“A Catcher In the Rye” is hardly the universal touchstone today that it was for knowing teenagers in the decades following its publication, but it still sells a quarter-million copies a year and every time I read it, my heart bleeds again for Holden and the sensitive boy that I, too, once was.
The first time I opened those pages I was in the eighth grade and younger than Holden. Now I’m older even than Holden’s father, for God’s sakes, so my perspective has changed considerably. I see now, for example, that no book, TV show, or movie did more to convince me that New York City was the most thrilling and exciting place in the world. But I also realize that as a young teen I didn’t fully appreciate the sadness behind Holden’s weekend of night clubs, highballs, cab rides and cultural touchstones. Instead, the novel made me yearn for the sophistication of a metropolis that was at the height of its power just a handful of years after World War II. And not only was Salinger’s New York glamorous, it was safe; Holden walks the empty streets and roams Central Park in the middle of the night without worrying about getting robbed, stabbed, or worse.
To a 21st Century consumer, what’s most striking about the New York of 1949 was how affordable it was. Consider what Holden does with the birthday money from his grandmother. He stays at a midtown hotel, visits and buys drinks at three different nightclubs, buys two tickets to a Broadway show, sees the Rockettes perform at Radio City Music Hall, skates at Rockefeller Center, pays for a prostitute (granted, it’s only a “throw,” but still), makes a nostalgic return to the Museum of Natural History, and takes five or six cabs. Today a weekend like that at Christmas would cost well over a thousand bucks.
But if the New York City of “Catcher in the Rye” is a distant memory, its portrait of teen angst is more relevant than ever. A common theme of 21st Century pop psychology is the loneliness of our youth in a social media-dominated world. And yet, even before Instagram and TikTok, Holden was deeply alone, an outsider longingly peering in at a society where everyone else seemed to be enjoying himself, no matter how superficially. Out for drinks with his former dorm adviser, he admits “I’m lonesome as hell.” He invites his various cab drivers out for drinks, tries to get some little kids to socialize over hot chocolate, donates money to two nuns he meets at a coffee shop, and pays for the drinks of the three female tourists from Seattle. None of this addresses his alienation.
“Bloomsday” is celebrated each June 16, with marathon readings, pub crawls and other festivities. We could do the same with Holden’s Weekend. For one thing, “Catcher” is a lot more accessible than “Ulysses” and would lend itself better to public readings. And many of the locations mentioned in the novel are still standing, which would make for authentic Holden walks. But most important, now, more than ever, we need someone like Holden to take down the “phonies” and advance a discussion on how to make deeper human connections.
Really!!? 
Wonderful, Gary. Will always remember reading The Catcher in the Rye in high school. This make me want to read it again.
Thanks Michael. It’s a quick read so I’d encourage you to revisit it with adult eyes, and let me know what you think.
I read “Catcher” in junior high school, and I was certainly no novel reader. It so impressed me that I read it at least seven more times before graduating high school in 1980. I always wondered about the timeline, too, and I definitely wanted to visit NYC after reading of Holden’s experiences there. (Since he was born and raised in Manhattan, I would consider it easy enough for him to find his way around). It’s interesting to consider that, were Holden a real person, he could conceivably still be alive out there (as of this writing: 6-29-2022), though he’d be a quite elderly 89-90 years old. Highly unlikely, given his two pack a day smoking habit, plus his drinking and otherwise fragile mental health. I would imagine a real “Holden” would’ve passed away years ago. Plus, I always wondered if there was any particular significance to Allie’s passing away on July 18, 1946. (A Thursday, by the way). Was that, perhaps, the day JDS wrote that particular chapter of the book? A birthdate of someone related or known? Also, as Allie died of leukemia, wouldn’t the Caulfields have known A was becoming ill or beginning to break down physically? It would’ve been no less sad for Holden, but it just seems he took A’s death as though it was a real shock. Perhaps if A would’ve died accidentally (struck by a car, say), I could REALLY see why Holden would’ve taken A’s passing as hard as he does. Guess it doesn’t matter in the end, though… Anyway, just wanted to throw these observations out there, and I really enjoyed your analysis. Good Day!
Thanks for the great post. I too think that Holden would have had a heart attack about ago fifty and then died of a stroke about ten years later, and been survived by two alienated and two unalienated kids by three wives. I never thought about Allie’s date of death. Excellent question. My guess is that since Holden was so young it was still shocking even though expected. I hope you made it to NYC and checked out a few of those places mentioned. It really did bring it closer to home for me, although much of that world is gone for good.
I’ve been to NYC on a few occasions, tho none of these entailed a “Holden Tour.” Another thing: I believe that world of the 1950’s is TOTALLY gone! No matter if the buildings or places still exist or not. (Hell, even the world of the 80’s is LONG, LONG gone!!)