Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations The Adventures of The Grapes of Wrath Portnoy’s Complaint Huckleberry Finn Great Expectations A Portrait of the Artist The Age of Innocence The Great Gatsby as a Young Man Alice’s Adventures in Gulliver’s Travels Pride and Prejudice Wonderland The Handmaid’s Tale Ragtime All Quiet on the Heart of Darkness The Red Badge of Western Front I Know Why the Courage As You Like It Caged Bird Sings The Rime of the The Ballad of the Sad The Iliad Ancient Mariner Café Jane Eyre The Rubáiyát of Omar Beowulf The Joy Luck Club Khayyám Black Boy The Jungle The Scarlet Letter The Bluest Eye Lord of the Flies Silas Marner The Canterbury Tales The Lord of the Rings Song of Solomon Cat on a Hot Tin Love in the Time of The Sound and the Roof Cholera Fury The Catcher in the The Man Without The Stranger Rye Qualities A Streetcar Named Catch-22 The Metamorphosis Desire The Chronicles of Miss Lonelyhearts Sula Narnia Moby-Dick The Tale of Genji The Color Purple My Ántonia A Tale of Two Cities Crime and Native Son The Tempest Punishment Night Their Eyes Were The Crucible 1984 Watching God Darkness at Noon The Odyssey Things Fall Apart Death of a Salesman Oedipus Rex To Kill a Mockingbird The Death of Artemio The Old Man and the Ulysses Cruz Sea Waiting for Godot Don Quixote On the Road The Waste Land Emerson’s Essays One Flew Over the White Noise Emma Cuckoo’s Nest Wuthering Heights Fahrenheit 451 One Hundred Years of Young Goodman A Farewell to Arms Solitude Brown Frankenstein Persuasion MCI_CatcherInTheRye.indd 1 12/30/08 3:33:14 PM MCI_CatcherInTheRye.indd 2 12/30/08 3:33:14 PM Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye New Edition Edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom Sterling Professor of the Humanities Yale University MCI_CatcherInTheRye.indd 3 12/30/08 3:33:15 PM Editorial Consultant, John Unrue Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye—New Edition Copyright ©2009 by Infobase Publishing Introduction ©2009 by Harold Bloom All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information contact: Bloom’s Literary Criticism An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data J.D. Salinger’s The catcher in the rye / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom.—New ed. p. cm.—(Bloom’s modern critical interpretations) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60413-183-3 (alk. paper) 1. Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David), 1919– Catcher in the Rye. 2. Caulfield, Holden (Fictitious character) 3. Runaway teenagers in literature. 4. Teenage boys in literature. I. Bloom, Harold. PS3537.A426C3292 2009 813’.54—dc22 2008045784 Bloom’s Literary Criticism books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Bloom’s Literary Criticism on the World Wide Web at http://www.chelseahouse.com. Cover design by Ben Peterson Printed in the United States of America Bang BCL 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. All links and Web addresses were checked and verified to be correct at the time of publication. Because of the dynamic nature of the Web, some addresses and links may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. MCI_CatcherInTheRye.indd 4 12/30/08 3:33:15 PM Contents Editor’s Note vii Introduction 1 Harold Bloom Rhetoric, Sanity, and the Cold War: The Significance of Holden Caulfield’s Testimony 5 Alan Nadel “The World Was All Before Them”: Coming of Age in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Weep Not, Child and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye 21 Sandra W. Lott and Steven Latham Go West, My Son 37 Sanford Pinsker Hyakujo’s Geese, Amban’s Doughnuts and Rilke’s Carrousel: Sources East and West for Salinger’s Catcher 45 Dennis McCort Cherished and Cursed: Toward a Social History of The Catcher in the Rye 63 Stephen J. Whitfield The Catcher in the Rye as Postwar American Fable 89 Pamela Hunt Steinle MCI_CatcherInTheRye.indd 5 12/30/08 3:33:15 PM vi Contents Holden Caulfield’s Legacy 105 David Castronovo The Boy That Had Created the Disturbance: Reflections on Minor Characters in Life and The Catcher in the Rye 115 John McNally Holden Caulfield: A Love Story 123 Jane Mendelsohn Catcher in the Corn: J. D. Salinger and Shoeless Joe 131 Dennis Cutchins Mentor Mori; or, Sibling Society and the Catcher in the Bly 151 Robert Miltner Memories of Holden Caulfield—and of Miss Greenwood 167 Carl Freedman The Zen Archery of Holden Caulfield 183 Yasuhiro Takeuchi Chronology 191 Contributors 195 Bibliography 199 Acknowledgments 205 Index 207 MCI_CatcherInTheRye.indd 6 12/30/08 3:33:15 PM Editor’s Note My Introduction raises—but declines to answer—the question of any last- ing aesthetic value of The Catcher in the Rye. The baker’s dozen of essays tend to merge in an appreciation of Sa- linger’s narrative. I would choose Sanford Pinsker, David Castronovo, Jane Mendelsohn, and Carl Freedman as making their critical responses more agile than are most reactions to Salinger. vii MCI_CatcherInTheRye.indd 7 12/30/08 3:33:15 PM MCI_CatcherInTheRye.indd 8 12/30/08 3:33:15 PM HAROLD BLOOM Introduction j. d. salinger (1919– ) I I t is more than a half-a-century since the publication of The Catcher in the Rye (1951), and the short novel has gone through hundreds of printings. Authentic popular fiction of authentic literary distinction is rather rare. Does The Catcher in the Rye promise to be of permanent eminence, or will it eventually be seen as an idealistic period-piece, which I think will be the fate of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, works as popular as Catcher continues to be. The literary ancestors of Holden Caulfield rather clearly include Huck Finn and Jay Gatsby, dangerous influences upon Salinger’s novel. The Ad- ventures of Huckleberry Finn remains Mark Twain’s masterwork, central to Faulkner, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, and the other significant novelists of their generation. The Great Gatsby endures as Fitzgerald’s classic achieve- ment, capable of many rereadings. Rereading The Catcher of the Rye seems to me an aesthetically mixed experience—sometimes poignant, sometimes mawkish or even cloying. Holden’s idiom, once established, is self-consistent, but fairly limited in its range and possibilities, perhaps too limited to sustain more than a short story. And yet Holden retains his pathos, even upon several rereadings. Man- hattan has been a descent into Hell for many American writers, most notably in “The Tunnel” section in Hart Crane’s visionary epic The Bridge. It be- comes Holden’s Hell mostly because of Holden himself, who is masochistic, ambivalent towards women, and acutely ambivalent in regard to his father. Holden’s psychic health, already precarious, barely can sustain the stresses of 1 MCI_CatcherInTheRye.indd 1 12/30/08 3:33:16 PM