The catcher in the rye

I’ve been reading ‘The catcher in the rye’ again. It’s a great book but after the last page all I wanted to know was, what happens to Holden Caulfield?
Does he do better in his next school? Does he grow up and become a cynical author? Does he spend the rest of his life hanging out in pubs hating all the phonies in the world? Or did he decide that, what he’d do was, he’d pretend that he was a deaf-mute?

I can really relate with the character in an abstract sort of way. In the book he says, ‘I’m quite illiterate but I read a lot.’ I like that because I’m quite illiterate too. Kindred spirits, as you can see. I felt cheated though, when I got to the last page. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown up on commercial fantasy and fiction where everything is A-OK when you get to the last page. Hero’s alive, villain’s dead, everyone finds true love and lives happily ever after, blah, blah, blah.

None of the books which are closest to real life, as far as I’ve seen, gives you a happy ending. In most of them, things aren’t any better in the last page than in the first. The story doesn’t change but the characters do and you don’t even see any appreciable change. Just the feeling that something’s different but you can’t quite put your finger on what that something is.

Some would say that that’s the beauty of it. There is no happily ever after, only a vaguely confusing reality which can be captured by few women (and men) on paper. A really good author (according to J.D. Salinger) is someone you wish was your friend, someone you want to call up and talk to over the phone.

I wouldn’t mind talking to J.D. Salinger. Really, if it was a choice between Salinger, Lee and Rowling, I’d definitely pick Salinger.
There are some books you enjoy because you escape your own mundane life for a few glorious hours and then there are others that make you go, ‘Wow’ and you can’t sleep for the better part of the night because you can’t stop thinking about it.

So you know what? I don’t want to know what happens to Holden Caulfield. It’s better that way.