The essay I should have written in year 11.
I feel as though I have no choice but to post because the article that I read this morning invoked in me a primal instinct to shred the paper into tiny pieces and revel in the sound of its destruction. Alas my blog is turning into a mere Reader Response column for the SMH but we shall persevere because I cannot let this one go.
Read the article here.
It is no secret that I despise the book ‘Catcher in the Rye’. I had the same ‘argh! I want to rip this book apart!’ feeling when I read it in year 11 – in fact I remember throwing the book across the room in sheer frustration (being forced to read a book was never fun). When I have discussions with my guy friends (who all seem to relate all too well to its protagonist Holden Caulfield, a phenomenon which does little to restore my faith in that gender), I can never competently articulate why I loathe it so much. Perhaps it’s because it’s been 6 years since I’ve read it. But this article makes me remember again. So boys, this is my argument – I look forward to your rebuttals.
The article is a 41 year old man’s perspective on life, love and sex. In the article he argues that brothels are the way to go, and that people are fooling themselves in attempting to squeeze into the unnatural convention of monogamy. This guy is Holden Caulfield at 41, if Salinger were ever to write a sequel.
"The great thing about sex with whores is the excitement and variety. If you say you’re enjoying sex with the same person after a couple of years you’re either a liar or you’re on something. Of all the sexual perversions, monogamy is the most unnatural… Love [is] the delusion that one woman differs from another."
Like Holden Caulfield, he speaks with high-horse ambience about how the world ‘should’ work, as though he were one ordained with superior knowledge about the human condition. The persistently arrogant tone attempts to feign a pseudo-authority that he, unlike other less-informed men out there, is one who can see beyond social convention. He ‘knows better’, and he doesn’t bother with humility in preaching this ‘greater truth’ to us, the lesser-minded, who may never understand.
What the writer does not realise is that in his advocation of ideas, he induces not the sympathy to his argument that he was hoping for, but mere pity to his inability to understand meaningful relationships. It is glaringly obvious to the reader that the problem isn’t with monogamy itself, but his immaturity and fear of relationships – a fear of being emotionally vulnerable to another person. "The problem with normal sex is that it leads to kissing and pretty soon you’ve got to talk to them. Once you know someone well, the last thing you want to do is screw them." Instead he attempts to hold the power in a sexual relationship by being the payer – "I love using money to buy the personal act of intimacy… to fall into a woman’s arms without falling into her hands."
He sees intimacy with women as an " invasion of my innermost space, the slow strangulation of my art." More than just being intrusive, women are perceived as castrators, cutting off male freedom and chaining them into a life of monogamy. "When I love somebody, I feel trapped."
Holden Caulfield perceived himself a sort of ‘last great innocent’ who saw the through the world’s ‘phoniness’. His manifesto came down to a gross oversimplification, which was both testament to his immaturity and proved his ultimate downfall as he loses his mind in despair. The generalisation is that, in contrast to childhood, which is pure and all-good, adulthood is corrupt and all-evil. Male-female relationships fall into the second category and are immediately treated with distrust and disdain. His dismissal of monogamy through intellectual banter is a thinly veiled mask to cover his juvenile fear of the opposite sex – or rather adult relationships of any kind requiring mature characteristics such as commitment, perseverance, forgiveness and compromise.
Critics often idealise Holden Caulfield as a pure soul tainted by the dirt of this world. To some extent I agree with his viewpoint that the world is phony in some ways – but his response to this, to cop out rather than to cope, screams dysfunction and immaturity. This 41 year old guy copped out. He didn’t know how to deal with emotional complexity, and rather than learning, he quit. Maybe because he didn’t know how to appreciate the abundant rewards of monogamy – the perceived costs blinded him from seeing the beauty of meaningful relationships.
Holden Caulfield wasn’t a martyr – he was just a kid. Which is okay if you’re a teenager and you grow out of it. Reading this article about this 41 year old guy still stuck in such a mentality – the thought that men can reside in such arrested development for life – is why I want to rip this paper into shreds. Because his way of life is not harmless – he fuels a debasing industry which exploits women of low socioeconomic status, low self-esteem and prior sexual abuse (fact: 67% of prostitutes have a history of sexual abuse in childhood). Holden Caulfield idealism is just as dark and corrupt as the things he tried to rebel against.
This is the crux of my argument – Holden Caulfield is not the quintessential male, to be glorified and immortalised. He is a warning sign to society, of men denying rather than dealing with adulthood, whose failure to adjust leads them to a life of meaningless cynicism. ‘Catcher in the Rye’ should serve not as laureateship for maleness, but as a wakeup call to the boys who read it, lest they end up like Holden Caulfield, broken and emotionally defunct. Lest they end up as 41 year old guys heralding prostitutes as the answer to life.
