Teenage Angst Novels

[Tenure]

Ok, so maybe Teen Angst isn't the right phrasing to use, but it's what these sorts of books are generally described as. It's not an adequate description, but it will suffice for now.

Now, first, a bit (a fair bit) of background. If you've not read these two novels they're pretty much this (SPOILERS!):

Catcher in the Rye - Holden Caulfield is an obviously talented student who could be a great writer. He has a talent for being sensitive about all he sees (think John Galt, who manages to find great love for the simple act of sensory perception), but he is eternally cynical of everything he sees, except children, who sees as intrinsically pure. This fits in with his perception of women, as either innocent virgins or whores. He doesn't give much reason behind his judgements, he just makes them and moves on. Sometimes he'll call himself "crazy" and he will very often call people "phonies" because of, well, various reasons.

The actual plot is just following him pissing around in New York for a day or two after being kicked out of boarding school a few days before the Christmas holiday. Unlike Roark, Caulfield simply doesn't work. What he does do is good stuff, but generally he doesn't apply himself at all (the typical gifted student who flunks essays). So, he goes around New York, becoming more and more obsessed with reasons for why people are phonies, before becoming completly disconnected with reality sometime between the final chapter and the epilogue.

We don't know exactly what happened, but from foreshadowing, it's assumed to be attempted suicide. All we know is that he's in a mental hospital and he's thinking about applying himself. It ends with the lines: "Never tell anyone anything. Otherwise you just end up missing them." This is probably in relation to his younger brother Ally, who long before the events of the novel, died of some disease or something. He's the only person who Holden ever opened up to, and it is probably a key factor in why he avoids facing up to reality, especially the reality of his thoughts.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - This book is quite an interesting book, in that it's meant to be a response to Catcher in a way, according to the author. It's about Charlie (no surname mentioned, it's an epistolatory novel and he changes names to 'protect their identity', much like in Les Liasons Dangerous), a teenager in the early 90s, who's far more connected to his family than Holden. He gets on well with his sister, and his parents are far more supportive than the distant parents of Holden.

What is most important is Charlie's perception of the world however. Unlike cynical Holden, he acts far more naively, making an honest effort to 'participate' with the people around him. This is very important because it highlights the key issue that's troubling Holden and Charlie. Charlie tries to 'participate' so hard, rather than distancing himself from people like he used to, that near the end of the novel he is practically living for other people. Holden could barely live his own life, never facing up to what all his actions meant. He simply chose not to participate in life at all. However, Charlie's idea of participation is love, in the altruistic sense. This is so superbly summed up by his best friend, Samantha, who tells him in their eponymous scene near the end (splicing together the key quotes): "It's like you're not even there sometimes, Charlie ... You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love ... If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am ... and I want to know where you are, what you need, and what you want to do".

Needless to say, he doesn't really understand what Sam means by all this, and in the same way as Holden does: hospitalised. Although we did learn that he did have a nervous breakdown, and causes of his trauma lay in an incident in his past, which triggered all the altruistic living that he did ever since.

I really have no clue if Chbosky, the author of 'Perks', is an Objectivist, but at the very least his ideas are very much in tune with the themes of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. In fact, the character of Charlie reads The Fountainhead near the end of the book, before Sam's speech. It's quite important what he says here in fact, as I think it underscores the values missing from these boys lives. Salinger leaves it to be inferred, whilst Chbosky is more obvious about it, hence why I am about to quote this section:

"The architect says something like this: 'I would die for you. But I won't live for you'. Something like that. I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people."

You've most likely read 'Catcher in the Rye', so you at least understand what I mean when I say that Holden cuts himself off from reality. His problem is that he can't face up to who he is, he can't examine his life because he's too scared, or because he's got no one to help him do it. Charlie could examine his life, but he doesn't realise why he should. He misses the advice that his teacher Bill constantly imparts onto him, and fails to learn from the lessons that teach him that his mindless altruism just isn't working.

If anyone here has kids, you should give them these books to read as teenagers. Let them read them and then make up their own minds. It took me two years to finally come to the realisation of what these books meant (aided by the beginning of my quest to understand Objectivism) and I'm all the better for it. They're books you should read, if you want to understand the motivation that drives someone who is blinded by reality, or lives altruistically. It won't garner you any respect for them, it may make you aggravated, and it most certainly may actually force some pity out of you. But it will teach you what it is that can get grounded in you from a young age, that can lead to the many evils we see around us today.

[hunterrose]

Don't mean to be too contrary, but I couldn't stand The Catcher in the Rye. Pretentious kid who saw phoniness in almost everyone except himself. I think Catcher is a bit overrated qua "classic novel", but it does show some of the things you say. Some people might get more from it than I did. I never read (or had even heard of) The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I'll have to look into that one; you make it sound interesting.

The Chosen is also IMO a very good teen/coming of age book, though it's in quite a different vein than Catcher. Not particularly angsty, either.

I liked The Chocolate War too, though again, I'm not sure that would fit with the rest of the books...

[Inspector]

I had to read Catcher back in high school. I couldn't stand it; it was a book about an aimless loser and I constantly wanted to reach into the book and smack him on the head. We were required to write margin notes and mine were a constant stream of berating. I just couldn't believe that so many people worshiped this whiny pansy.

[Tenure]

I had to read Catcher back in high school. I couldn't stand it; it was a book about an aimless loser and I constantly wanted to reach into the book and smack him on the head. We were required to write margin notes and mine were a constant stream of berating. I just couldn't believe that so many people worshiped this whiny pansy.

Well, yes, the incredibly annoying fact is that people do seem to worship the character of Holden. The same way they think Tyler is the hero of 'Fight Club' and that Johnny The Homicidal Maniac is just a misunderstood guy. Yes, these are stories about losers, but there is merit in that fact - not in itself of course, but because of what it teaches you about the mentality of a loser, and the importance of things like judgement, imagination and individuality.

I think that it's important to understand why people act the way they do, and these sorts of books are very clear in explaining why that is; you just have to consider it beyond "this is a whiny teenager" to "Why is he a whiny teenager?".

[Inspector]

I think that it's important to understand why people act the way they do, and these sorts of books are very clear in explaining why that is; you just have to consider it beyond "this is a whiny teenager" to "Why is he a whiny teenager?".

That's just it: if the author's position was that he was a whiny loser, then it might have been tolerable. But he was supposed to be the protagonist. That's why I don't share your enthusiasm for the book.

[Tenure]

That's just it: if the author's position was that he was a whiny loser, then it might have been tolerable. But he was supposed to be the protagonist. That's why I don't share your enthusiasm for the book.

Ah but that's the thing. Being a protagonist does not make you a hero. It simply means you're the person we should pay the most amount of attention to in a story, and you're the barometer by which we measure the themes and such of the book. We don't have to like a protagonist, that's why he's a kind of anti-hero really. Like I said, the problem is that people are stupid and emotional, and take the position that it's the big bad world that's out to get him, falling right into the emotional trap that people like him create; rather than realising that it's the intolerably selfless attitude of Holden's which is being demonised by Salinger.

[Inspector]

Like I said, the problem is that people are stupid and emotional, and take the position that it's the big bad world that's out to get him, falling right into the emotional trap that people like him create; rather than realising that it's the intolerably selfless attitude of Holden's which is being demonised by Salinger.

But that is precisely Salinger's position. He isn't demonizing Holden - he is demonizing the world that doesn't permit an intolerably selfless loser like Holden to thrive. Believe me, I've read books where the main character is a loser and the author knows it (Mission Earth comes to mind) - and Catcher In The Rye is not one of them.

[Tenure]

I've had enough time to mull over my answer. Salinger doesn't explicitly demonise Holden, but there is no way any rational person can walk away from that book thinking Holden is a hero. To disillusioned teenagers, he can seem like that, because he's just like them. But when you realise why he's completely messed up, you understand the point that Salinger is really making - that the imagination and love for life is squashed at an early age, and I think he's making further the point that that is only aided by a faulty school system and neglecting parents. Kids who detach themselves from reality will never come back again, unless someone reaches out to them on rational grounds.

One of my favourite plays is 'Six Degrees of Separation' by John Guare. It's a play about this young guy who cons his way into people's lives, for a thrill, some money and eventually to feel like he belongs somewhere (he's a sort-of reflection of Holden). He makes a speech near the beginning, reciting from his College dissertation, where he very poignantly says: "But the aura around this book of Salinger's - which perhaps should be read by everyone but young men - is this: It mirrors like a fun house mirror and amplifies like a distorted speaker one of the great tragedies of our time - the death of the imagination".

[Inspector]

I've had enough time to mull over my answer. Salinger doesn't explicitly demonise Holden, but there is no way any rational person can walk away from that book thinking Holden is a hero.

Ah, but do not make the mistake that because no rational person could possibly mean for Holden to be a hero that Salinger did not mean for him to be a (anti?) hero. If Salinger did not mean for him to be a hero, then the only explanation for his sympathetic perspective was that he was an arch-naturalist who had to write it from Holden's point of view.

Either way, the book was excruciating. Holden was presented as sympathetic and the moral ideal which is crushed by the "phony" society.

It is not ignorance as innocence that is the value our society is lacking. Precisely the opposite: it is that we need to grow the hell up and face reality, not "imagination." Salinger is dead wrong, no matter how you look at it.

I'm glad you took a good lesson from the book, but it was quite apart from the point the author was trying to make.

[Tenure]

Ok, I should explain that imagination comment. I mentioned it in another thread, and I'll quickly repeat it here: the imagination is not a mystical thing, it is very much grounded in reality. The use of the imagination is that it allows us to examine ourselves. Holden cannot bear any sort of self-examination, and would rather live in all his false premises, because it's easy. If I could draw you to the very last quote in my signature? That is the very act of imagination. It forces you to question your premises, to say "Ok, I understand, I'm always saying and thinking this. Obviously it's not working though, something isn't right", Holden says many times that he's 'crazy', "So what could I do to change?"

It is as much about facing up to what you do do, as well as what you could do. Maybe it's just my personal background, but I had to slug off a lot of stupid irrational stuff before I came to be able to accept reality (read: Objectivism), so maybe I'm just sympathetic towards what someone like Holden goes through in the book, rather than outright disgusted - sympathetic because of his own delusions, not because of anything that he feels 'society' has done to him.

Salinger is a recluse himself. He is also a blatant mystic, believing in Buddhism and Christian Science and all manner of crap. He may very well have intended for Holden to be some sort of anti-hero. However, the book is absolutely dripping with irony and the feeling most people (this is from my highly scientific pool of about 4 or 5 people) get from reading the book ranges somewhere from mistrust of Holden to outright disgust. So, even if we are meant to feel sympathetic, what Salinger has actually written betrays that intent, whether he realised it or not.

What would be interesting is if we could find some information on Salinger's intent, however the man is a recluse and will probably die with his story.

Edited May 15, 2007 by Tenure