English, Junior Year

First thing first, I know that that is a cartoon rendering of Thomas Pynchon.  I wouldn't want anyone thinking that I'm confused about my Simpsons episodes or my reclusive authors*.  But pictures of reclusive authors are hard to find and honestly, if The Simpsons could have worked it out, I'm sure that sign would read "J.D. Salinger's House: Come on In."  And today is a day when we're remembering the reclusive author of our high school years, so you'll have to forgive me the inaccuracy of the picture and appreciate the spirit in which it was posted.

Like many people who survived high school, I read The Catcher in the Rye in English class my junior year.  The big life lesson I learned from the book was that that people who protest books are likely to have never read them.  On the literary front, I found that I liked Holden Caulfield.  He sounded like an actual teenager and not an approximation of an teenager written by an adult.  And I've found that many of the students I teach have read and enjoyed The Catcher in the Rye, which is pretty easy to understand.  Unlike much of what is assigned in high school English, it's relatable and not Shakespeare**. 

The power of  The Catcher in the Rye, I think, is in its uniqueness, especially an audience already hardened by texts that seem old-fashioned and feel more like chores than reading***.  For a good number of high school students, the novel captures their imaginations in a way that few things in an English classroom (or much of high school, for that matter) do and they feel less alone knowing that on the page Holden is saying much of what they've been thinking about the world.  But probably the best thing about The Catcher in the Rye is that it can be a five-year book - something you pick up once every five years and basically discover all over again.  The second time I read it, I understood who Holden was and that I wasn't him and I didn't want to be him.  But I could sympathize with him, because the things that were going on in Holden's life were making him lose his shit.  Unlike the first time I read the book - where I only saw the world through Holden's eyes - the second time I read it I saw the world around him and how he was going to have a lot of trouble in that world.  And the power of the novel comes from the effects of both of those readings, which are vital functions of literature in the first place - to make us feel less alone and to help us understand other people.  The Catcher in the Rye does both of those things, and continues to do that for generations of readers****.

So, it's no surprise that people were genuinely moved when an author who lives out of the public eye and who hasn't produced anything new in decades passed away.  While Salinger doesn't fill our bookshelves, he produced a work that many of us understand, acknowledge to be good, and that many readers feel explain the world at a time when little else manages to do so.  Because seriously, most teenagers can't see that Holden's losing it.  Because they're feeling a little desperate themselves and Holden's genuine outrage at the world comes as a bit of a comfort.  Because a lot of adults are phonies and that becomes pretty clear as one starts to make the move from the kids' table to the adult table.

But enough with the seriousness.  While there have been many tributes to J.D. Salinger and his work today, I will offer you the one that I found to be short, direct, and affectionate.  Here is "Bunch of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger" from The Onion.



----------
* Pynchon's voice is featured on an episode in the fifteenth season titled "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife" in which Marge writes a romance novel.  Pynchon is asked to give a blurb for the book.  Also, I think the episode is hilarious, especially as the plot of Marge's romance novel about whaling unfolds. 
** My apologies to Shakespeare fans.  But, as I've tried to certain parties in the past, Shakespeare in high school is not an enjoyable experience because 1.) Everyone's down on it, 2.) The teachers assume you're not smart enough to get it so they sort of build it up to be something impossible to tackle, 3.) It's not cool, and 4.)  For the most part, you only get to read tragedies and honestly, the comedies would probably work better with teenagers.
*** Again, I'm not getting down on Shakespeare (or Arthur Miller, since I was sort of thinking of him too), but King Lear for 17 year-olds?  A very rare teenager finds him or herself in that play.  And while I'd like to think I was mature, I was definitely not that kid.  And I suspect that most kids are not that kid.
****Fun fact: My dad's copy of The Catcher in the Rye from high school is sitting next to my keyboard right now. 

When You Were Young...

This week I've been sitting through the English department orientation for new Teaching Fellows, thinking and talking about the class of 2013. I have to admit that I'm starting to feel like I've been blessed with a strange double-sightedness. While most people who know me are unsurprised that I'm strangely fond of Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA" and enjoy Top 40 radio (yes, radio) for the reason that it's just so darn catchy, I'm noticing that there are a bunch of songs that I would also sing along to appearing with an alarming frequency on LiteFM stations everywhere. (Case in point: I spent last night discussing the songs that I tend to belt out at traffic lights when the windows are down. This tends to be embarassing. One of those songs is "How Do You Talk to an Angel?" I not only identifyed this song on a restaurant radio, but traced its origins back to the one (or so) episode run of The Heights, the Melrose Place spinoff that only someone far too young to watch and understand Melrose Place would be interested in remembering.)

I entered college 10 years ago, in 1999, and while I feel connected in some ways to the First-Year students (or Newbies) that I'll be meeting and teaching on Monday, in other ways we couldn't be more removed from each other. As I was watching families lug comforters, plastic stacking units, microwaves, tvs, clothes, and the various contraband items that our new students have stowed with their possessions to their dorm rooms, I could remember a similarly disgustingly hot day in August when I was dropped off in a strange place, to live in a strange room, with a stranger, and told that the other nearby strangers would help shape my adult life. But, unlike the Newbies, I have the advantage of knowing how that all worked out and how right or wrong these statements were. In some cases, they were mostly right, but it's actually pretty complicated to try to fully agree with any of those first week statements after you've lived through the whole fun/messy/odd college experience.

Another thing that startles me at the beginning of every school year is the fact that while I've lived through a good number of technological, social, cultural, and political changes, for my Newbies, things have always been certain ways. Every year Beloit College posts the "Mindset List" for each incoming college class that gives a general summary of what life has "always been like" for the students entering college. And while I can definitely see the damage #20 has done to them (high-stakes educational testing) in the classroom, I really didn't realize what this group looked like culturally until I read the list. A good deal of my shock might come from the fact that I was 10 years old (or 9, if you count in the late birthdays) when this class was born and I was just starting to become aware of the world around me. I remember when Magic Johnson announced he had HIV. I was in a school full of fifth-graders and people told each other Magic Johnson jokes at lunch and thought they were up on current events. I remember the advent of blue Jello, though I still wish they would re-focus all their efforts into only making red Jello. I remember "discovering" salsa and the early days of its presence in my parents' house. And while I was briefly caught up in the early Berry Berry Kix hype, I still think it's too sugary and pretty disgusting. Especially when it's stale. And I would probably bet good money that my brother would still eat it should a box come his way.

So, what's my point? Well, I'm not sure exactly. I don't feel old remembering the world both before and after these changes. But I feel oddly in between my students and something else in the world. We are definitely of different mindsets and awarenesses; like my parents and other people who aquired portable technology later in life I have a stringent set of rules and expectations regarding its use. But in other ways we're very similar. I'm glad I don't have to use a card catalog anymore. But I'm also glad that I had to go on that fieldtrip to learn how.