we thought we hated holden caulfield... - the catcher in the rye by j.d. salinger

phonies, crooks and big bastards beware! this episode we’re discussing a book often cited as an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature - an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and a book held in the tote bags of ex boyfriends and would be assassins alike. this month, we’re exploring a seminal work of softboi fiction and spending time with one of history's most divisive protagonists, Holden Caulfield. we're reading about loss of innocence and life on the cusp of adulthood in the Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

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Transcript

Bridget 0:00

Ready to catch all this rye.

Laura 0:02

Hello and welcome to Talk Lip Get Hit, a podcast where we read viral books the internet won't shut up about and rate them lit or shit.

Bridget 0:10

We're your hosts Bridget and Laura, lovers of sad girl fiction and tragic endings, fearers of smart urban fantasy, and the Who Did This To You trope. Join us as we pick apart all the books the internet loves and embark on a journey to figure out why.

Laura 0:27

This episode we're discussing a book often cited as an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature. An elegy to teenage alienation capturing the deeply human need for connection. A book held in the tote bags of ex-boyfriends and would-be assassins alike. This month we're reading The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. Bridget, hello, hello. Hello, hello.

Bridget 0:48

The Catcher in the Rye.

Laura 0:50

It is time. It is time. We meet again. Your old nemesis. Heldin. How's your month been?

Bridget 1:01

It's been pretty good. I don't know if I've done too much. I'm back at work, and that has been quite nice. I think the most exciting part of my month is that I went to the sprint cars. I haven't been to the sprint cars since I was quite young, and the main memory I have of that is rolling down the hill and my dad getting really mad at me. Me and my sister, because all we wanted to do was roll down the hill. Um, didn't do that this time, thought about it. But the greatest part of this was that after the sprint cars were finished, there was a demolition derby of boats, caravans, and dunnies. And if you don't know what a dunny is, it's a toilet. So it was incredible. I have never felt closer to my roots as a bogan than sitting covered in dirt at the sprint cars watching some old Commodores be smashed into by like a limo pulling a caravan on the back of it. Amazing. If anyone has a chance to go to a demolition derby, do it. Sprint cars, like once they've gone around a few times, wow, fast. Sometimes there's a big crash, exciting after you find out they're okay. But the demolition derby highlight, absolute highlight, amazing. I was like, I can't believe they're allowed to do this. This is crazy. It felt so reckless, and I loved it. What are the quals you need? I wonder. Like, I think you have to be a spring car driver. Oh. Like, I think they know how to smash into the other without killing them. Okay. It was actually so fun. And I thought the crowd would be a bit hard to handle. They were great. Everyone was so nice. Like families just sitting down together, not bothering anybody else. It was like one drunk guy, amazing, loved it. That's so funny.

Laura 2:42

Mum has always wanted to go to see monster trucks, which I think is sort of at odds with like a lot of other aspects of her personality. Like she's very crafty and like into reading, like very similar to you in some ways. But I love that you both have this part of you that craves vehicular violence. Yeah, you have a need for speed for sure.

Bridget 3:03

The only other thing that I could really think of was that I have actually been watching a little bit of TV. And the first one is Emily in Paris.

Laura 3:10

So like, when are you when not watching Emily in Paris? Unfortunately, it does still have a hold on me after all this time.

Bridget 3:18

And every episode, Maddie and I are like, why are we watching this stupid, stupid, stupid show? And then we're like, let's watch another one. And then we just keep going. And then by the time the next season comes out, we're like, wait, what is happening? Is she in Italy? Why is she in Italy? Why is it? Anyway, so we're watching that. I am having a lovely time. And the other thing I've been watching is Bridgetton. And it's so good. Who would have thought after the train wreck that was the last season? It's I feel like it's listened to the criticism. It's back to the roots. We've barely had a Mondret mention. Thank God. And it is about Sophie and it is about Benedict.

Laura 3:54

I was hearing some feedback from someone who also was enjoying it, by the way, but they were just sort of describing to me what a dumbass Benedict was. Like the Cinderella situation where he'd like used his best artistic skills to sketch out exactly what her lips and nose looked like or whatever. And then cannot see her right in front of his face.

Bridget 4:12

I mean, I'm kind of too far involved to even like be on that train because I'm like, no, I have justified that in my head. Spoiler, if you don't want to hear about this, skip forward. And it's not really a spoiler. So it's like obviously like a Cinderella retelling sort of thing. But when he first re-meets her, he's drunk. Okay, he's gets sick. He like nearly dies. He has like an infection. And then the next morning he like wakes up and she's still there. So in my mind, I've sort of justified it by saying when he was drunk, he was drunk. And then the next morning, she's familiar, but she's familiar because she's been here all night. You know, she's not familiar because I met her one, six months ago. She's familiar because she's been here with me all night, saving my life.

Laura 4:55

I see, I see. Kind of that kind of got me. Gotcha. I'm by the plug. I'm back in and I love it. I will watch it eventually, I think. I'm yeah, yeah. It's good. Okay.

Bridget 5:06

And it's crazy. I never thought I'd say that about Bridgeton again after season three, but uh, it's bad, baby. Anyway, that's been my month. How has your month been?

Laura 5:15

Yeah, my month's also been really good. I've had a really, really delightful start to the year. I've just been going to the reservoir, I've been going for walks, I've been going to little cafes, I've been seeing my friends. It's just been very wholesome, very nice. Something that's been helping me this month, and it feels like I'm dipping ever so slightly into a James Clear school of thought. But I've been writing really targeted to-do lists for the month. And so even if it's something small, like I want to go to a specific cafe I have been meaning to go to, I'll pop it in the list. And I'm like, no, no, you actually have to do that this month. And then it feels really nice because I'm like, look what I achieved. Those are things I wanted to do and I did them. And so yeah, I've just had like a very positive start of the year. That is positive.

Bridget 5:58

I wonder if it's because we're not using social media. It could be. Is that why we're so positive?

Laura 6:02

I will never get off my high horse. In relation to the no social media, I've really been noticing my superiority complex at the gym where like in between sets, people are just sitting scrolling. Maybe they're talking to people, maybe they have more friends than me. But like the other day I did the most boomer thing. There were these like a gaggle of like floppy haired young guys using broccoli heads. Yeah, broccoli heads. I only just found out that term. They were using their the leg press machine, which I really wanted to use. And there's like six of them around my machine. Yeah, crazy. Just doing nothing. And I was taking my time, trying to find other stuff to do. It was like the last thing I had to do. I was like, I just really want to do this. Just get off. And so I set a timer on my watch. I did that too. I was so late. I did it yesterday. It was just like the guy using the machine was on his phone. And then like the three other guys around him were also on their phones, and no one was talking, and no one was exercising. And I was like, What are we doing? Like, get off the machine. I always have a job. I know I could have just gone up and said, We be on here much longer. Can I use this after you? I would never, yeah. Also too scared.

Bridget 7:11

Yeah.

Laura 7:12

Anyway, that's when I feel my most superior.

Bridget 7:14

Yeah. I'm like thinking of things, and I look at around the room and I think, none of you are thinking. Everyone's just scrolling. And what I'm what I'm thinking about is probably like Emily in Paris. Yeah. But I'm thinking. Before you puzzle together. Two months ago, wouldn't have been thinking. I would have been scrolling.

Laura 7:32

Wake up, sheeple.

Bridget 7:34

I've been reading Villette by Charlotte Bronte at the gym.

Laura 7:37

You don't even know what I'm reading. I also have a TV show rec and this is big news because it's a show that I've been waiting to find on streaming for like the whole time since I first watched it. So it's a show called Happy Endings. I think it came out around like 2011-ish. It's very reflective of that era of television, like new girl-ish kind of like sitcom vibes. And it is just so charming. They're like 20-minute episodes, and it is like pretty ridiculous. Like they get up to some shenanigans. And although the humour I think is very, very millennial, it's like not the puppas and like pumpkin spice latte brand of millennial. It's not quite like Bazinga, Big Bang Theory-ish. It's a bit more like the every man would joke about with their friends. And I'm just, I don't know, I'm so charmed by it. Even though it's also not a very serious show, and it's not like these characters are sitting down, like having sort of deep relationship issues or like complications, their friendship manages to feel like so real and so funny. And like I think the writing's so smart because you get a sense of sort of like their shared history and like how deep the in-jokes are in their group. Like just one small example I can think of that sort of caught me off guard was when they go to like Michigan or something for a friend's wedding. They're always going to Michigan. Yeah. Yeah, they're out of town, they're in New York. And one of them walks in and is like, hello, Michigan. And someone says, Stop saying that. It's like, I love the idea that they've just been saying that the whole time and everyone's like getting annoyed. Ah, yeah.

Bridget 9:17

I love a really well-crafted sitcom. It's so good. Yeah. I've been watching Community as well, actually. I don't know if I've told you this, but I've never really watched it before. Like I sort of started it maybe two years ago and then just started watching it again. And it's like, God, it's just so good to watch something that's short and sharp and funny. Yeah. And like low stakes.

Laura 9:36

Yeah. But also another show where it's like somehow you do end up caring for and rooting for these characters, even though it doesn't really seem like a show where that would happen. Yeah. Let's stop talking about this. Yeah. Separate episode incoming.

Bridget 9:52

We're now three months into the year, and so I thought this would be a great time to check in. How are your ins and outs going for 2026? I have been dreading this question.

Laura 10:03

Look, it's it's a mixed bag, so just running rapidly through the list. Star charts never got off the ground. I still have a lot of stars though, so there is potential for those stickers to find purpose. Liking things with my whole chest, yeah, I would say this is still going well. And I think it's been a slow burn like over the last few years. I'm on an upward trajectory. Is it the NRL season? Are they currently playing? Oh, it is coming back. And let me tell you, I am ready. Yeah, boys are back. Every single post on social media, I'm like, oh, junkyard dog just signed till 2028. Oh, great. We could go all the way to the top eight this year, boys. So I'm yeah, I'm ready. Fin's up. Frids up. Fermented shit. Look, it's still going well. I feel that I'm just due a fridge clean out. Boobs. Getting my boobs out slightly. Um in some ways I've improved because I've been going swimming more. So there is an element of uh cleave there.

Bridget 11:04

It is quite unavoidable when you're swimming.

Laura 11:06

Yeah, definitely. And then on the other side of the coin, I'm sort of like in chains because none of my wardrobe is very revealing. And I'm also simultaneously trying to not buy new clothes. So I'm not going out just to buy like some scissors. Yeah.

Bridget 11:21

I could.

Laura 11:23

I mean, I have a lot of button-ups. They could be hanging out if I wanted. So maybe I need to commit a little more.

Bridget 11:29

Yeah, maybe.

Laura 11:30

Sandwiches and cereal. Um, again, still a big fat inn, still like a cornerstone of my cuisine. Have I been having them as much as I thought? Again, no. This is a good reminder. I do need to get back to sandwiches and cereal. So I will refocus into the next three quarters. Me not being embarrassed about exercise, going super well, actually. And to illustrate how unembarrassed I am, I'm just gonna mildly raise the roof. Yep. You have to visualize this. Yep, yep. And I'm gonna tell you that I have achieved the ability to run two kilometers without stopping. Amazing. Which is big news for me. In public. In public. Oh, in public. Yeah. On the treadmill? Both. Wow. Yeah. Amazing. In nature and on the room. Raise the roof, guys. Everyone. What? If you're driving, maybe don't please. Stay safe out there. Um, but yeah, no, it's going well. That's so good. Actually, it's genuinely very exciting because my whole life I've thought that I people some people say you can do it, but they don't mean me. But I can. So that's cool. Living the pub life, it's not really going. I'm not really going to any pubs. There's not really any pubs near me.

Bridget 12:38

What about the Leagues Club?

Laura 12:40

Leagues Club is now out of my league. They had a big fat makeover. For those who don't know, the Broncos are a team that won the grand final of NRL last year. And did they? Yeah. Lions, NRLW, and the Broncos won. So it's a big year. Queensland. Queensland. And and the origin. No, yeah, true, yeah. Since their big win, their bistra money. Yeah, the bistro has been made over and it is no longer within my price range. They have a stake. Granted, it's in the like prestige section. It's $190. Yeah. So I can't go there anymore. Jesus.

Bridget 13:20

Yeah, it's not for me. You know what's being renovated in Toomba? The Shamro. Oh, nice. Yeah, I don't I don't know how that's gonna go. The last time I went there, it was probably like 2014 on maybe like a Wednesday night when I was just having like a night out on the town when I was at uni or whatever. Anyway, and there was just two people doing karaoke in like one of the bars, and it was bleak.

Laura 13:45

Whatever vibe. Yeah. So yeah, pub life not going so well. I have been having beer and chips, just not at the pub. And then lastly, following creative impulses and ignoring perceived inconveniences. I will say that ignoring perceived inconvenience part is going a bit better. Like I think I'm a lot better at just thinking to myself, don't worry about like being tired, you're gonna have a good time, or you know, don't worry about that it hasn't happened, you've made it up, and just sort of committing to plans. So that's pretty good.

Bridget 14:13

Hmm. How about you? I think it's been going quite well. I did unfortunately have to explain my social media policy to someone the other day. I got my hair cut and the hairdresser was like, What's your buzzword for 2026? And I panicked, and I was like, Well, do you like know much about Ed Sharon? And he was like, No. And I was like, Oh, and then I had to like quickly explain, and he was like, Oh, I see, so you're just not using social media. And I was like, This is what I said. I know, but it's like it's not not using social media, it's like only having iPad time. So now this guy thinks I'm a bigger Tieron fan. Whatever.

Laura 14:48

Um, but you kind of are though. I'm not, I'm not. Uh COVID at the concert. I didn't get going to edit my favorite rumor.

Bridget 14:59

Any of his albums in a long time, okay? Like the first two, that's it. I'm just saying who was getting all cotton bottom. Whatever, moving on. If Tenerife C comes on, I'm gonna cry. What of it?

Laura 15:16

Oh yeah, was that that video you sent me of the people after the concert?

Bridget 15:20

Oh my god, no. But that was so nice. That's Castle on the Hill, and that song also does make me cry. But I did go to see the Lumineers, and when we were walking out, there was a guy singing in um like the courtyard, and he was playing Castle on the Hill, and it was actually so lovely because everyone in the crowd was singing, and they were so tuneful, and it was so beautiful, it was like harmonious. What a lovely way to end the evening. So nice. Anyway, Apple Music DJ mode. I'm still really enjoying that. I have that now, it's awful.

Laura 15:53

It's so bad that it's so funny. I exactly what you said, it has no regard for content, I love song, melody, rhythm, whatever.

Bridget 16:03

And it's also like, oh, slowing down. What are we gonna get? It's really exciting. Um, a lot of smorissette still listening to that. Listening to music like I did in high school, I have been doing that. The first album that I really uh really got stuck on was Hayley Williams' Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. Listened to that non-stop for about seven days, and recently been listening to this album by Clover County, which is just like a country singer. Really nice. Um, just a lot of nice vibes and talking like this, but sometimes I really like that, and it's really nice. So that's been good. Um, not buying new books, tick. I did use some of my Christmas vouchers to buy my favourite books from last year, and that's been really nice. I bought this beautiful copy of Wuthering Heights. Watch one new movie a month, tick. I've watched A Bug's Life and I've watched People We Meet on Vacation. So I'm doing well. Getting up earlier, also have been doing well. Sadly, I'm really tired, even though I'm only getting up at six, but I'm exhausted by the end of the day. Um, I haven't always been going to the gym. Sometimes I just sit out the front, sometimes I just lie in bed and don't go back to sleep, but I have been getting up earlier.

Laura 17:14

Can we talk about your deranged alarm that you're using?

Bridget 17:18

I downloaded this app called Alami that you have to have a mission when you wake up because I'll just go back to sleep. Like I could sleep for another hour. Um, why wouldn't I? But this app forces me to get up and scan something in my house that isn't in my room, and then I'm up, so I'm like, I'll just stay up now. Some days I have to scan the toilet or the sink or like the toaster or um like a square pillow, and it is really jarring because it's like loud, you can't turn it off, and it's like where where am I going? Like I'm picturing like the eh eh eh No, I it's quite a peaceful one, but there are a lot of them to choose from. So if you do need the eh eh, they are there. But it's called Alami, and it has been very helpful because I would have gone back to sleep every single morning. Horrible. But the first few nights I was using it, I kept having dreams about how stressful the alarm was going to be. So I'd wake up and be like, oh, it's four o'clock, it's five o'clock, oh my god, it's coming. But I'm a bit I'm used to it now. Yeah, I'm still updating my notes app list. I've started making more lists, like my favorite words. Can we just have a check-in on what's on that list? I do have a few more things on there, so I can't quite remember what I shared the last time, but I'll just read what I've got. Guantanamo Bay, Aristotle, Oedipus, Freud, Vanity Project, Litmus Test, Hemingway, Janice Stropplin, Burning Bush, Puritans, White Whale. I think it's because I read the Scarlet Letter. Uh. A few of those. Um, but yeah, I'll get there. I've just been quite busy. So yeah, they're there my inns. Going quite well. A bit of a mixed bag. But overall, a success, I would say.

Laura 18:52

How's your reading going for 2026? I've had a pretty good run of books. I've managed to read a couple from my physical TBR, so um, some of those include Really Good Actually by Monica Heisey and The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose, both of which, yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed, completely different vibes. It's not necessarily on my list of good books, but I did read Paradise Rot by Jenny Fahl as well, which I believe you've also read. And this was the first book I read for the year. I thought, you know, started off with a bang. It was the first book I read after the Let Them Theory as well. And it had quite a spooky, detached kind of writing style, which I didn't dislike. Um, I wouldn't say that I really understood what was happening in the book, but what I didn't expect was the amount of times that piss was mentioned in the book, which was simply way too many for me.

Bridget 19:46

Yeah, when I first read it, I saw a lot of reviews that were saying, like, wow, a lot of piss. And I was like, how much piss can there really be? And then I read it and I was like, oh, there's a lot of piss.

Laura 19:56

Yeah, like there was one scene where the protagonist and then this woman who she's in this like strange, sort of spooky, codependent situation with. And there's one scene where she wakes up and the woman is just like pissing on her hand and like pissing in the bed, and it's describing like sort of it soaking through the sheets and onto her clothes and like into her skin. I was like, oh no, we didn't need this. I also read two Bridget books that I really enjoyed. So one was Flashlight by Suzanne Choi, and yeah, you were right, this was exactly my kind of book. And then The House of My Mother by Shari Frankie. That is certainly a book that I never would have picked up on my own. One that I was surprised you picked up as well, but um, yeah, like a good break and sort of as heavy as it was, quite a nice book to sort of break up some of the other ones I was reading. I guess it's completely different to what I typically read.

Bridget 20:46

Yeah, I just picked it up at the library. It was just on one of the shelves at the front of the library. I do remember when Ruby Frankie and Jodie Hildebrett were arrested a few years ago, and I wasn't really aware of them before that. I was intrigued when they got arrested. I was like, oh, what is this? Some shit is going down. That is correct. Yeah, yeah, absolutely awful, but it was a good book.

Laura 21:05

And lastly, I read a book called On the Calculation of Volume One by a Danish author called Solvay Baal, and I may have that not quite right. I believe this is the first in a to-be written 10-book series. I don't think they've all been written yet. Um, and I don't think all of the books have been translated so far. So they've been translated from Danish to English by Barbara Haviland. This was sort of like a groundhog day type story. So the character gets trapped in a day, I think it's like the 18th of November, and she's the only one that's like changing, growing, aware of what's happening in every day in recents. Which on paper does not really sound very interesting to me, but what completely captured me was her writing. It was cozy philosophical commentary on like time and pleasure and the mundane and like the way that we exist in the world. It just sort of exceeded my expectations. And I think I would read at least one more book in this series.

Bridget 22:03

How about you? I've read quite a few good ones as well. I read House of My Mother by Shari Frankie. I read a Laura book, Deep Cuts, by Holly Brickley. I did like that book. I think going into it knowing that the characters were going to be annoying was quite good. Like I was prepared for that, and they were annoying, and they were quite insufferable and pretentious about the music. I enjoyed it, despite all of those things. I made a playlist and added to it as each song was mentioned, and I listened to that while I was reading the book, and that was quite cool. I sometimes like to do that sort of immersive reading experience. Thought the ending was a little bit underwhelming. I read another one, which I think will be one of my favorites for the year, which was The Three Lives of Kate K by Kate Fagan. And this was a really fantastic book. It was quite sad, and it was about this girl who had lived her life under three different names. And so you heard the story about each name started when she was in school and then moved into her sort of early 20s and then moved into her 30s. And it was a story about love and friendship and that sort of like codependency. Are we in love? Are we just best friends? Sort of vibe that we seem to love. And it was quite devastating. I've heard people say that it was like Evelyn Hugo, once again, way better. Another one that was really good was Inspire of You by Patrick Lenton, who is an Australian author. It felt like a sort of rom-com movie that you'd watch. It was a gay romance where this man was haunted by his ex and he was going to have to see him at a reunion for this prestigious literary writing course that he did one time. And it was like a revenge plot. He wanted to get hotter and he wanted to make his life so cool. And it was just silly and funny, and it was really, really good. Two books that I have been trying to get a copy of for ages were Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Carolina Donohue and First Love Essays on Friendship by Lily Dansinger. And I really enjoyed both of them. I love Carolina Donohue. Everything she writes is so delightful. And this one was a little bit different to what I expected. I didn't really think it was going to have that sort of mystery. It was quite spooky, kind of vibe. Yeah, a little bit spooky. First Love Essays on Friendship. That was nice as well. Like about friendship and about girlhood and grief and family and all of these things. It was really nice. And the last one I read was Hailstones Fell Without Rain by Natalia Figueroa Barroso, who is an Australian Uruguayan author. I don't know if that's how you say that, but it was really interesting. It was split into three stories of three different women in the family and across uh different timelines. And it was set in Western Sydney and it was set in Uruguay, and it had a lot of uh political themes and once again like sisterhood and family and like mother-daughter relationships that are always juicy and good to read. It had a sort of whimsical narrative voice, and it was also really interesting because when they were in Uruguay, obviously they weren't speaking in English. It was either written in English or it was either written in the language. So, like if we were in Australia and somebody was speaking Spanish, it was written in Spanish. But if we were in Uruguay and someone was speaking Spanish, it was written in English. And like it's kind of hard to explain, but it was quite interesting. I haven't read anything from that part of the world either, so that was quite new for me as well. It was great.

Laura 25:21

So the theme for this month was Softboy Book Club. And I think we ought to talk a little bit about what we mean when we say that. So a softboy, at least to my understanding, is intended as the sort of antithesis to the alternative, which is the fuckboy.

Bridget 25:39

Yeah. It's a real performative male in my mind.

Laura 25:42

I think performative is key. In my mind, there's a real disingenuous element to men who align with the softboy nature. I think there's sort of like a Venus flytrap designed to appeal to women looking for something different from the usual, I don't know, like tough guy, sporty guy, like finance bro kind of guy, whatever you think that they would usually come across.

Bridget 26:03

I'm imagining like baggy jeans, maybe a white t-shirt with a little bit of a chain around their neck, wired headphones, shaggy sort of hair, tote bag. Tote bag is key. Reading Bell Hooks, All About Love, or The Bel Jar, Sylvia Plath. Listening to Claire, yes. It is interesting because I feel like this evolution of Soft Boys gets quite different from the hipsters of 2010, but they are sort of the same thing. May not have a man bun anymore, and they may not be into like microbreweries as much, but I feel like the general vibe is the same.

Laura 26:41

I think they sort of align themselves as being in touch with their emotions, uh woke, like aware of the arts, literature, film, and whatever shape that's taking at the moment, that's what they're into. Yeah. I think another key element of Softboys is because of this way that they're positioning themselves as different to other males, that there can often be a sense of feeling like misunderstood or at odds with the world. And I think that's what leads us into these particular kinds of books that we were hunting for for this episode that perfectly demonstrate this vibe. So some of the contenders we put forward were ones like Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Uh, we had Fight Club, American Psycho, of course Catcher in the Rye.

Bridget 27:25

I was also Thinking My Body by M. Radajkowski. I'm not quite sure how you say her name, but I have seen a few men reading that book. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace. Maybe some like Joan Diddian as well.

Laura 27:39

If we're talking about the books like Fight Club, like American Psycho, the ones written by men, something that is funny to me is that from my perspective at least, these books seem to be written as a kind of commentary on this frail type of masculinity, but they end up being adopted as like a like a manifesto. Yeah. Yeah. The commentary and the themes just fly straight over their heads. Yeah.

Bridget 28:03

Yeah. I think we're hearing a lot at the moment about like the male loneliness epidemic. And I think these kinds of books sort of feed directly into that. I was reading this really interesting article from The Independent with the headline, Meet the Performative Male. Are men reading books for attention? And this was in August 2025. The journalist has sort of spoken to a few women, I think around London and asked for their experience, maybe dating these soft boys. One woman by the name of Myra said she is deeply suspicious of men who read in public and thinks she can spot performative males a mile off. Her go-to tells are if they're sitting in a prominent seat in a coffee shop and haven't made it through the first chapter. Her examples are borderline cartoonish. One bloke was walking around with a Truman Capote text sticking out of his back pocket to ensure the title was on show. Another was crossing a busy road with his eyes glued to the fifth page of a spanking new novel. She said that she has been on a date with one of these supposed performative males, and she said, one bought me a book on the first date. It was by an Instagram poet R.H. Sin. A sweet gesture, but he was rude when I told him I wasn't interested. I looked up said poet's work and it reads like an abridged Drake verse. In the crib because who I want ain't in the streets is one whole poem. Also thought this was quite interesting as well. We're always sort of circling back to the idea that girls aren't allowed to like what they like, or like they're sort of being made fun of, or always being policed about what is traditionally seen as girly things. And so this says, as horrifying and hilarious as these stories are, there's a twinge in me that thinks perhaps the internet's recent assumption that men can't read is a little unfair. For a long time, women couldn't wear football shirts or Pink Floyd merch without being labelled a fake fan or a pick-me girl. The performative male accusations are similar in the sense we find it instinctively unfathomable that a straight man could want to read fiction or go to an expensive Pilates class on Sunday morning unless they're angling for a shag. And I don't care about that opinion. I think it's time for men to be ridiculed in the same way that girls and women have been. If a man is reading a Sally Rooney book while listening to Audrey Hobart in his wide headphones, fair game.

Laura 30:26

I think so. I think like if you have conviction in your tastes, then it won't bother you.

Bridget 30:30

Yes. Like when we were talking in our bonus chapter about the people we meet on vacation movie, if you want to be a poppy right boy, be it without worrying what everyone else is thinking about you. I think that's fine. But if you're doing it to get girls to get Instagram likes, whatever you're doing, the jigs up, the jigs up are onto you. Yeah, and we will make fun of you.

Laura 30:50

Now it's time, as always, to discuss our initial thoughts, expectations, hopes, and dreams heading into the book. Bridget, we have been lucky in previous episodes of the show to have a preview of how you feel about this book. Do you want to rehash that at all?

Bridget 31:05

Yeah, I have some audio to play for you. So this is from the good old days of the podcast back in uh 2023. So this is our first season of the show. And we were reading uh The Love Hypothesis by Allie Hazelwood. So I'll play that for you now, and that will be a perfect explanation of my initial thoughts about reading The Catcher in the Rye.

Laura 31:28

That character's called Holden, and like I just don't think who else is called Holden.

Bridget 31:32

But I was thinking that uh what's that book I hated? Um You mean Holden Caulfield? Yeah. Oh Catcher in the Rye.

Laura 31:40

I hate that book. Yeah, that stupid book.

Bridget 31:43

So yeah, we hate that stupid book.

Laura 31:45

That's what we said. Something that is intriguing to me about that is I have never read this book until now. What?

Bridget 31:52

Yeah.

Laura 31:54

I'm a bombs are dropping.

Bridget 31:56

That's fine. We've all lied. We've all said we've read books we haven't read. We're performative if you're not.

Laura 32:03

Let's do the soft boy.

Bridget 32:05

Same. Anyway, so I read this a long time ago. I was probably around 18. I absolutely hated it, as we just heard. I was so bored, and Holden Corfield has been my enemy, public enemy number one, as far as I can remember. I gave away my copy a few years ago because I never saw myself rereading it, so I had to go and buy a new copy. Stings. That does sting. That being said, I could not remember a thing about the plot or the character other than he was a whiny, whiny boy, and I did remember that he would call every one and everything a phony. And I did also remember that not much happened. It is funny because now my favourite books now are books where not much happens. So it is interesting character growth. As I've said three million times before, I don't enjoy reading books written by or from the perspective of men.

Laura 32:50

Not always as a rule.

Bridget 32:52

Have been rare exceptions. Yeah. Yeah. Like just for anyone out there that's like they seem to be hating on men a lot. I did recommend a book by a man at the start of the episode, guys.

Laura 33:03

You are a well-rounded reader.

Bridget 33:05

Yes. I try my best. Anyway, so I was pretty sure that I would hate every single page of this book. How are you feeling going into this? Now we know that we've never actually read it. You're phony. Such fake. Fake it a phony.

Laura 33:17

Uh I have tried to read this book many times. I guess in that clip I never alleged to have read the whole thing. I just said that stupid book, and that was my impression. I reckon I've read or tried to read the first chapter or so 15 times in my life. In the front cover of the copy I have, I see my handwriting as it was in high school, which is when I got this book. So it's quite amazing that I've had it in my collection for so long. I remember I really, really wanted to read this book and enjoy it because I think it was on Tumblr a lot. And it was also in the book list that the teacher gives Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. So I think I just kept thinking, oh, it's just gonna be Perks of Being a Wallflower 2.0, picking it up and being like, not at all.

Bridget 34:01

That would have been why I read it as well. Like I would have been seeing it a lot in cool places where I was spending my time. It's you know, obviously it's on lists of books everyone should read. And I love reading from that list. So that's why I would have read it as well.

Laura 34:15

So based off those experiences and like, you know, knowing who I am now and liking what I like, I was not very excited to read this. For God's sake, if you haven't read The Catcher and the Rye and you don't want any spoilers, now is your time to stop listening and get out of the episode. God damn it, you phony.

Bridget 34:35

You know what I love about this content warning is if you haven't read it, you're like, why are you so aggressive? True. I think keep going.

Laura 34:44

We'll be discussing the plot of the book in detail. So now is the time to hit pause, subscribe to the show, and come back when you're ready.

Bridget 34:51

The catcher in the rye includes mentions of suicide, death of a family member, sex work, drug and alcohol use, racism, misogyny, and mental health issues.

Laura 35:01

Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters. Shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone around Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible. In all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness.

Bridget 35:25

Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid's sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him. And his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning. The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature, an elegy to teenage alienation capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

Laura 35:49

Okay, Bridget, I'm desperate to know. Has time improved your relationship with The Catcher in the Rye, or has it soured it like milk?

Bridget 35:59

Has time healed all wounds or only made them deeper? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I reluctantly started reading this and I got about halfway through before I realized I was actually having a really good time. I was chuckling to myself, and I genuinely had no idea where the story was going. The whole time I was reading, I was struggling to figure out why this book is still popular. Why has it endured the test of time? Why was it ever popular? When I got to the last 50 pages or so, this wave of sadness hit me, and I felt so much for Holden and it just clicked. And I was like, oh my god, I get it. And I was absolutely shocked, and I was absolutely devastated at the end of it. Crazy.

Laura 36:44

I had a great time. How about you? I am so shocked to hear you say that because that was my exact same journey.

Bridget 36:52

Isn't it absolutely crazy? I was like, I cannot believe this.

Laura 36:56

I was like the first six chapters, most certainly, cracking up. Yeah, it was funny. I was Googling, like, is Catcher in the Rye a comedy? What is the tone of Catcher in the Rye? And then there were these sections where I would be like, oh, I'm crying. Like, yeah, I what am I feeling right now? I know. And like he was still so annoying. Yes. Do I like this character? No, not really. But do I feel for him? Yeah. Yeah.

Bridget 37:23

Yeah.

Laura 37:24

And something about it really, really swept me up.

Bridget 37:27

It's hard to put into words because I'm still like, but why? But it just feels so right. I don't know. It's it's a really clever book. I was wondering how much our recent Bridget Jones looking for Alaska Epiphanies have influenced my abrupt 180 of this book. I don't know, just sort of feeling empathy or I don't know what the word is, kindness for teenage selves, like our teenage selves and like teenagers that are trying to just figure out where their life is going and coming to terms with the end of school and the end of childhood and all of these things. And I don't know. I just thought it was really sad.

Laura 38:03

Like he's just a little boy who's lost his. I'm gonna cry. You're crying, I'm crying. Whose brother has died and he can't handle it, and his friend at school killed himself.

Bridget 38:16

So sad. And I was like, Bridget. Actually so sad. And I just didn't know. I didn't know it was like this. And I don't know what I was doing when I read it last time, but I was like, oh poor little boy.

Laura 38:35

Like, or he just needs someone to look after him. I think it is not so straightforward to pick up that vibe. Like he is a hard pill to swallow. I think it works twofold because like you're feeling such a sense of frustration with the character, like not being able to pull his shit together and just like behave like a sort of better adjusted, more regular kind of person. And then you're seeing people in the book have those same frustrations and sort of like ostracize him because of it. And it's like, ah, it's heartbreaking to watch because then you're like, you're doing the same thing, you're treating him the same way.

Bridget 39:10

That's a lot for him to be dealing with at such a young age and with like no support. Because if that was happening now and you're in school, like you would have therapy, you would have counselors, you would have psychologists. Hopefully, you you would hopefully have those um support networks in your life and sort of those um agencies that would come in and lend support to the family and the student and whatever. But I think he was just so alone in his little world, and it was so sad. I read this review from a girl I follow on Goodreads, Emma. I think her Instagram is Emma Reads Too Much. Part of her review says it's the story of a heartbreakingly empathetic child coping with coming of age and the death of his brother while being betrayed by every authority figure and person he trusts, and his main takeaway is still loving his sister and appreciating the world around him and missing everyone he's met. Oh I really did not expect, like, I don't know, two weeks ago when I started this book, did not think we would be sitting here doing this.

Laura 40:12

Even on the drive here, when I was talking to Brown about it, I was like, I'm really not sure how I feel because I wouldn't really say that I like this character, but there's something that's so devastating underneath it all that like is really making me empathize with him. I was reading out the initial sections of the book that were having me in stitches from like how hysterically funny I was finding it. Yeah. And then it just yeah, took this sharp turn. Oh, we need to get into it. Yes. So J.D. Salinger. Jeremy David Salinger. Great name. Yeah.

Bridget 40:48

Sure. Love it. Not so much the Jeremy David, but the JD Salinger. Stunning. Born to write. Yeah. JD Salinger was born in 1919 and he passed away in 2010. Have to say that didn't cross my radar at the time.

Laura 41:06

Didn't he die? Neither. I was shocked to discover that.

Bridget 41:10

I was also unsure about how old he would be because when I was trying to find an ebook copy or an audiobook, I was like, oh, surely it's free. Like surely it's past the years of copyright. But no, he only has passed away 16 years ago. Yeah. So we've got a little bit to wait before it becomes in the public domain. As I learned, it's 70 years after the death. So yeah.

Laura 41:31

I was also super confused about when he was born, how old he should have been, so much so that I Googled, when Donald Trump born. Because I thought, ooh, possibly of the same generation. Getting a little bit hopeful then. Fingers crossed.

Bridget 41:45

I keep seeing those TikToks where they're like, he's dying. He hasn't played golf. Please don't tempt me with a good time. So it seems that JD, good old JD. Jezzer. Seems that Jeze was just whopping about, writing, published a few short stories before he served in World War II. And he seemed to have quite a lot of PTSD from that time in the war, as you would expect. Something I found really interesting about the publication of this book is that it was partially published in serial form between 1945 and 1946. And then it was novelized in 1951. A few books in the past we have sort of accused of being published in this sort of fan fiction-y sort of way, where they might release like a chapter a week or a chapter a month, or like, sorry guys, I this week's chapter is late. I was just finishing my English homework sort of thing. I'm talking to you the love hypothesis, uh Wildfire. Wildfire, icebreaker. But I am often intrigued by these sort of older books that were serialized. Like I know that Charles Dickens sort of wrote in that way as well. Even Bridget Jones. Yeah, Bridget Jones, really interesting. It was an immediate success after its publication in 1951, and he sort of became a bit of a recluse as a result of the attention. After he published Catcher in the Rye, he also published a short story collection, nine stories, in 1953, and Franny and Zoe in 1961. I have read Franny and Zoe before and I really liked it. I can't remember much about it, but I also know that Zoe De Chanel is named after Franny and Zoe. So yeah, she is the true hipster. Yep. Yeah. He's written a few more novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour, and his last published work that he consented to being published was published in The New Yorker in 1965. Since then, he's had a few unwanted biographies or memoirs released by biographers and also his uh family. So his former lover Joyce Maynard and his daughter Margaret Salinger.

Laura 43:54

Something that really soured my perspective of him was the discovery that he did have a pattern of. Age gap relationships with women who were underage or very near. I guess one that stands out is in the case of his relationship with the novelist Joyce Maynard, she was 18 and he was 53. Yuck. And apparently he wrote to her after she'd published an article when she was 18 on her life so far. And he sort of sent her a letter that was like, Love your writing, keep up the good work, kiddo. And then they kept in contact until ultimately she dropped out of Yale, went to be with him, and then you know, that ended a year later in a miserable fashion. And when she spoke up about it, naturally everybody was like, Keep his name out of your mouth, you silly little girl. So not good. Not good. I did also read a small section of a book called JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, A Cultural History by Joseph Benson. And he wrote the first six chapters of The Catcher in the Rye just before witnessing the horrific results of racial prejudice in the Nazi concentration camps, and then wrote the rest of the book after, representing the single most important fact about the novel. I really noticed that tone shift. And I am so interested, and I guess we will never know what book he was intending to write, but I can really see how the influence of that and sort of just his utter disillusionment with the world must have bled into this book.

Bridget 45:19

I read somewhere that he said that it was a somewhat autobiographical novel, and he just seems like somebody who was searching for connection or searching for meaning in his life. He practiced Zen Buddhism for a few years, and he followed something called Advaita Vendanta Hinduism, which advocated celibacy for those seeking enlightenment and detachment from human responsibilities, such as family. He was practicing Korea yoga, and after he abandoned that, he tried Dianetics, which is the forerunner of Scientology. Uh, even met with the founder L. Ron Hubbard, but quickly became disenchanted with that. He then tried a few different spiritual, medical, and nutritional belief systems, including Christian Science, Edgar Casey, Homeopathy, Acupuncture, Macrobiotics, and Sufism, which allegedly a lot of other writers also dabbled in in the 1960s.

Laura 46:20

This book has also frequently appeared on banned books lists almost since its first publication. I see you have a note here that according to one angry parent's tabulation, there are 237 instances of goddamn, 58 uses of bastard, 31 usages of Christ's sakes, and one incident of flatulence. And that was what constituted what was wrong with the book.

Bridget 46:44

It was funny, wasn't it? It's just so interesting how language changes and like I don't know, society expectations change because when his sister was telling him to stop swearing, I was like, Where's that? F C? No, G. Yeah, I love reading that the one incident of flatulence, and I have to admit that I don't remember that. I think I might have highlighted that actually. Something else a little bit controversial about this novel is for some reason or another, it has been connected with quite a few assassination attempts or assassinations. Yeah. I didn't quite know what the opposite of attempt was, but yeah, I guess it would be success. The most famous one, probably, being the murder of John Lennon. Yeah. In 1980, apparently the assassinator Mark David Chapman identified with the novel's narrator so much so that he wanted to change his name to Holden Caulfield. And when he shot John Lennon, he was found with a copy in the book, and he had written, This is my statement, signed by Holden Caulfield. And he also read a passage from the novel to the court during his sentencing. A man called Daniel Stashsauser speculated that he had wanted John Lennon's innocence to be preserved by death, inspired by Holden talking about children's innocence in the book. Another big one, uh, John Hickley Jr. tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981, and the police found the catcher in the riot in his hotel room, amongst other books as well. And one last man, Robert John Bardo, who murdered the actress and model Rebecca Schaefer, was carrying the book when he murdered her. Interesting that they're all men. Not all men, but always a man.

Laura 48:36

I think one last thing that's sort of intriguing and frustrating about this book is that in the wake of its 1950s success, Salinger did indeed receive and reject numerous offers to adapt the catcher and the rye for the screen. This was frustrating. I was trying to find an audiobook copy. I was trying to find if there was like a film adaptation, a play, like anything that I could just sort of use to sort of uh bolster my understanding of this book, and there is nothing. And this is because he thinks the character Holden is unadaptable. And you know what? Having read the book, I agree.

Bridget 49:13

Yeah, I kind of love it that he's like, no, if you want to read my book, you've got to read my book. Yeah. I mean, thinking about Wathering Heights at the moment, as we're recording, it's not out yet, but I am becoming increasingly annoyed about the way that that book is being portrayed in that movie. And if I was the author, I'd be, I don't know. It either is or it isn't. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I would want to watch this movie. I found this book to be quite similar to The Perks of Being a Warflower. And when I watched that movie, I felt like there was something missing, like some magic missing that the book just had. And I think it would be very, very hard to do this. I did see that at one point he wanted it to be, or maybe thought at one point it could be a play, and he would have liked to play the part of Holden Caulfield. Joyce Maynard said the only person who might have ever played Holden Caulfield would have been JD Salinger. Fair. I did see something interesting that there was like a fan writer, maybe like fan fiction sort of thing, was trying to write a fan sequel, and he was like, uh-uh-uh, not on my watch, and shut that down with legal action.

Laura 50:18

The only person who can write fan fiction about my own life is me. Release it in the paper, bitch.

Bridget 50:24

Um, one more thing that I really want to talk about is the original cover of the book. Sadly, when I went to my local independent bookstore, they didn't have the cover that I wanted, which is the one that we all know and love. It's got some red shit on it. And I have to admit, before I finished the book, I had never really looked at the cover. I'd seen it many, many times. But it is actually quite beautiful. It's a beautiful cover. Is it a horse? It's one of the carousel horses. Ah. Which is so lovely. And in the background, it has the New York City skyline. Oh. And it's stunning, I think. I have the ugly cover too, and I'm very sad about it. It is sad. Apparently, his friend E. Michael Mitchell created it. Thank you, E. Michael Mitchell. Very iconic.

Laura 51:08

Let's talk about Holden Coalfield because before I read this book, I had little to no understanding of what this book was even gonna be about. Now I can't remember what I was actually Googling, but I typed in was Holden C? And the results that came up were Was Holden Coulfield gay? Was Holden Coulfield a spoiled brat? Was Holden Coulfield autistic? Was Holden Coulfield in a mental hospital? Was Holden Coulfield sexually abused? Was Holden Coulfield mentally ill? And was Holden Coulfield essayed? And that was an intriguing list of unanswered questions heading into this book. I agree with JD Salinger. I think it would be really, really difficult to capture the tone of this narrator because I had such a hard time finding a voice. And I think my understanding of how people spoke and how teenagers spoke in like the 1940s, 1950s kind of era is pretty slim. And I think there's a good chance that he's done a great job of capturing that kind of vernacular, but the way that it initially read to me was like the nastiest gay guy you have ever met in your life, and I could not stop cracking up. I love how he hates everyone at the start. It's iconic, like it is so funny. I could read out a couple of sections because I felt really inspired. There's this lady on TikTok who does so many funny videos, but one in particular that comes to mind is a video she did after the capture of Luigi Mangioni, and it was from the perspective of the person that called the hotline to dob him in, but called the wrong hotline. And it's sort of like a riff on a transatlantic kind of accent. She's so good, she's so good at it. And it's like, I'm the one that dubed the bad guy in. And I called the wrong hotline. Okay. Mm-hmm. So I won't be getting a reward. Right. But now everyone knows my name and my address. Okay, okay, nice. She's so funny, and that is exactly what I dialed into for this child.

Bridget 53:14

You saying that is sort of a bit like whatever his name was in the favorites. The one who's meant to be Nelly.

Laura 53:20

Yes. Bitchy. Yeah. So even on page one, he's talking about his brother. Now he's out in Hollywood, DB, being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me.

Bridget 53:35

I was like, cracking up. I mean, I didn't really picture him like that. I thought about like when we were at school, we were like, ew, swimming carnival, ew, sports carnival, ew. We're just gonna put on a stupid costume and not do any sport.

Laura 53:50

Yeah.

Bridget 53:51

And I love that about him as well. Because this line on page two, he says, it was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win. Yeah. And that's what we'd be like too. We'd be like, well, commit suicide. I highlighted that section too. So funny.

Laura 54:06

There's a really funny bit where he goes to visit one of his old teachers who's quite old and he's I can't wait to see if we have the same ones highlighted. There's a few sections highlighted here. So in this part, the teacher is talking about Holden's parents, and he says, I had the privilege of meeting your mother and father, blah, blah, blah. They're grand people. Holden says, Yes, they are. They're very nice. And then internally he says, Grand, there's a word I really hate. It's phony. I could puke every time I hear it.

Bridget 54:40

I highlighted a bit in that same sort of part, and he was like, You take somebody old as hell, like old Spencer, and they can get a big bang out of buying a blanket. And then another one. What made it even more depressing? Old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he was probably born in or something.

Laura 55:02

It's so funny. I love those myths too. And then there's like a really good bit where he's it's like the teacher's second attempt at throwing something onto the bed and he's missed again. And he says, He tried tucking my exam paper on the bed when he was through with it, only he missed again, naturally. I had to get up again and pick it up and put it on top of the Atlantic. It's so boring to do that every two minutes. He sucks so much.

Bridget 55:33

I love him.

Laura 55:35

I was obsessively reading just for like the first six chapters before he hits me with the book. My brother died.

Bridget 55:41

Yeah.

Laura 55:41

And you're like, oh God.

Bridget 55:43

And because I'd also, I think like at some point he kind of makes mention to the fact that he is in some place. Like, I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas, just before I got pretty run down and had to come out here and take it easy. And that's what I didn't really register that when I read it. Um, and so it really took me by surprise when it took a turn because I was having such a great time. I also love when he had to listen to his shit essay that he wrote. And I and I thought this is so funny because in my mind, this is like everything that I wrote at uni. It wasn't, but that's how I feel like it would be. And so he's the the teacher's reading it out to him to like sort of like a wake-up call. Yeah. Like you This was funny. You can't submit this shit. You're so clever. What are you doing? He says he doesn't want to hear it, but he's gonna read it anyway because you can't stop a teacher when they want to do something, they just do it. And so the essay is The Egyptians were an ancient race of Caucasians residing in one of the northern sections of Africa. The latter, as we all know, is the largest continent in the Eastern Hemisphere. The Egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for various reasons. Modern science would still like to know what the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they were wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for innumerable centuries. The in this interesting riddle is still quite a challenge to modern science in the 20th century. The teacher says your essay, shall we say, ends there. And then he wrote a little note at the bottom of the page. Dear Mr. Spencer, that is all I know about the Egyptians. I can't seem to get very interested in them, although your lectures are very interesting. It is all right with me if you flunk me though, as I am flunking everything else except English anyway. Respectfully yours, Holden Corfield.

Laura 57:30

And then he says he put the goddamn paper down then and looked at me like he'd just beaten the hell out of me in ping pong or something. I don't think I'll ever forgive him for reading me that crap out loud. His disdain is so delightful.

Bridget 57:47

Also, I don't think he really means it because he does make meaningful connections with people that are older than him. Like he's searching for connection, but he's just so funny as well. He's so fragile. Yeah, he's so fragile, and it may be like using like that humor as a protective shield because he knows what he's done is stupid, and he's like, I don't give a shit about it anyway. I don't give a rat.

Laura 58:08

There was one bit I highlighted that I thought was like the olden day version of nah for real. And he says, um, then we shook hands and all that crap. It made me feel sad as hell though. And I was like, oh, nah for real. Okay, I found so I did find a mention of the fart. And this is in chapter three. This is where he's talking about the time a guy came to school to do a speech for the boys. He arrived in a Cadillac and started off with about 50 corny jokes just to show us what a regular guy he was. And then he gets down to talking about God and Jesus and Holden's finding this very phony and calling him a bastard. And then he says, he was telling us all about what a swell guy he was, what a hutshot and all, and then all of a sudden, this guy sitting in the row in front of me, Edgar Masala, laid this terrific fart. It was a very crude thing to do in chapel and all, but it was also quite amusing. Old Masala, he damn near blew the roof up. I think we should bring back terrific. Terrific fart. And damn near. At the start of the novel, before he's left school, he's really freaking out because this guy, Stratler, is going on a date with a girl named Jane, who is a girl that Holden has known since childhood and has some feelings towards. And he's a little bit nervous about how their date could be panning out, sort of like firing off in odd directions, and really can't get a hold of his emotions here. He says I sat there for about half an hour after he left. I mean, I just sat in my chair not doing anything. I kept thinking about Jane and about Stradler having a date with her and all. It made me so nervous I nearly went crazy. I already told you what a sexy bastard Stradler was. But like at its core, I get it. Yes. Like sitting there being like, oh my god, she's gonna do anything. Oh my god, she's gonna fall for him and she doesn't know like what a bad guy he is. About chapter five or six is where things really started to take a turn for me. This is what denotes the sections of the book written before and after he went to war. So things really start to shift after he's been asked to write an essay for Stratler while he goes out on his date with Jane. I think really the only criteria he's been given is that it should be a descriptive essay. He says, I'm not too crazy about describing rooms and houses anyway. So what I did, I wrote about my brother Allie's baseball mitt. It was a very descriptive subject, it really was. My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. He was left-handed. The thing that was descriptive about it though was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up at bat. He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine on July 18th, 1946. You'd have liked him. And that's when I was like, oh. Yeah. Huh? What? Something's gone wrong here. What? And then he goes on to talk about his younger brother. He was two years younger than I was, but was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were always writing letters to my mother telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Ali in their class. And they weren't just shooting the crap. They really meant it. But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest in a lot of ways. He never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did. And he had very red hair.

Bridget 1:01:37

It is interesting because like the tonal shift from this point onwards, like there was no more funny quotes from me. It was all heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking quotes that I was highlighting because I realized it was a very different kind of book than what I originally thought it was going to be. Something that is always very sad is leaving childhood and sort of like becoming ours for the first time, realizing that everything's about to change. And there were a lot of really nice quotes about this. One that I really liked was when he went to visit the museum. So he's sort of just been walking around New York for a few days, like, I don't know, just deep in his feels, I guess. It is a lovely quote, but there are a few words in here that I'm not sure are still appropriate to be saying in 2026. So I might just say person instead. The best thing though in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that person would still be just finished catching those two fish. The birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole with their pretty antlers and their pretty skinny legs. And that person with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that exactly. You'd just be different. That's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. And it sort of goes on about that, and then he relates it to his sister Phoebe. I kept walking and walking, and I kept thinking about old Phoebe going to that museum on Saturdays the way I used to. I thought how she'd see the same stuff I used to see and how she'd be different every time she saw it. It didn't exactly depress me to think about it, but it didn't make me feel gay as hell either. Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway. Anyway, I kept thinking about all that while I walked. And I really liked the way he would say this like really devastating things, and then end up with just like a anyway, I just kept walking. Brought me back to the fact that it was a teenage boy just thinking about this. Just thinking about stuff. Walking around, thinking about stuff.

Laura 1:03:43

There was another nice quote when he was at the museum and he said, Nobody gave too much of a damn about old Columbus, but you always had a lot of candy and gum and stuff with you. And the inside of that auditorium had such a nice smell. It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't. And you were in the only nice, dry, cozy place in the world. I loved that damn museum. That is like I think an a consistency across museums worldwide. They're always so dry and cozy and comforting.

Bridget 1:04:11

Yeah. Another nice passage about the museum was a little bit later on where he was sort of deeper into his meltdown. I don't know, is that the right word? Breakdown? I'm not sure. Um, but it's just after he's been to Phoebe's school and he's noticed that there's some graffiti on the walls, and he's been quite upset about that. Like little kids shouldn't be seeing graffiti and they shouldn't be worrying about things like this, they shouldn't have to lose their innocence at such a young age. And he's gone into this tomb where there's these Egyptian mummies, and he says, I was the only one left in the tomb then. I sort of liked it in a way. It was so nice and peaceful. Then all of a sudden, you'd never guess what I saw on the wall. Another fuck you. It was written with a red crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones. That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody will sneak up and write fuck you right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think even if I ever die and they stick me in a cemetery and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say Holden Corfield on it. And then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right underneath it, it'll say, fuck you. I'm positive, in fact. And I just really enjoyed how he would just like ruminate on these things. It would just spiral and spiral and spiral and put him into like this very, very dark place.

Laura 1:05:34

I guess some of the themes of this book are like alienation and isolation. And I was so consistently struck by him going from place to place, event to event, person to person, and consistently trying to seek connection and consistently getting it wrong. It was like watching him always choose like the wrong dialogue option. Like when he goes to meet his friend Old Luce, who he knew from Hooton, which is another school he got kicked out of. And he said the only thing this guy did was give these sex talks late at night where there are a bunch of guys in the room, and he would tell them all of this sort of like perverted, like juicy stuff about sex and like sexual proclivities. It was such a tough scene to read because he just wants to go back to that sort of scandalous, juicy conversation, and he doesn't understand that this guy has moved on, he's learned a little more, we don't talk like that anymore, we're not still in school. He's sort of making like disparaging comments about gay guys in the bar. Then he finds out that this guy's wife is Chinese and he has a bit of a run with that, and the guy's sort of like, hey, nah, not cool. Another passage that was so painful was where he says, How's your sex life? I asked him. He hated you to ask him stuff like that. Relax, he said, just sit back and relax for Christ's sake. I'm relaxed, I said. How's Columbia? You like it? Certainly I like it. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't have gone there, he said. He could be pretty boring himself sometimes. What are you majoring in? I asked him. Perverts? I was only horsing around. What are you trying to be? Funny? No, I'm only kidding. I said, listen, hey, Luce, you're one of those intellectual guys. I need your advice. I'm in a terrific he let out this big groan on me. Listen, Caulfield. And then he like cuts him off. I feel like he was about to open up. But he's already missed his opportunity. He's already effed up the conversation. And now that moment has passed, and it's just like, yeah, sliding door moment after sliding door moment. It's just so painful to watch these things happen again and again. I think watching him go around to all of these bars and like trying to order drinks and repeatedly get shot down and like talk to girls that his brother knew and try to get in on conversations with older people, try to get a prostitute, jumping in taxis, all of these like adult things that he was trying to fit in with was so sad as well. I was just picturing him in like an oversized suit, like his dad's clothes kind of thing, sitting up at a bar, his feet dangling off the seat, and sort of everyone seeing right through his cover, but nobody sort of acknowledging him for what he was, which is a child. Nobody looking out for him, nobody looking after him. You feel his frustration where nobody's taking him seriously as an adult, but nobody's caring for him.

Bridget 1:08:18

The last few pages really got me. He's taken his little sister to this carousel in the park. It's raining, and he's just watching these kids go around and around and around. And he's wearing his little hunting hat that he bought. And he says, I felt so damn happy all of a sudden. The way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling. I felt so damn happy if you want to know the truth. I don't know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice the way she kept going around and around in her blue coat and all. God, I wish you could have been there. It's just so sweet. Like he loves his family. He's just looking for direction. He loves his sister. He loves his brother. He doesn't want to grow up, I think is the thing. The very last passage of the story, he's in some sort of sanatorium or like, I don't know, mental health institution. And he was talking about how his brother, DB, visited with his new girlfriend. And he had just finished writing down all of the stuff that happened to him. And his brother asked him what he thought about all of it. And he said, I didn't know what the hell to say. If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it. I'm sorry I told so many people about it. About all I know is I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Stratler and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddamn Maurice. It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody. He just wants a friend. And then I closed the book and I was like, wow, change and growth. Isn't it nice? It's intriguing, mate.

Laura 1:09:59

Yeah. Despite all that, like I really have a hard time saying whether I enjoyed reading this or not. Because I think I really struggled with the tone shift. And then when I picked it back up, I like didn't really quite understand where it was going. Because it is boring to a degree. Like it's boring, but it's also compelling. Because he's just going from thing to thing to thing. And like his internal monologue is relentless and repetitive. And there's not really peaks and troughs. It's just like you said, him ruminating on things going from thought to thought to thought. And it's quite exhausting in a way. And it's not necessarily comfortable to sit with that feeling of emptiness, really, yeah, throughout the book. So I don't know. I didn't, I didn't enjoy reading this despite enjoying having read it.

Bridget 1:10:47

Yeah, it's interesting. I read half of it about a week, two weeks ago, and then I didn't pick it up again until about three days ago. So it wasn't like I was just powering through, like wanting to finish it. But once I got to like the last 50 pages, I really just wanted to keep reading. It's an interesting reading experience. I don't know if I'll ever read it again. It's time to wrap up the episode, and this is a bit of a funny book because there's like one character, not much happens, and we don't really know any of the other characters or like anything about them, other than they might be a goddamn bastard or something like that. But I'm interested to hear your favourite and least favourite characters. So Laura, who is your favourite character in The Catcher in the Rye?

Laura 1:11:27

Uh, I mean I guess my favourite has to be Holden Caulfield. At the very least, I appreciate him for his complexity. And yeah, maybe I just want to look after him a little bit. Yeah. Little baby. How about you?

Bridget 1:11:40

I think Holden has to be my favourite as well. I think for the same reasons you just said. He just he just needs someone to look after him. Just needs a friend. Or maybe he needs to spend some time at home with his family. How about least favourite character?

Laura 1:11:52

I mean, there's a lot of villains in this story, but I think probably the pimp that punched him in the stomach and beat him up for the prostitute.

Bridget 1:11:59

I'm really unsure, like because I know we didn't really talk about this much, but his ex-teacher that he goes and visits in the middle of the night, Mr. Antelone, I'm not sure if he was a bad guy. I don't know why you'd be patting someone's head like that if you had good intentions, but maybe he was just being caring. I'm I'm really unsure about how I feel about that. Maybe the boys who were bullying his friend James had jumped out the window. Oh yeah. They're my least favourite. Villains. Villains. Nasty, nasty boys.

Laura 1:12:28

Well, with all that said and done, Bridget. Do you rate The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger Lit or shit? I think I have to rate it lit. Crazy. Five minutes in talking about it, we were sobbing. Yeah. I'm so surprised. Cause yeah, even on the way here, I was like, I don't know. Yeah, like yes. But also what?

Bridget 1:12:48

I don't think the boys who are reading this would be getting the same reaction. I don't know. But but who am I to say that?

Laura 1:12:56

I'm really not sure. That is something I was grappling with because I just sort of kept thinking, like, what is the lesson here? And is it obvious to fans of this book? And like, not to say art has to be obvious, but I just sort of was like, is the lesson that some people are taking isolate yourself and go on a self-destructive path because no one will ever understand you?

Bridget 1:13:16

Yeah, because that's not the message. Yeah.

Laura 1:13:19

I don't think. I don't think so. And I don't I I always think I'm right. So is it just, yeah, solidarity for misunderstood men? Because you sort of see him going in this like incel-esque.

Bridget 1:13:29

Yes, living in the cabin of the woods.

Laura 1:13:31

Yeah. Only coming out when someone dies. And then you see him like sort of effing up in a social setting, people reacting badly and that reaffirming his like them versus me mentality. I feel like there are people that could identify strongly with those elements of the book. We will always be different and people will never understand.

Bridget 1:13:52

I guess you do pick out, like you have your own bias of whatever media you're consuming, and you do pick out messages that you want. So who are we to say they're wrong? But they are wrong.

Laura 1:14:02

They are wrong, and unfortunately, that is the point of art.

Bridget 1:14:05

Yeah.

Laura 1:14:07

Um, I also rate this lit, yeah, despite being shocked and confused.

Bridget 1:14:12

This is a public apology to Holden Caulfield, JD Salinger. Sorry.

Laura 1:14:18

Yeah, we were the real phonies all along.

Bridget 1:14:23

For our next bonus chapter, we have something new for you. Laura will be reading a very special book picked by me, Bridget. Have your say on what we read next by keeping an eye on the link in our show notes and on our socials. Make sure you subscribe to the show, and if you want to be on the same page as us, follow us at talklit.get on Instagram and TikTok.