So in this book I’m reading, the main character’s favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird. And I mean favorite in the sense of thinking of it as an old friend, a comfort read, describing it in reverential tones. And I get what she’s saying, because that’s how I feel about Catcher In the Rye.
But Catcher, these days, seems to have a lot of detractors. I haven’t heard many people express the same irriation, much less disgust, with Mockingbird as people do with Catcher. And I think my reason for disliking Mockingbird is the same as a common reason for people disliking Catcher. It’s a case of having been told that it’s The Most Important Book Evah. And having been told that often, vehemently, by people whose opinions were supposed to hold weight.
What do I love about Catcher? Reading it is like stepping into the late 1940s. New York City, with WWII over but still lingering. If there’s ever a movie (good luck with that), it’s \*\*got\*\* to be black-and-white, not least to highlight all the cigarette smoke. And Holden has a \*voice\*. He’s as vivid a character as anyone could want. And a lot of it is \*\*hilarious\*\*. How can you read Holden’s conversations with Ackley, or with the cab driver about the Central Park ducks, and not LOL? First you’re laughing with Holden, and to an extent at him (you think Stradlater and Ackley would describe \*\*him\*\* as the perfect roommate?), but little by little, you’re clued in that this guy has serious issues. And if you’ve never had a time when you felt like him — you don’t want to die, but how are you going to live? — you’re lucky.
But then, I read it voluntarily when I was 13. It was my mom’s copy, she thought I was “old enough”, and also my English teacher said “There are some really funny sequences in there…and some really sad ones, too.” Because that’s what you’re supposed to get out of it. I think a lot of the Catcher-haters were given bad intel. They went in believing that they were supposed to think the entire story was deep, and to feel Holden’s pain in every paragraph. Then they come up against “That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddam toilet seat.” And that leaves them thinking they’ve been sold a bill of goods: this is supposed to be Lit-a-chuh, but it’s just a whiny guy with a potty mouth. Which, ironically, gives them something in common with Holden. That’s how he reacts to a lot of things around him: “phonies” tell him he’s supposed to enjoy things \*their\* way, and he’s a freak if he doesn’t. (Relax, Caulfield. In a few years, you can become a beatnik.)
Conversely, I didn’t read Mockingbird until I was an adult; it wasn’t assigned in school, and I never sought it out until I was in my forties. And the impression I’d always gotten from devotees of it was, “If you read this, you’ll \*\*totally get\*\* race relations in the Jim Crow south!” Except, I’d already read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Song of Solomon, and others, plus watching and reading the companion book to Eyes on the Prize. Oh, and a memoir by Melba Patillo Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine. As such, I really don’t want to hear about segregation from the POV of a white person, \*unless\* it’s someone who starts out unapologetically racist, then changes their ways. No white saviors, okay? I AM white, and I know how few Atticus Finches there are.
But even evaluating it as a novel, separate from its sociological impact, I still don’t like it. It goes on forever, in excruciating detail, and the trial is like the last third, after a lot of dreary set pieces strung together. I Just. Don’t. Like those gloomy Southern writers from, or writing about, the Depression era. Sorry, Mockingbirders; I gave it a chance.
FTR, the book that gets my vote for the Great American Novel is The Grapes of Wrath. Yes, it’s set in the 1930s, but the Joads really go through it. They’re not sitting in the decaying antebellum house, watching the crumbs pile up on the oilcloth.
by Charlotte_Braun