Contributors to a New York Times forum on the novel 15 years ago called it “horribly dated,” arguing that its protagonist, Holden Caulfield, was “a throwback, the troubled teen of another time,” and even asking, “Who needs him?” Shortly after the book’s 50th anniversary, The Washington Post said that the novel was “aging gracelessly,” with a critic calling it “mawkish” and “outright squishy” and confessing that he “damn near puked” upon reading it again.
But this month, on the novel’s 75th anniversary, the reassessments are more favorable. “Holden’s moral rigor is refreshing in a cultural moment marked by an unsettling mix of cynicism and heedlessness,” The Atlantic declared. Here, too, the novel is reconsidered through current — and possibly fleeting — cultural concerns. “‘Catcher’ at 75 offers something of a guide away from the manosphere and its bluster: a case against nihilism and a vision of a gentler sort of manhood, even if achieving it means living on the edge of a cultural cliff.”
So, did “Catcher in the Rye” deteriorate in middle age only to blossom in assisted living? Or is the aging construct just phony from the start? (Ever the contrarian, The New Republic hated the book at the beginning, and in a 2014 essay revisiting it, still did.)
Critics gonna criticize, of course, and I’m glad they are there to rethink, reaffirm or rebuke at will. (For my part, I laughed my head off at Looney Tunes, enjoyed “The West Wing” and remain ambivalent about “The Catcher in the Rye.”) But to point out that time — that most relentless revisionist — seems to have ravaged a work only ensures that your critique will never be the last word, just the latest one.
Strident pronouncements that something has not aged well are bound to age poorly themselves. Even Irving Fisher, the overly exuberant economist, went on to become one of the architects of modern financial markets, his work growing highly influential, for better or worse, long after his death. Time has a way of changing its mind, again and again.
