A Phony and Her Boy

In early 2007, I fell in love. The object of my affections had a quick wit, an abhorrence of hypocrisy, a fondness for profanity, and an all-consuming desire to make the world stand still. Some—himself included—might have called him crazy, or dumb, or whiny. Others might have called him exactly what he called them: phony. But to me, Holden Caulfield was perfect.

Head over heels with my nose buried in the crisp pages of “Catcher in the Rye,” I joined the masses of misunderstood middle-schoolers in their adulation of the novel’s hero: Guys want to be him, and girls want to be with him. Why? Like most things, it’s all in the timing.

Middle school is hard. Kids are jerks. You’re still trying to grow out your hair from its old tomboy length, but what was once a bowl cut now looks like you’re wearing a small garbage bin on your head, and you can barely see through your bangs to notice the other girls laughing at you. Adults? They don’t get it either. Dad’s busy with work, and Mom spent hours making that meal, so “[name redacted] said my crush on him was like a virus” hardly constitutes a valid reason for crying over your dinner instead of eating it.

Holden turns the cons in our lives into pros. Insecurity becomes transcendence. He tells us that we feel alone because we possess the smarts—and the maturity—to view society in a way that others don’t. Suddenly, feeling alienated means feeling even more grown-up than the grown-ups. We embrace Holden’s cynicism as the mark of true superiority of mind, and we make it our own.

But Holden’s insecurity is just insecurity. He views society in a way that others don’t because he cannot look past himself and into the lives of others. In his alienation, he is not grown-up—he is a child. Holden suffers so much in part because he refuses to accept suffering. Instead of coming to terms with his demons, Holden lashes out against even those who aim to help him. As he tries to freeze time, he only holds himself in arrested development.

We never see Holden grow up—but we do it ourselves. I know I did, even if it took me a while to break things off with my erstwhile literary paramour. I saw phonies all around me in high school, and that didn’t change at Harvard. Certain of my friendlessness and mired in self-pity, I came home for break last year and pulled Catcher off the shelf immediately. I reveled in my old annotations like Holden perusing Phoebe’s notebooks.

Soon enough, though, I got over myself … and Holden. My trials and tribulations did not disappear, of course. Rather, I found people who submitted not only to hearing about them but also to helping me fix them. Plus, these real, live people could sit next to me in Annenberg. I’m home again, now, ready to weather the winter much more happily than I stood out the last. I might crack open “Nine Stories,” but I’ll spend more time talking to companions—platonic and otherwise—who exist off the page.

Sometimes, people really are goddamn rotten, and life seems that way, too. But for every phony, there’s a whole score of princes (and princesses). They’re everywhere: At home, at Harvard, and probably even in Manhattan. Holden cannot grapple with his problems because, instead of connecting, he cuts off. Growing up requires just the opposite—letting others understand us and, in return, trying to understand them.

We may be grateful that we have weathered our younger and more vulnerable years (the target of my next one-sided romance: Nick Carraway) and found ourselves with the world rather than against it. But that doesn’t mean that looking back on our own Pencey Preps and Jane Gallaghers does us any harm. Acknowledging and examining worse times helps us find better ones, especially when we do so not on solitary walks in a freezing Central Park but instead in the company of friends at Burdick’s or Felipe’s.

Sometimes, tell some people everything. It’s not the worst to start missing everybody.

Molly L. Roberts ’16, a Crimson editorial writer, is an English concentrator in Cabot House. Follow her on Twitter @mollylroberts.