Broadway Books Author J.D. Salinger’s work is the focus
of "With Love and Squalor."
By Kelsey McConnell
Daily Bruin Contributor
He is America’s best guide through a pubescent world of
secret slobs, prep school dropouts and phonies and he isn’t
even real himself.
The heroic anti-hero Holden Caulfield became an icon of literary
angst when J.D. Salinger’s novel “Catcher in the
Rye” was published fifty years ago.
Now, in celebration of this anniversary, a compilation titled
“With Love and Squalor” offers authors’ responses
to Salinger’s most famous work. One of the 14 featured
authors is UCLA’s own Karen E. Bender, Class of 1986.
Bender is the author of the novel “Like Normal
People” and her works of fiction have appeared in magazines
including The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope and Story.
Bender’s contribution to “With Love and Squalor”
is an intimate and provocative look at a Southern
Californian’s brush with Salinger.
Bender’s essay opens with her reading her parents’
worn copy of “Catcher in the Rye” after the prompting
of her 11th grade teacher.
“I cried when I finished the book,” she writes.
“I had entered the book and then been hurled back into my
world again.”
Such a highly emotional reaction is understandable as Bender
illuminates Holden Caulfield’s prowess as a sympathetic
narrator.
“Holden was the first person, living or fictional, who
admitted his craziness to me,” writes Bender. “… I
felt a hopeless, overwhelming love for him. I wanted so to be with
him, to be understood.”
Bender’s essay ultimately follows her through the rest of
high school, parts of college, to the beginning of her life as a
writer, and to the publication of her first novel. Salinger’s
unique way of sucking his readership deeply into the narrative
affects all of those stages.
“Salinger’s fiction helped me write in a way that
makes readers feel less alone ““ made me trust that if I am
deeply honest in my fiction, others will say, “˜Hey! I feel
the same way,'” said Bender from her home in New
York.
“Whenever I write something that makes me think, “˜Oh
no, everyone will think I am crazy,’ someone responds and
says, “˜I feel the same way as you.'”
And even though Holden is a male New Yorker, Bender contends
that he has a relevance to West Coast women.
“I think Holden is related to the lives of Southern
Californian women because in Southern California there is pressure
to act a certain way ““ effervescent, fun-loving,” she
said. “Holden is supposed to be a certain way at his boarding
school and he feels so alienated there. I think his poignancy comes
from his attempts to describe/experience the world in his
way.”
Bender says her own experience at UCLA had Salingeresque
moments.
“I remember once walking by a frat when I was wearing some
absurd outfit ““ pink polka-dotted pants, a raincoat ““
probably because I hadn’t done my laundry in some time and
some mean guy said, “˜Hey, nice outfit!’ Now that made
me feel like Holden.”
Holden may not have demonstrated his uniqueness in clashing
clothing ensembles, but he prompts conversation nonetheless.
Catcher in the Rye is still on bestseller and banned book lists
across the country and at any given moment some high school student
somewhere is being assigned to read it.
Maybe his most entertaining contribution to American society is
his use of the term “phony.” Everywhere he goes he
finds more phonies, just as living on both the West and the East
Coasts has given Bender an understanding of a range of
phoniness.
“East Coast phonies drop Ivy League school names more,
which I find profoundly annoying,” she says. “I think
West Coast phonies tend to drop Hollywood references more. Phonies,
no matter which coast they come from, are difficult in that they
are not honest ““ they are trying to bully you with their
insecurities.”
Phonies aside, Holden’s legacy is in his bringing
different kinds of people to a common understanding of the
world.
“I think fiction is definitely a bridge between people. I
tell my writing students that all the time,” Bender said.
“We’re isolated in our disparate selves and fiction,
(and) truly honest fiction, is one of the ways that we can learn
what it is like to be someone else.”
Bender may have moved on from learning what it is like to be
someone else in the context of college, but her essay in
“With Love and Squalor” is a nice bridge between the
vast influences of UCLA and a larger world.