Things Fall Apart

Our book group’s choice this month was The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger. A large number of us had read the book as teenagers, and it was interesting to note how our reactions had changed when rereading it as old geezers. Just in case you haven’t read it, it is about a privileged but severely troubled 16-year-old American male, Holden Caulfield, going AWOL for 48 hours in New York City. Substantial passages reflect a typical teenager’s negative attitude to almost all of the values of the previous generation, as ‘phoney’.

When I first read it, I felt some sympathy with the narrator, although he was the ultimate cynic and I was a nerdy swot. Now when I read it, I notice three things: first, Holden Caulfield is a monumental pain in the neck; second, he must be a terrible worry to his poor parents; and third, he exhibits some of the classic symptoms of bipolarity.

Digression: besides Catcher in the Rye, there are some brilliant descriptions of mental illness in literature, even if they are not billed us such. There is a chilling short story by the 19^th century Irish writer, Sheridan Le Fanu, called Green Tea, in which the narrator gradually comes under the influence of some kind of demon who urges him to extremes of destructive and self-destructive behaviour. My impression is that the reader is expected to think at first that this is a supernatural phenomenon, then to suspect that the experiences are hallucinations stimulated by overindulgence in drinking Chinese tea. In fact, the description fits almost perfectly with frequently observed manifestations of schizophrenia.

Anyway, back to the subject of revisiting our favourites of long ago. When I was a student, I loved the novels of BS Johnson, a highly innovative and experimental writer of the 1960’s. His books were mainly about young men (or rather one young man, BS Johnson) trying to find their way in life. The books had the usual ingredients of dissatisfaction with work and lack of success in love, but were written with great style and bravado. He was witty, quirky, a fellow enthusiast of Samuel Becket, and I thought he spoke for me. He was a major influence on a number of literary figures, including the massively successful novelist Jonathan Coe. Now, when I reread him, I am still impressed with the ideas and ideals, and the novel Trawl is still a masterpiece (look it up), but I feel that a lot of the other material is a bit juvenile.

But all that might be because I am an old git. One of the recurring themes of The Catcher in the Rye is Holden’s unerring ability to foul things up.  And we have all done that over our lifetimes.

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In the early 1990’s, before we had children, we had a Volkswagen Polo which had a tendency to overheating and to what the experts call ‘uneven running’, which I think means that the car doesn’t always do what it is told. On one occasion, we were driving up from Cambridge to Dunfermline on a Friday afternoon. In the evening, in Northumberland, there were signs from little circular lights on the dashboard, that the car might need some oil and some water. Being used to this event, I had plastic bottles of both in the boot of the car.

However, I should say (spoiler alert) that the water and the oil were contained in plastic bottles of identical shape. In the twilight, on a dark verge off the main road, and in the strong wind, I did not realise which was which. I poured around a pint of oil into the radiator and half a pint of water into the sump. On replacing the plastic bottles in the boot I realised my mistake.

Linda says that my reaction was very impressive to watch. I stormed up and down the verge, effing and blinding at the top of my voice and looking for all the world like Basil Fawlty, but with the voice of Wee Jimmie Krankie.

I was at a loss as to what to do about this, my mechanical skills extending no further than sounding the horn. However, I was a member of the AA (not that AA, the motor car one), and I called them up. They sent out a chap from a local garage, who towed us into Alnwick (a lovely Northumberland town), and undertook to make a complete oil and water change first thing the next morning. Being towed was a little like being on the Big Dipper at Blackpool with the added fun of having to steer the bloody thing.

We stayed in an upstairs room over a pub in Alnwick, with furniture of a dimension which made you think that a race of giants must have lived there once, and not so long ago, either. The following morning, we picked up the car, to be given the bad news that although the problem had been addressed for the moment, THE HEAD GASKET HAD GONE, and would need replacing in the next few weeks. This issue of the going of the head gasket had apparently been the reason for the overheating and uneven running in the first place.

For those of you without the requisite technical knowledge, the head gasket is a sort of magic thing that lives in the car’s engine, and if it is damaged the car won’t go properly. There. Glad we’ve got that cleared up.

There is no moral to any of this, although perhaps it illustrates the point that you don’t need to be sixteen years old to mess things up. Never mind Holden Caulfield, if ever you need anything wrecked, just give me a ring.

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With no relationship whatever to the above, other than the fact that Holden Caulfield does a heck of a lot of smoking in Catcher, let me tell you one more story. In the early 1980’s, my dad was making yet another attempt to kick the booze. In addition, he had stopped smoking tobacco and had adopted these foul-smelling herbal cigarettes (probably of no use, since the combustion products rather than the nicotine are the most dangerous ingredients to health). My oldest brother John, at a rather vulnerable period in his life, had driven over to Dunfermline to visit my mum and dad. As they sat blethering in the living room, my dad asked of John, ‘Do you want an alcohol-free lager? I think I’ll have one.’

‘Sure,’ said John.

Dad served the drinks, and took out his box of herbal fags. ‘Want one of these?’

‘Why not,’ John replied.

As the pair of them puffed on herbal cigarettes and swigged alcohol-free lager, their eyes met.

‘Lo, are the mighty fallen,’ said my dad.