Few texts epitomise adolescent reading habits as well as J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. A novel shrouded in mystique, itwidely regarded as one of the great prototypes of the coming-of-age novel, but you quite probably already knew that, having been prescribed it at one time or another by a former English teacher.
Since its publication, Salinger’s tale of disillusionment and temporary alienation has scandalised sensitive readers with its bold anti-authoritarian message whilst the protagonist of the novel, Holden Caulfield, has acquired a reputation as tantalisingly notorious as that of the book itself. Teenage everyman, boyish paragon of innocence and all-round carefully filleted soul, Caulfield is a compelling creation. But, considering the book’s reputation the quasi-profound whining of this pubescent misanthrope represents a startlingly myopic coming-of-age experience: Caulfield is sheltered from all but the most trivially egocentric of angsts.
The American academic Louis Menard once suggested that the frequent appearance of The Catcher in the Rye on English syllabuses is due to the optimistic conclusion of Salinger’s narrative. It conveys the message that “alienation is just a phase”. As the primary theme of a coming-of-age narrative, this is superficial. Fashions have lasted longer than Holden Caulfield’s melancholy.
If Caulden is the teenage everyman, then Henry Chinaski is the the teenage underdog. The literary invention and thinly veiled alter ago of Charles Bukowski, a contemporary of Salinger, Henry Chinaski (part Gregor Samsa, part George Carlin), like Caulfield, has a youth overshadowed by feelings of alienation. But Chinaski is a young man born of immigrant parents who dream of assimilating to the middle-class ideals of the American way of life during the Depression. Chinaski himself dreams of acts of heroism and grandiose romanticism. In reality his parents are content with a cycle of drudgery and he is socially withdrawn and disfigured by acne. For Henry Chinaski alienation is not merely a phase, it is a full-time occupation and, when he eventually becomes a writer, a salaried one.
Yet despite the reality of his unenviable life, the distinction between Chinaski and Caulfield is that Chinaski is in no way self-pitying. What might otherwise be a trashy, even lurid chronicle of adolescence is transformed into an empathetic narrative by forceful, sincere prose made poignant by the roman á clef elements of the book. That Ham on Rye isn’t widely assigned coming-of-age literature is probably in part a consequence of the poverty of critical attention that Bukowski’s novels have received and in part a hesitation to associate with the dirty old man of 20th century American letters.
Unfortunately, Bukowski’s cult status ensures the preservation of a “’burp, cough, fart, #@%*’ Hey, Bukowski just said something, let’s write it down” mentality by a following of adoring self-professed barflies, but Ham on Rye is nevertheless one of the rough diamonds of modern American literature.