It is a theme that predominates in Salinger’s fiction, and, I will argue, is fundamental to his engagement with Zen Buddhism, especially as he learned it from the writings of D.T. The key connection for our purposes is between textual authenticity and personal authenticity. But one could equally claim that part of what makes his vision so authentic, so opposed to phoniness, is that it has such an original (inauthentic) relation to the original text.
One could certainly argue that Caulfield’s problem is that he just wants to catch and release, rather than actually connect and meet. Ironically, the achievement of personal authenticity is based on an inauthentic rendering of the text (“catch a body” instead of “meet a body”). There is no possibility of being a phony because there is no possibility of a mour – propre, yet at the same time there is the necessary community-the children-to ensure the genuine purpose of the task. In this dream, Holden seeks an authentic position in the world, and he recognizes it as an endless sacrificial job with no chance of recognition. One after another, and forever, it seems. There is no grown-up there besides himself, and his task is to catch the kids as they exit the field, before they fall over the edge. The field is perilously close to a cliff edge. He recalls (incorrectly, his interlocutor tells him) a line from a Robert Burns poem: “If a body catch a body coming through the rye.” (The correct line, it turns out, is “meet a body,” but Caulfield continues.) What he’d like to be is someone out on the edge of a field of rye where all these kids are playing. It is a poignant vision from which the novel draws its title. In this context, Caulfield imagines another scene of what he would really like to be, a scene in which nonphoniness (his authenticity) would be secured.
“How would you know you weren’t being a phony? The trouble is, you wo ul dn ’ t.”
He considers that there might be some good to being a lawyer, but he doubts that even if he really were committed to saving the innocent, he could ever know if it was in fact for the moral good or because he wanted everyone to think so. Caulfield, in a climactic moment, even wonders if he himself might become a phony. Salinger’s most famous character, the worst insult he gives in Catcher in the Rye (1951) is to call somebody a “phony.” The word appears about three dozen times in the narrative, and it covers just about everyone. In spite of all the famous cursing by Holden Caulfield, J.D.
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