"old" Phoebe. And many of the things Holden does, he does, ambiguously,
"like a bastard."

Holden is a master of the ludicrous irrelevancy. Indeed, a large part of
The Catcher in the Rye consists of the relevantly irrelevant. On the opening
page, Holden says, "I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam
autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that
happened to me around last Christmas...." By the time we have finished
Catcher we feel that we know Holden as thoroughly as any biography could
reveal him, and one of the reasons is that he has not hesitated to follow in his
tale wherever whim and fancy lead him. For example, in the early part of the
novel, Holden goes at some length into the history of the Ossenburger
Memorial Wing of the new dorms, his place of residence. Ossenburger, we
are told, was the Pencey alumnus who made a "pot of dough" in the
undertaking business, and who, after giving money to Pencey, gave a speech
in chapel "that lasted about ten hours." "He told us we should always pray to
God—talk to him and all—wherever we were. He told us we ought to think
of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all of the time. Even
when he was driving his car. That killed me. I can just see the big phony
bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs."
Ossenburger, of course, has nothing to do, directly, with the "madman stuff"
that happened to Holden around Christmas; but Holden's value judgment of
the phony Ossenburger is certainly relevant to Salinger's purpose, the
revelation of Holden's character.

When Holden refuses to express aggressive dislike of the repulsive
Ackley, the pimply boy whose teeth "looked mossy and awful," he is not
being facetious nor is he lying. He is simply expressing an innocence
incapable of genuine hatred. Holden does not suffer from the inability to
love, but he does despair of finding a place to bestow his love. The depth of
Holden's capacity for love is revealed in his final words, as he sits in the
psychiatric ward musing over his nightmarish adventures: "If you want to
know the truth, I don't know what I think about it. I'm sorry I told so many
people about it. About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about.
Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam
Maurice. It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start
missing everybody." We agree with Holden that it is funny, but it is funny in
a pathetic kind of way. As we leave Holden alone in his room in the
psychiatric ward, we are aware of the book's last ironic incongruity. It is not
Holden who should be examined for a sickness of the mind, but the world in
which he has sojourned and found himself an alien. To "cure" Holden, he
must be given the contagious, almost universal disease of phony adultism; he
must be pushed over that "crazy cliff."

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