Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Quarter-Life Crises Aren’t So Novel

Coming of age is a term synonymous with J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield embodies that angsty sense of disillusionment that we all encounter at the ripe old age of 16 and that almost always coincides with at least a 10 percent increase in our listening to acoustic bands.

Perhaps because of this association, Salinger’s seminal novel tends to be described as overrated or even trite. This fact always seemed unfair to me, since I read The Catcher in the Rye of my own volition, without chapter quizzes or book reports, and ended up liking it more than most do. Still, despite its place on many reading lists and library shelves, the book remains a much derided stereotype of the overvalued novel.

So what work have we turned to as a more adult, less whiny coming-of-age novel? Who is the Holden Caulfield-esque icon of the college set?

It might be Sal Paradise of On the Road. Jack Kerouac’s beat novel is just obscure enough and just offensive enough to be left off of high school required reading lists and well-known enough to be reached for by 20-somethings looking to pass the summers between college terms. It’s relatively short, straightforwardly written and realistic.

However, Kerouac holds little respect for punctuation, political correctness or plotline, for that matter, and the “novel,” to use the term loosely, proceeds at times as a long, run-on paragraph with little form and even less thematic structure. Of course, Kerouac would defend his beat mentality, claiming intentionality for the flat plot and repetition. On the whole, it seems that the exhaustion in On the Roadmay not be so much a function of style, but more a side effect of writing a book over the course of three weeks, as Kerouac often said he did. While the veracity of Kerouac’s claim remains disputed, the result is clear: This book is not nearly as accessible as the jazz music he sought to imitate in his prose.

The book bobs and weaves more than Sal’s erratic traveling does. Sometimes it’s tragic; other times Sal and his companions participate in hijinks worthy of The Hangover. The book promises some great revelation but never delivers to the degree we are led to expect it will. Besides this disappointment, Sal’s tendency to hyperbolize and an overuse of 1950s slang make the book feel as scruffy as a gray-haired flower child. Can you read it easily? Yes. Will you enjoy it or gain any type of insight into your impending quarter-life crisis? Not so much.

Two novels that have some similar themes of disillusionment and coming-of-age beyond college are John Updike’s Rabbit, Run and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Both, like On the Road, have a definite somber, somewhat depressive tone. Unlike Kerouac, these authors wrote in a style that aged well. Updike even claimed that he wrote Rabbit, Run in response to what he felt was an unrealistic portrayal of living on the road in Kerouac’s work. The Bell Jar focuses more on the psychological ramifications of maturing in the modern world but is equally well-written. Both are great, but sobering, reads for those of us who are also grappling with the realities of the working world. You don’t have to muddle through them, feeling left out from some big thing that Kerouac and all his buddies were in on. While reading On the Road, I was plagued by a sense of isolation, and if that’s not a cause of turn-up-the-Dashboard-Confessional angst, I’m not sure what is. Save your anxieties for more important post-college things, like deciding which “Intervention” episode to watch or, you know, choosing a career.

Elizabeth Garbitelli is a junior in the College and is currently studying abroad in Oxford, England. She can be reached at [email protected]Literary Snarknotes appears every other Friday in the guide.

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