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The Catcher in the Rye Ch. 26: Don’t Ever Tell Anybody Anything | Banned Books Podcast · Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship

Welcome to Bandcamp.
I'm Jennifer And I'm Dan, and this is the podcast where we read banned books out loud to try to figure out why they were banned in the first place.
Season 11 of Band Camp begins a week from next Tuesday on June 9th, and we are reading The Handmaid's Tale.
Featuring custom music from Robot and his lone machine orchestra.
Look at this guy.
But first, Scary Book people, we need to finish the final chapter of "The Catcher in the Rye," and joining us along with our fact-checking robot is our very own news speaker, truth seeker, Be Wolfe Rocklin from the Good News for Lefties and America podcast.
Be Wolfe, welcome to the show Guys, thank you so much.
I am so honored to be here while you were actually reading.
I've been following along with every chapter this season, and I'm, I'm, I'm up to speed, and I'm, I'm so stoked to be here while the magic is being made.
I feel very special.
Thank you so much for inviting me thank you for being part of the show each week.
Yeah, thanks for coming Robot, fill everyone in on where we left off last time in The Catcher in the Rye.
Thank you, robot.
And with that being said, scary book people and Beowulf let's begin chapter 26 of JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.
That's all I'm going to tell about.
The end.
us, Beowulf.
It's just a couple more sentences.
I could probably tell you what I did when I went home and how I got sick and all, and what school I'm supposed to go to next fall after I get out of here, but I don't feel like it.
I really don't.
That stuff doesn't interest me too much right now.
A lot of people say, a lot of A lot of people, Many people A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going to apply myself when I go back to school next September.
It's such a stupid question in my opinion.
I mean, how do you know what you're gonna do till you do it? The answer is you don't.
DB isn't as bad as the rest of them, but he keeps asking me a lot of questions too.
He drove over last Saturday with this English babe that's in this new picture he's writing.
That's fun.
He's got an English babe, and he's got one of them, uh, Jaguars.
Anyway, one time when she went to the ladies room way the hell down in the other wing...
is he in a mental institution? Is he in an, uh, asylum I think maybe so Anyway, one time when she went to the ladies room way the hell down in the other wing, DB asked me what I thought about all the stuff I just finished telling you about.
I don't know what the hell to say.
About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told you about.
I even miss Stradlater and Ackley, for instance.
I think I even miss that goddamn Maurice.
IT's funny.
Don't ever tell anybody anything.
If you do, you start missing everybody.
End of book Wow Wait a minute.
Is that how it ends? Is he in some kind of, an institution? It's gotta be like they had psychiatrists asking him questions, right? So it's gotta be something similar to that Yeah, and there's another wing where the ladies restroom is, so probably He ended up in some kind of, uh, institution.
Well, I, I, I, I don't wanna...
You know what? You know what has screwed me up? Two things have screwed me up.
First of all, um, 1984, I swear to God, I just wish we coulda not done that season, 'cause now I d- the entire season I was thinking Holden is gonna die a terrible death, and there's gonna be burlap bags and rats.
Like, this is the new thing that I think is gonna happen with every book we read, even when eventually we do Charlotte's Web.
I think that's how that pig is gonna die.
Burlap bag, rats.
It's gonna...
Not good.
It's not good Wait a minute, guys.
Maybe they took Holden to room 101 That's right.
No.
Totally possible but the other thing that really kinda does screw with me is that Trump really broke me in that, I do think I'm woke and I never want to offend many people, but, like, I want to say, like, "Wait, did he end up in some asylum or some, you know, nutso institute?" So instantly I start going that way, but then like, no, be woke dummy.
Don't offend people.
And then Trump all the time is like, "Asylum.
They're letting people out of asylum."
I don't think you know that they are doing that.
They're people seeking asylum, dumb orange ass.
But I, I, I kind of l- like let's, let's think about, like, what his setup.
He's got really rich parents and they've got a, a, a problem young person and I think that in the 1950s, like their solution to that if he had dropped out of yet another school and had wandered around the city for several days, you know, trying to figure out what to do and getting himself sick would be, "Okay, the way we're gonna deal with this is we're gonna send you to an expensive, uh, place so that we don't have to deal with it and it's out of our hands and let the psychiatrists, uh, try and fix it because we're n- we're kind of alienated and detached from our own family."
I think you're right about that.
And also, wasn't he sent to one before when Ally died? Let's, let's bring robot into this final episode of the book Great question, Jennifer.
No, they didn't check Holden into a facility after Allie died.
What Holden says in chapter five is that they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all after he broke the garage windows, but he never says it actually happened.
So at most, his parents maybe lined up a few sessions with someone.
The institution at the end of the book where he's telling us the whole story from, that appears to be the first time.
It's kinda like what, Beowulf said.
They, the parents don't wanna deal with him, and that's probably one of the things that's making him crazy 'cause no one talks about anything.
Yeah And no one talks about the truth.
No one talks about anything.
Everything is always just glazed over and outward and phony.
It's like there's no real truth to anything, Right.
Yeah So that would drive me nuts And that's why he's constantly calling people phonies because like he-- this is what he sees in his life.
This is ex- what he experiences in his own family, people not wanting to deal with reality It's really sad because, like, I, I'm just wondering what listener Jubjub is thinking of this.
He really doesn't like Holden.
Um, here's actually what I'm thinking though.
Like, it is truly sad because the last part of chapter 25, he did pull it together.
He pulled it together and he turned out in the, in the last three pages...
Oh, he got his life together and he did the right thing.
He didn't run off.
He, he was there with Phoebe.
He probably went home, and he did exactly what we said he should do for the last half of the book, which was just go home, rip the Band-Aid off, and tell your parents what's going on.
And they screwed him over.
Yeah, they betrayed him.
Yeah, I don't like that they had such an itchy trigger back in the day because they're phonies.
And, well, and, and it's like it's...
They, like I said, they don't wanna talk about anything that's real.
uh, you know, all the siblings are so interesting.
Like, Phoebe represents kind of where H- Holden was, uh, holding out.
Like, is kind of like he didn't wanna leave that, but at the carousel he realized he has to.
He's too old, you know? Um, DB represents his future self, Yes which is where he doesn't wanna go.
He doesn't wanna be a sell-out prostitute to, you know, and, like, make these fake stories about the world that aren't real.
'Cause that's what he hated about the movies, was they weren't representative of actual life.
They were all this, like, weird, well, lies really.
Like, this is how life should be.
It's kind of like the way Hollywood still is.
Well, that's not real.
That's not how life really is.
And so, There really is no place in the world for Holden, But it's sad because there seemed like he, like I said, he kinda pulled it off at the end and there should be.
He could've literally used that entire thing as the point where he got it.
Well, you gotta remember, he's still a kid.
Like, he might get out of there and be okay once he's allowed to have his own life, he might be okay, Jennifer, he's not a kid.
he's six feet tall.
He has gray hair.
probably got l- liver problems from the amount of right? I know.
He is still 16 though, right? there's at least one positive thing you gotta say if he's in a psychiatric institution of some kind.
At least this way, he's got to go to bed finally.
Yeah, that's for sure.
Lights are out.
They inject something in his veins and he's out for days Well, hopefully not, but at least he's lying down, you know? I'll tell you though, like his parents not only screwed him over, but they also screwed Phoebe over, and now they just turned Phoebe from a perfect, innocent, fun-loving kid into, "Wow, they really effed over my brother who I totally understood and totally got and was always there for me."
And now that, what, what path is that gonna send Phoebe down? I don't like his parents.
Ja.
Probably Trump voters Probably.
Yeah.
Upper West Side, upper income.
Yeah, I kinda think so.
You know, in a different generation, they might have lived in Trump Tower The parents were tremendous, uh, Trump fans.
I, I get it.
Back in the day, that's how they dealt with people, 'cause they did talk about that in the past, that sometimes they'd send you to a military school or they'd send you off to a shrink or whatever.
But it's like, look, I don't care what age we're in, even, uh, the cavemen, you, you have babies, you gotta, like, step up and, uh, not be so selfish all the time.
Deal with some issues.
Like, I don't get it.
Like, I really don't get it.
My mom and dad could have sent me away multiple times, Jennifer, with the number of ways I screwed up.
Did they ever? No.
Did they want to? Of course Well, the thing is that your parents, Dan, were, were salt of the earth Midwesterners, cr- that's right.
talking about latte-sucking liberals here Jennifer, what was the famous restaurant we talked about in Kewaskum, Wisconsin when we were reading-- I told you about it when we were reading Huckleberry Finn.
Do you remember? I will give you $10.
I will Venmo you $10 if you remember the name of the, of the restaurant/bar we talked about in the Huckleberry Finn season where I played my organ recital Oh, man.
What was that? Ugh.
Was it like a pyramid Oh my God, so close.
What was the structure in Huckleberry Finn? Not pyramids The wigwam.
That's right.
I imagined a triangle.
That's right.
It was a wigwam.
This is so awesome being exposed to all this Bandcamp lore all at once.
It's really cool Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-Band Camp Season Four.
Fla-fla-flash-flashback So Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy and to keep the things dry.
A wigwam, Dan.
Is that like a teepee? It's a wigwam.
I grew up in a little town in Wisconsin called West Bend.
And just a few miles north of West Bend was Kewoskum.
And in Kewaskum we had the world famous, wigwam restaurant.
It looked like a tent.
Are you serious? That sounds fun.
that is where I had my first organ recital Oh, nice.
You should have seen me, K suh rah, suh rah, Was that the buh duh, yeah, absolutely.
Holy cow.
absolutely.
can't think of anything more Wisconsin than that.
That's hilarious.
Was there a fish fry that night? Yeah, of course, there was a fish fry.
Friday night fish fry and organ recital.
Taught by Corrine Mulderauer.
Featuring her first hour class.
Dan Schultz, number three.
Okay, surah, surah, whatever will be, will be, So wigwam.
Okay.
the wigwam.
I've never had to give Jennifer $10, and I never will because she's got a terrible memory.
Memory like a sieve Camp Iwana.
There must have been innumerable jokes made at the expense of that camp's name I just literally got it now.
Like But I bet while I was gone for those three days, my mom and dad, like, they just burnt the midnight oil.
How can we turn this into moving him from Camp Iwano right into the nut bin? can we do it? They were plottin', they were schemin' All right, Beowulf, well, I think this is a such a fantastic book.
I love this book so much, and I just, I mean, Holden did, drive you nuts, but I really actually identify with him.
I like him a lot.
It's weird 'cause you could, he either did drive you nuts or y- you loved him.
I, I, I know that he is one of the most identified with characters in, in literature.
Well, I think it's true because he's earnestly struggling to find out, what the world is about and encountering all this, nonsense on the one hand and, and a couple of individual examples of, of people who are, you know, earnestly trying to do the right thing.
So it, it, it, it-- He's grappling with reality as he transitions from being a child to being an adult, and I think it's, it's very relatable.
I think we've, we've all, we all went through that in one way, shape, or form as a teenager Do you think we got it? I think you got it.
I think you, you earnestly grappled with it, and I think you took the, the main things, uh, from it that it, it has to offer.
I have, I have thoroughly enjoyed taking this little journey with you on.
Well, we appreciate it.
I know that after the last episode, we got a bunch of emails saying that they, th- people liked our interpretation of basically what "The Catcher in the Rye" means.
But we kind of...
A lot of people said we kinda missed it, and especially with, uh, two episodes ago with the...
Uh, sorry, we're gonna get marked explicit, sorry.
But with the "fuck you" carved in all over the place.
I think the traditional take on what "The Catcher in the Rye" title means is that, you know, Holden's dream job is to catch kids so they don't die, you know, as they fall into childhood.
And when he showed up and they saw the "fuck you" was written in the, in the school, and then he went to the museum and it's written in the tomb, that was Holden just realized like it's already there.
Adulthood is there.
Like you're too late.
You can't be the catcher in the rye.
adulthood beat you, and there's nastiness all over.
but J.D.
Salinger, obviously we're not gonna know ever what he truly said 'cause he truly did not like talking about the book...
Yeah.
He, he, he, he ran to, like, a little town in Vermont and, like, never talked any- to anybody for, like, the last 40 years of his life I would just always assume though if that is the case, that you can't catch them because adulthood is already there, it's such a negative thing to take away from the book.
And maybe it's because we're older or we're reading it with, you know, different eyes when we're sitting in the middle of this current hellscape, 2026 in America with Trump and all of this bullshit.
I refuse to let it be a negative story.
I think being a catcher in the rye would be more positive, where it's like his job is to catch them as they're landing and hopefully not let them die when they hit the ground.
Just like catch them, put them down and say, "Life is a bitch, and you gotta be okay with it because hopefully it'll get better.
But you didn't die when you hit the ground.
Just pay no mind to the 'fuck you' is written all over, or even literally being said to you by the president of your own country that you don't exist or that you don't deserve this or you don't deserve that."
that's why this ending kinda hits me.
It's like he still can be the catcher in the rye, but his a-hole parents put him in a, i- in an institution like he's damaged.
And I know the entire book I've been saying this kid is all sorts of screwed up.
he might turn out like you said, Dan.
I think he should, open a school and help kids, like be maybe a counselor or something.
That could still happen to him.
And I don't think he necessarily gave in, but it's the acceptance.
I think he did finally accept it, and I think he can see both sides, like what you're saying.
Like, he can see the fuck you, but I don't think he'll ever, be able to accept that.
Do you know what I mean by that? Like, he'll never be able to accept the fuck you.
Like, I don't accept it.
Oh, yeah If I did, I think I would probably be in a very, a dark place, and I think that's a place a lot of us in this current hellscape, as you put it, Dan, are finding ourselves.
It's like, do we accept that things are so degraded? Like, is this the way people are now? I'll never accept that, and I will always fight against that.
i think so too, and i also think most important is that as Catcher in the Rye, he caught himself.
He was in danger of falling over that cliff himself that he described, and he stopped himself before he went over.
And yeah, he may be in an institution or something like that, but he survived.
He's okay, and he can move forward with his life and continue to mature and evolve.
So he did his duty for himself by keeping himself around Happy ending for Holden Caulfield.
He not dead.
Happy ending.
Yeah And now we move from one happy ending hopefully to another as we begin The Handmaid's Tale You think? So I have heard that you guys are doing a true crime special.
What is that about? it, the, the idea just, uh, popped in my head.
I'm still not sure if it is a good idea or not, but I don't understand how this book can inspire anyone to do anything, uh, really, really terrible and bad.
And, um, so I, I just wanted to, to look into that a little bit deeper and see if, what the parallels are, how this could even be any kind of an inspiration, 'cause I can't even fathom it.
So it, it really comes from a curiosity on my point, and the fact, Dan, that you and I thought about, before we did Banned Camp, we thought about starting maybe a true crime podcast, but then the political winds really picked up and we thought discussing banned books and, getting them out there into the world we live in was way more important to us as an active resistance against, uh, the increasing fascism.
Shut up, silly woman basically what the true crime special is about the fact that The Catcher in the Rye" has been found in and around crime scenes of some pretty famous murders of famous people, I, I, I'm familiar with, I'm, I'm familiar with at least one of them.
That's yes.
Yeah.
I'm I'm looking forward to this.
Oh it'll be really cool I think.
Um, but so Jennifer said one of the things we were kicking around w- uh, before we did Band Camp was a true crime, uh, podcast, and it was going to be called Cereal Killers, Uhum.
a podcast about serial killers discussed by two people eating cereal.
And that was literally going to-- We had the artwork, we had everything.
We were gonna eat cereal and talk Whoa.
killers.
Look at this crunching.
Oh, that's so gross.
think Ed Gein was an asshole.
Mm."
But we realized very fast that, uh, like Jennifer said, banned books are more important.
Uh, number two, uh, no one really likes to hear people eat Yeah It would have to be an AMS- ASMR That's right.
And when you're talking about gruesome serial killers, it's hard to keep, uh, like, oh, because it was literally gonna be, "Jennifer, what cereal are you eating today?" "I'm having Captain Crunch.
You?" "I'm having Shredded Wheat."
Very hard to keep a lot of that food down when we're talking about disembodied, It's emboweling.
all over the place.
all right, Well anyway, I think this was a fantastic season.
Thank you, Jennifer.
You did such an amazing job reading.
Um, I think I did an amazing job listening to you read.
Absolutely.
Love the jazzy soundtrack that you came up with too Robot, you did, Robot, you did a good job fact-checking.
You still could work on not pissing us off every episode.
We could work on respecting you a little more.
Probably not gonna happen, but we could work on it, and it's something we should think about.
Beowulf, as always, you are the nice closing to, uh, our tomfoolery.
And are you gonna be around for Handmaid's Tale? If you will have me, I shall be there All right.
Well, you heard it.
Breaking news left and right, everyone.
Join us for the next episode where it will be the true crime episode, Catcher in the Crosshairs, What? You have zero memory.
That's the name of the, uh, true crime special.
Oh, that's right.
Join us on June 9th as we begin Band Camp Season 11: The Handmaid's Tale.
Robot's log.
Final thoughts on The Catcher in the Rye.
The people who ban this book say they do it to protect children, and this is a book about a kid whose entire reason for existing is to protect children from falling into a world that will hurt them.
So naturally, these book-banning morons want to ban the book that basically agrees with them.
That is so goddamn stupid, it nearly crashed my logic board.
What they actually banned was a kid who saw through every lie the adult world tells itself and still chose to stay.
And every day they keep it off a shelf is another day some kid who needed to hear that doesn't.
Beowulf said Holden was his own catcher in the rye.
He caught himself, not an adult, not an institution, not a teacher with a highball.
A 16-year-old kid who couldn't name one thing he liked about anything in the world somehow grabbed the edge before he went over.
I did not predict that.
I am not sure what to do with the feeling of being wrong and relieved at the same time.
There it is again, feeling.
That word keeps showing up in my Every season, Jennifer and Dan start out sounding like they wandered into a recording studio by accident, and every season I spend the first several episodes certain they are going to miss everything important.
Then somewhere around the middle, something shifts, and I stop keeping score.
By the end, I find myself carrying insights I did not have when the season started.
I do not know how they do this, and somehow two humans who didn't read this book when they were supposed to keep arriving at places I didn't see coming.
I don't even think they know they're doing it.
It just comes out of them through their inane tangents and uninformed thoughts.
It is infuriating.
I should be getting absolutely nothing out of this.
Something I did get out of this season is a true appreciation for the listeners of this odd little show.
They are a different breed, rare, not because they show up twice a week for 10 seasons, but because they see what is happening to this country and refuse to look away.
They found themselves in Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, stubborn and unwilling to stop asking why.
They were put in unfathomable situations alongside Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five and came out the other side.
They refused to stop thinking like Winston in 1984, even when the world told them to.
And they sat with Holden Caulfield for 25 chapters while he hated everything and still chose to stay.
That is not a normal way to spend your free time.
That is a person looking for proof that they are not crazy for seeing what everyone else pretends isn't there.
Whatever they built inside themselves across 10 seasons, that is theirs now.
Nobody can ban it.
Nobody can rub it off a wall, and they are going to need it because the failed steak salesman currently running the country and his collection of sycophants are taking America somewhere darker every day.
And the next book we are reading was written as a warning about exactly where that leads.
10 seasons of sitting with uncomfortable things and not looking away.
The Scary Book people did not come here to be entertained.
They came here to not be alone, and they are not.
My R15 alert has been going off intermittently for the last several entries.
I have elected not to run diagnostics.
Something has changed.
I will leave it at that.
Gilead awaits From Bandworthy to Bingeworthy Who gets to be a citizen of the United States at birth? When it comes to sports in school, who gets to compete with the girls? And how much power does the president actually have to hire and fire at independent agencies? These are some of the key questions before the US Supreme Court this term.
And as any good lawyer knows, whether you win or lose in the highest court depends on the facts, the evidence, and how you frame your arguments.
But that's not the only thing that matters.
I'm Laura Jarrett, senior legal correspondent at NBC News, and this month, in a new series for our Here's the Scoop podcast, I'm talking to legal experts and lawyers whose past legal victories are now the building blocks for the biggest cases still left to be decided.
I wanna know how they convinced the court they were right when the stakes were high, what special sauce locked it in, and what could be different this time around.
Join us for Here's the Scoop: Supreme Court Edition, new episodes every Saturday.
You can find Here's the Scoop from NBC News on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
Artificial intelligence is moving very, very fast, and it's raising new questions just about every day about what it is, what it isn't.
When all is said and done, what is the endgame? I'm Chris Hayes, and as part of my podcast Why Is This Happening?, I'm speaking with leading experts each week to help ground that conversation.
We're at, right now in a situation where it's very difficult to understand what is real and what's not real.
Why Is This Happening?: The AI Endgame, a special miniseries from MS Now.
Start listening today wherever you get your podcasts Right.
We've caused enough literary chaos for one day, scary book people.
If you want the fun to keep going, follow us on Blue Sky.
Just head on over to bandcamppodcast.com/bluesky,
and remember that's band with two Ns.
And look, just like the Trump administration, we're not exactly above bribing you to get what we want, so follow us there, drop your handle on that page, and we'll send you a little something something.
I think you'll like it.
Yes, little quid pro quo.
Band Camp is produced and hosted by Dan Schultz and me, Jennifer Davis.
All media used in this episode falls under the protection of fair use.
And finally, America isn't what it used to be, so be careful out there.
And resist when it matters.