Use of Salinger's ‘Catcher in the Rye’ In Salem County School Stirs a Dispute

OLIVET, Oct. 28—After more than a quarter of a century, J. D. Salinger's novel, “Catcher in the Rye,” is still stirring controversy. Residents of this small Salem County community and the surrounding area are in a heated dispute over the use of the novel, first published in 1951, in a class at Pittgsrove Township High School.

“It is totally depraved,” Ruby Rauser said in an interview today.

She said she read the story about the mercurial adolescent Holden Caulfield for the first time this month when her 16year‐old daughter, Rebecca, brought home as assigned reading for an elective class in development of the novel.

Her husband, John, said he was equally shocked and read passages to the nineman school board at a board meeting in the Municipal Building here last week. He stressed Holden Caulfield's profanity. The Rausers demanded that the board ban the book at the Arthur P. Schalick High School, which draws 800 students from rural Pittsgrove Township's 47 square miles and from surrounding areas in this section of South Jersey.

“It is totally filthy, totally depraved an& totally profane,” Mrs. Rauser told the:board. “I don't believe a young mind can absorb this book without being scarred.”

Most of the board members were not familiar with the book, which has run into similar difficulties elsewhere in the country since it was first published. The board deferred a decision on it until its next meeting here Nov. 7. Meanwhile, Dennis Crowley, chairman of the English department and the selector of the book, provided them with copies.

He also provided them with critiques and an English department memorandum calling “Catcher” a milestone in the development of the novel.

“The language is the author's attempt to show how confused young people try to hide their insecurity and apprehensions about growing up behind a mask of bluff and force,” he said in the memorandum.

“Under the direction of a concerned teacher who stresses the ineffectiveness of childish conduct, the book and the actions and words of its characters can be placed in a constructive perspective. The book shows that profanity is a useless and harmful substitute for adult responsibility.”

The teacher of the class, Betsy Haase, told the board the novel was about “adolescent experiences, not profanity.”

Mr. Crowley, who is vice president of the board of education in Washington Township, where he lives, said in an interview that he thought the language in “Catcher” was “mild” compared with that in books and in use by teen‐agers today.

He took a dim view of a headline in The Elmer Times, a weekly newspaper in the township. The headline was: “Par ents Protest. Obscene Book in School Library.”

“The book is not obscene,” Mr.Crowley said. “To deprive every student because two parents complain is obscene. Censorship is a dangerous thing.”

He said reaction from the students was that the brouhaha was a tempest in a teapot and the book should be retained.

Rebecca Rauser is now reading a different book, one her parents approve of. Her mother is not satisfied, however.

“Every other child also has a right to be protected from filth,” she said.

She said parents must form a committee to pass on all books used at the school. Before the $4 million school opened last year, Pittsgrove Township children attended school in Vineland and Bridgeton.

In an “open letter” to Mr. Schalick printed in the Elmer Times yesterday, the Rev. Paul W. Hornung of the First Baptist Church of Elmer said that “screening” of all the books in the school library “must be done if we are to preserve our society.”

“The avant‐garde liberals would classify me as ignorant and anti‐education,” he said, “but I do not feel one has to read garbage in order to understand the development of American literature.”

He said in an interview that he had not read “Catcher in the Rye,” but had seen excerpts and had found them “totally obscene.”

He said he saw no valid objection to censorship.

“The government screens hotels and restaurants for cleanliness,” he said. “Why should we have less concern for screening what we put in our brains?”

Mr. Hornung said he expected the open letter to stimulate support for censoring objectionable books. He said he would rally his own congregants from the pulpit and at prayer meetings to attend the public meeting of the school board Friday and make their views known.

The Borough of Elmer is just outside Pittsgrove, but sends students to the new school.

“Elmer is concerned about moral issues,” the minister said. “There are no bars in Elmer. We are basically God‐fearing, moral people here.”

He said sex education in the schools was tearing at the moral fiber of youth.

Another View

On another block of the small town, the Rev. Joseph T. Hourani of the First Presbyterian Church said:

“It would set a horrible precedent for a group of extremists, such as the Baptist minister, to have such an entree into running the schools. We can't afford to allow religious differences to shatter the school life of the community. I have full confidence in the faculty and school administration. The fundamentalists who are objecting are not within the mainstream of Christian thinking.”

The minister's wife, Caroline Hourani, a native of Brooklyn, said that “it's hard to believe this is happening in the 20th century.” Her husband said he would alert the church's governing body about the meeting and call on Mr. Schalick.

“When the local ministerium becomes involved,” said John E. Cashner, Superintendent of Pittsgrove schools, “it is likely to involve the whole community. I didn't want this to happen. I hate to see it become a religious confrontation.”

He said he would recommend to the board that the judgment of the faculty members be upheld and “The Catcher in the Rye” retained.

The key man at the meeting is likely to be Arthur P. Schalick, 85 years old, who has been on the school board 37 years and its president for 25. He has also been Town Clerk for 32 years and assessor for 57.

“He is the township,” said Joseph C. McCloskey, principal of the Arthur P. Shalick High School. “He is the school district. The school is in deep trouble if the board doesn't support our professional judgment.”

Mr. Schalick said in an interview in the clerk's office, where he still works five days a week, that he had missed the last board meeting and had little to go on in the controversy.

“I never read it,” he said. “I never heard tell of the writer.”