The death of J.D. Salinger last year made me realize that in 15 years of teaching American literature to university students in the U.S, I never assigned “Catcher in the Rye.” I always assumed that people shouldn’t read “Catcher in the Rye” after the age of 17, 18 max. Also, I was in graduate school during the 1990s and tended to prefer stories narrated by immigrant women warriors to those by whiny white boys. I still do. But after moving to Korea, I thought I’d give old Holden a shot, wanting to see if Korean students could relate to the cynical ramblings of a 16-year-old prep school dropout as he gets drunk, goes to jazz clubs, picks up a prostitute and has a mental breakdown in 1940s Manhattan.

My students and I have had a lot of fun reading Salinger’s classic coming-of-age novel. They have an easy time identifying with Holden’s anger and frustration toward an education system that treats students as objects to be disciplined and punished. One of the most shocking things I witnessed after moving to Seoul was seeing long lines of school buses waiting outside academies at 11 p.m. on Friday nights.

After students finish their regular school, disheveled zombie kids stagger into cram schools and academies for extra tutoring in science, math, and of course English. Students spend the first 18 years of their life memorizing stuff, being talked at, and preparing for the university entrance exam, so that by the time they finally make it past the main gate, the idea that learning could be fun, interesting or relevant has been paralyzed. One of the few things Holden actually likes is narrative digression; he likes it when stories wander around. For many students, there is simply no time for digression, no time for wandering or play, either in their studies or personal lives.

As we were finishing up “Catcher” last semester, a student at Korea University made a very public, and Holdenesque, decision to drop out of school, declaring, as if channeling UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio from the steps of Sproul Hall in 1964 or Malvina Reynolds folk anthem Little Boxes, that universities were factories that turn students into products. This student’s gutsy act has struck a chord with university students all over Seoul. Apparently she was a business major. I don’t necessarily agree with her decision to drop out of school. If she wanted to do something productive with her critique of the social function of the university, there are other departments, English for example, that would, or should, support her ideas. English literature is one of the few majors where, in addition to learning how to carefully read literary texts, students are encouraged to think about what it means to be human in an inhuman world. The highlight of my Introduction to Literature course every semester is Herman Melville’s classic short story Bartelby the Scrivener. Bartelby’s affirmative protest against being treated like an object has been repeated by generations of restless students who want their education to be more than a means to an end.

If it’s been a while since you’ve read “Catcher,” Holden, like Bartelby, compulsively repeats a key word over and over: phony. Everything is phony: teachers, parents, movies, pop music. “Catcher in the Rye” offers a useable critique of the demand for conformity in American mass culture. Students enjoy applying this critique to contemporary Korean mass culture. Their list of things that are phony is not that different from a list American students might come up with: politicians, pop music, plastic surgery, social networking sites. A few examples are more locally specific: idol groups, the Miss Korea contest, lookism, professors with fake diplomas, students who say they got into Seoul National University because of hard work and not because their parents are rich and can afford expensive academies, and my personal favorite, choosing marriage partners based on the persons blood type.

Salinger’s critique of conformist consumer culture is as relevant in Korea today as in America, although the terms are slightly different. Everywhere you look -- on television, style magazines, club nights -- young Koreans are exhorted to “Be Trendy.” You can be sure that if one of the omnipresent K-Pop groups like Big Bang or Girls’ Generation do something on Friday, a scary number of young people will be doing it on Monday. There isn’t much of a cultural underground here for parasitic corporate cool hunters to mine; what’s cool is what’s popular, and what’s popular is dictated by an authoritarian culture industry that efficiently keeps peoples desires in check.

As cultural critic Thomas Frank used to point out in the post-punk zine Baffler, American consumer culture has done a good job of absorbing Holdenesque cynicism, converting vaguely rebellious posturing into a pervasive marketing demand: Be Different. Where else but in the hyper-cynical American marketing system could Beat writer William Burroughs, a queer junkie who shot his wife to death, be enlisted to sell Nike Air Max shoes. But regardless of whether advertisers instruct kids to “Be Trendy” or “Be Different,” the end result is the same: kids being taught that happiness is something that you buy, and that how you look determines your value in society.

Last semester, as I was walking around Hongdae, a cafe and bar-strewn area where university students from all over Seoul converge, I noticed someone had spray-painted a line down the middle of the sidewalk. One side was labeled phonies, the other side said you. This reminded me of the playful political graffiti the Situationists used to put up around Paris in the 1960s. As a teacher, I had to walk on the phony side, ironically of course.

By John Eperjesi

John Eperjesi is assistant professor of English at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. He is the author of the book, “The Imperialist Imaginary: Visions of Asia and the Pacific in American Culture” (UP of New England, 2005). -- Ed.