Chapman was an a-hole, but Lennon was a phony if you really want to know the truth.
It’s been 35 years since I read it. But I remember Holden calling many people ‘phonies’. I grew to agree with this part of his misanthropic seeming literature.
Any book I was forced to read in high school I didn’t like. It wasn’t until I got out of college before I read books for the sake of reading. I remember we had to read CITR and Native Son back to back. Talk about boring. And Oliver Twist, Yech. So many ‘phonies’ try to read so much in to a book about some deep meaning or profound discovery when it is for entertainment. I was at an art gallery in Lahaina and a surprise guest,
Artist, Anthony Hopkins was there giving a presentation. Some egghead phony asked, “Sir Anthony, (were in America you snob” what are the meanings behind these paintings. (They were all very amusing and strange portraits.)
He said, “I just like painting. Why does there have to be some hidden meaning behind everything.?”
As a Southerner in the early 1980's I attended a class in the ITT building in Manhattan for a few weeks when I worked for ITT USTS. I stayed in the Algonquin Hotel and on the weekend I walked from Battery Park back up to midtown. The day before I flew home I saw a notice on a utility pole that said Itzhak Perlman would appear in a small chamber music event the next week, proving that NYC was the center of the world.
Even with that effort to connect with NYC, I could not relate to Holden Caulfield. All of the heartache and angsts that J. D. Salinger put the kid through seemed forced and fake. There was not a single thing in the book that made me identify with any of the characters. For a book written before I was born and was claimed to be a classic, it was the epitome of hype.
The following quote from Faulkner has always influenced my attempts to find hidden meanings in the works of famous authors:
They—they read into my stories lots of things which I myself didn't know were there...source
I liked it, I also liked “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me”.
I read constantly when I was a kid. I read ‘Catcher in the Rye’ in Jr High. Eh. Never read it again. I used to reread books I liked. I read Little Women 7 times, plus I’ve read all the subsequent books I could find at library at least once. The
A generation of English teachers loved it more than it deserved to be loved, but it’s certainly not worthless.
I don’t think the people Holden saw as “phonies” were really that. They had a different script and were playing a different role than Holden was.
But I do think that most politicians are phonies. Their scripts are too different from those of the people who elected them. They aren’t accountable to the voters as they ought to be, and aren’t accountable the truth either.
I read Catcher in the Rye in high school and thought it was stupid. I read it again more recently, and my opinion hasn’t changed. The only thing we had to read that was even more painful was Death of a Salesman.
People on ‘ludes shouldn’t write novels and plays.
The American version wouldn't work.
One book I never read nor cared to read, anymore than I wanted to read anything by James Joyce, William Faulkner or Henry Miller.
The book was assigned reading in our high school. I read it in one night. I couldn’t put it down. Now, I can’t even remember the storyline. I vaguely remember the protagonist had a cynical worldview, which is probably why my 16-year-old self enjoyed the book.
Hated it. Rad part way through it and quit. It was another of those lame books popular in the ‘60s. Hesse, Castaneda, Brautigan did many of those. Just boring.