Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 07/14/2026 10:39:13 AM PDT by Borges
On July 16, “The Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger, will turn 75. Commemorating such a nice big number would surely strike its adolescent hero, Holden Caulfield, as the absolute nadir of “corny,” but maybe we could use a little corn, as the data centers invade our farmland.
Pour out a Scotch and soda — make that a malted milk — for this spry codger of a novel that’s stayed on the dance floor long past when might be expected, leaping over book bans from the right and dodging cancellation from the left. “Catcher” has somehow inspired artists as disparate as John Guare and Guns N’ Roses, its denunciation of phoniness presaging the social-media demand for “authenticity.”
Though set mostly in the sophisticated precincts of New York City where Salinger was raised but did not remain, “Catcher” might be the purest of the Great American Novels. (Partly because it has never been made into a movie, though everyone from Billy Wilder to Steven Spielberg tried to secure the rights.)
It’s also one of the dirtiest: ruffling parents and school boards with its fingernail clippings, shaving stubble, blood, flatulence, drunkenness, voyeurism, vulgarity, prostitution, profligacy and slang. Oh so much delectable lost slang.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
“Book bans”. At what point has it ever been illegal to buy, possess, or read this book. I read it long ago and enjoyed it and I am right of the right wing
They really love that term. It makes them sound heroic.
A lot more phony people out there these days.
Didn’t it also inspire the assassin of John Lennon?
In the sense that Taxi Driver inspired the guy who shot at Reagan. Crazy will Crazy.
I hated that book! They made us read it in high school!
My English teacher was fresh out of college and thought it was perfect for us to read.
Why on Earth did they think that teenagers wanted to read a book about a teenager trying to get laid?.....................
and look at De Niro today
That’s not what it’s about. Holden is mentally ill and having a nervous breakdown.
Why on earth would a fresh out of college English teacher sit on her desk in a short dress in front of hormonal boys? She didn’t last long, she got replaced when she got pregnant.
Holden was a pussy.
And the killer of Rebecca Schaeffer.
There’s definitely some funny business going on in that book. Books that were heavily pushed post-1947 are suspect. Much of what JD was doing for the government immediately after the war is still classified, but we do know he was high up in Intelligence.
We had to read it in HS also and I couldn’t tell you the storyline today if you held a gun to my head. I can’t remember one thing about it but I vividly remember “Of Mice and Men”
I read it long ago and thought it utter rubbish. Living in a free country is great! Reasonable people may disagree, and not get in trouble with the government.
The conspiracy-theory association of the novel with assassins is funny.
I started reading that book. Never finished it. I don’t remember why.
Maybe I’ll pick it up again someday. Or not, since I’m not an adolescent boy.
I had to read in hs also, and found it boring
Agreed. WAAAAY overrated.
Agree. In fact there were more than a few of these so called literary pieces we were forced to read with nothing good in them but that sort of thing. Creepy.
You don’t think he captured that character perfectly?
Oh, how I hated that book.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.