Posted on 02/03/2010 4:57:53 AM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
This brings me to the book The Catcher in the Rye, which is in the news again after the death of its author, J.D. Salinger. Like so many others attending high school in the early 1980s, I had to read Catcher. Now, I guess I was "supposed" to relate to it, but I never did. I didn't experience teen "angst," and I didn't think everyone was a phony, either. Furthermore, if any of my friends related to the book, they certainly never said anything about it. Nor did any of my friends — or the teens I would work with later in life — exhibit angst or a preoccupation with the phoniness of others. In fact, I think the young are better epitomized by a starry-eyed idealism, where they expect some virtue, heroism and idealism in others. For sure, the millions of youth who chanted "Yes, we can!" in 2008 expected those things (although it's rumored that many have now become Holden Caulfield).
Now, mind you, I don't imply that Catcher tells us nothing about people in their adolescence. I simply say that its popularity — just like the other social phenomena I mentioned — tells us even more about a civilization in its twilight.
For one thing, there was a time when telling kids how they were "supposed" to behave meant drawing from Sunday school or the Bible, not the Kinsey Institute or the DSM-IV. We taught the morals we expected, not the misbehavior to be expected (and, by inference, accepted). This makes sense, too, as morality needs to be taught. Problems just happen naturally....
(Excerpt) Read more at renewamerica.com ...
The reviewer is correct.
I NEVER could stand that pathetic book.
Fortunately, i was never forced to read it. On the occasions that i started it, I quickly put it down as boring.
I hated that book.
I couldn't relate at all to the main character nor the setting of the action. I seem to remember that the lady who taught that lit class and the girls who were in it liked the book much more than any of the guys who were in the class.
Amen to this. I also “had” to read it in school and couldn’t understand why it was such a big deal...neither did any of my school friends. “Brave New World” made more of an impact...from that list of required school reading.
I have not re-read it as an adult, perhaps there is more to appreciate through the lens of (ahem) maturity?
Did I miss something profound here?
No, I see that I didn't, from FReeperland, I am relieved.
Wow! I thought I was the only one who read “Catcher in the Rye” back in the 60’s who didn’t get what the big fuss was about. The book was one big bore for me.
I labored to read “The Catcher in the Rye” from cover to cover and ended up puzzled about all the hue and cry. Holden Caufield seemed to be a whiney loser who couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but came to see he was a “Progressive” at heart, and would never see the true value of anything.
David Warren in his column wrote a pretty strong takedown of the book.
http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=1104
My HS English teacher (in the early 70s) had us read it also. I was a stupid book. It’s really stupid to make a teenager read a book that is supposed to be about a stupid teenager. Sallinger wasn’t a teenager when he wrote it. It really is about adults’ concept of how they remember being a teenager. ...
Plenty of better “coming of age” novels. The ones written in the WWI era are my preference. If you’re going to read about a fall from the heaven of childhood, to the rude battlefield of earth, might as well look there.
Nor need it deal with an eye-opening war. Check out “Le Grand Meaulnes” by Alain-Fournier.
Salinger’s snotty anti-hero with his lousy childhood -— it was an “alienating” experience to read! :(
I would daresay that it is absolutely the most overrated book in American lit..........
Actually, though, the entire NE literati scene is like that. Got my copy of the New Yorker yesterday (gift scrip from my parents, who have a free one to give bec. they have subscribed since the 40s, I guess they're in the habit). The entire issue is full of the same sort of myopic self-absorbed whining, as though nothing outside Manhattan and the Hamptons really exists. And there were 3-4 articles about Salinger, personal reminiscences that managed to be both dull and gossipy.
Those folks really inhabit a different universe. I feel the same way when I read my alumni magazine from my college. Their ways are not my ways (and, thankfully, not the ways of most Americans).
Forcing kids to read politically correct books is a huge scam. the author makes maoney when shcools buy the book or force the kids (parents) to pay for it.
It makes it seem that the book is popular, sometimes even keeps a book on the best-seller lists when really the book is being sold to a captive audience.
Like Soviet literature.
Someday somebody is going to write something about this.
I hope soon.
Like The Bean Tree and The Color Purple. etc. I am beginning to think that authors write politically corrext books just so they can get on the high school and college reading lists, i.e. books that will be chosen by teachers/instructors, for the reading lists. Guaranteed sales.
This is a major scam but nobody in the literary world is looking into it.
that said, Catcher In The Rye is a terrible book. Nobody likes it -— only academics. They force kids to read it. to BUY it!
A rich white kid indulging himself in one long whine from beginning to end.
These posts have made my day. Like so many posting here, I couldn’t stand the book but I seemed to be a minority of one.
I actually enjoyed Catcher...quite a bit, though I do agree it was rather tame compared to its reputation.
As for required school reading...oof, I only *wish* we’d had something like Catcher. Most of my teachers assigned plodding stuff like A Doll’s House or Billy Budd.
Oh, and that frickin’ poem about plums in the icebox.
Moby Dick is right up there with it.
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