Among the Intellectualoids
Calling All Adults
J.D. Salinger’s most famous creation was a whiny scout for the Me Generation.
You’d have to turn to the Ivy League education, the family vacation, or valet parking to find things more overrated than J.D. Salinger and his perennially best-selling celebration of adolescent self-absorption, The Catcher in the Rye.
Much of the literati and many in the education industry have clutched this pathetic character and his quirky creator to their collective breast. So there’s been much media gushing about Salinger and Holden Caulfield since Salinger’s death last Wednesday at 91. The NYT set the tone early on with a novella-length obit in Thursday’s number, giving a hint by heft alone how important a literary figure the Times considers Salinger to be.
Most of the pieces on Salinger have been hagiographic. Of the many I read, only one used the adjective “whiny” for Holden. More should have. Many of the paeans claim Salinger “caught the mood of a generation.” To a melancholy extent this is true, and we’re the worse for it. Holden was a scout for the Me Generation, still at flood, which has done much damage to the American spirit. He showed the way for a huge scrum of indulged young people who, just 15 or so years after Holden’s appearance, pitched a 10-year tantrum.
For the true believers, the perpetually adolescent among us who recognize one of their own, Holden is a sensitive and alienated anti-hero whose 1951 picaresque exalts the innocence and authenticity of childhood and adolescence against the phoniness and corruption of grownups. For more adult readers, Holden is an indulged, self-pitying, twit whose elephantine sense of entitlement has become far more common as the decades have passed. His novel is puerile, anti-grownup, kid-lit, nothing an adult should take seriously, or promote to the impressionable.
Holden is the narrator of his own story as told from a mental institution, where he was banged-up after a mental breakdown. Attentive readers don’t have to get far into this short novel to see why Holden is where he is. Perhaps a couple of years at such an institution would do Holden some good. But I can’t help but suspect that two weeks at Parris Island would do him even more good, and at a fraction of the time and cost. It would quickly create a focus that Holden and Catcher lack.
Those who’ve had the pleasure (if such it is), remember Holden’s story begins when he’s expelled from yet another prep school his well-off and indulgent parents have sent him to. He’s not cashiered for being too sensitive or misunderstood, but for being a bone-idle mope who does no academic work. It begins this way:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into It if you want to know the truth.
Unfortunately, he goes into it anyway, and gives us an odyssey far less compelling than David Copperfield’s. Pouting, sulking, and complaining his way through barely more than 200 pages, Holden sets an NCAA record for whining.
Holden departs Pencey Prep to spend a couple of days in New York City — where Holden lives with his family in between being expelled from expensive schools — until the expulsion letter reaches his parents. Over these days Holden goes through a series of banal and inept encounters with, among others, a prostitute, a male former teacher who makes a pass at him, and a hotel doorman who will never take the Miss Congeniality prize.
The purpose of these encounters is.. .well, the purpose is never made clear. And they demonstrate that the only thing Holden is really good at is feeling sorry for himself. By and by the novel ends, but not before Holden carries on a good deal about phoniness and hypocrisy and the comprehensive ickiness of the adult world. This sort of thing resonates with young people who enjoy believing they are rebelling against hypocrisy, phoniness, cruelty, et al., though most, in truth, are just rebelling against cleaning their rooms and doing their homework.
The tone of Catcher is a mix of cynicism and world-weariness. But adolescents aren’t old enough, experienced enough, to have earned either. The most people Holden’s age can have is a kind of low-grade moodiness. Something just one step past the unformed an uninformed malevolence of the four year-old who refuses to eat his peas. So the mood of the book never works for anyone who has, in the words of St. Paul, “put away childish things.”
While it’s easy to see why adolescents, particularly of the indulged sort, would find this kind of thing attractive. It’s more of a mystery why grownups, some disguised as teachers and lit professors, praise this nonsense and oblige high school and college students to read it. This is almost child abuse.
Adolescence is a tough time. The carpet-bombing of hormones alone insures a rough patch. So why cater to and indulge the worst instincts of what’s already a rough time of life? Requiring adolescents to read Catcher is a little like requiring an alcoholic to read about booze, or giving Bill Clinton a free subscription to the Playboy Channel. Nothing good will come of it.
Salinger wrote things other than Catcher, but not a lot. He wrote short stories, some of which are more readable than Catcher and contain some witty, even elegant passages. But even these can be awfully precious. In some of the stories and novellas published in the sixties, Salinger spends time on the eccentric and angst-ridden Glass family, which seems to exist in a parallel universe. The chief Glass, one Seymour, kills himself at the end of the short story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.”
Salinger published nothing after 1965, by which time he had fled to rural New Hampshire to live as a hermit, emerging only occasionally in order to sue people he claimed were invading his privacy. He was, if anything, quirkier than his main creation. Not, of course, because he lived in the New Hampshire woods and skipped the literary scene (which has its own quirks). After all, even Huck Finn, to whom Holden is often compared (wrongly, I believe), lit out for the territories. There being no territories left, the beautiful New Hampshire woods will do nicely.
On the strength of the Glass saga and other stories, Salinger might merit a footnote in the anthology of 20th century American literature. No more. His reputation, and his exhaustive and exhausting NYT obit, rests on Catcher. And it’s a reputation that would not exist in a country whose literary elites had not abandoned the whole notion of adulthood.
No one over the weekend would come out and say it, so allow me to. This literary emperor is wearing no clothes. His only novel and its chief character are contemptible. I hope Salinger’s soul rests in peace, and I wish the best to any survivors who cared for him. But the man’s literary reputation belongs on the remainder table of an obscure bookstore, perhaps in rural New Hampshire.
About the Author
Larry Thornberry is a writer in Tampa.
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Spinny| 2.1.10 @ 6:47AM
AMEN....WELL SAID. "Catcher" is a joke...a COMPLETE waist of time. I'd rather watch re-runs of the "Price is Right" than pick up that book again!
MOS was 71331| 2.1.10 @ 2:21PM
I believe you meant "waste" rather than "waist." Or was there some pun there which went over my head?
drudge ette obama| 2.1.10 @ 6:51AM
I thought I might re read this book, but then I remembered that I never liked it much. Must be too cerebral.
So, I will reread "To Kill A Mockingbird" again. This book never fails to amaze me.
Brian| 2.3.10 @ 9:45PM
To Kill a Mockingbird" was a good book, but talk about a book that inspired millions of empty-headed liberals.
They all still want to be Atticus Finch when the issues the book relates to, are about as relevant to today as the Spanish Inquisition.
Stuart Koehl| 2.1.10 @ 6:53AM
For what it's worth, my daughters found Holden an insufferable loser. When my older one was reading it, the only comment I heard her make was, "For crying out loud, Holden, man up!"
Anastasia Mather| 2.1.10 @ 9:10AM
Congratulations on raising beautiful adult daughters.
Richard Miniter| 2.3.10 @ 3:29AM
He is an insufferable loser. I remember reading it as a teenager in the fifties and laughing at what a loser he was. A book you never pick up a second time or give a second thought to.
The Europeans love it though. While tells you a lot about Europeans.
Occam's razor| 2.8.10 @ 7:43PM
Well, you know how you can tell Europeans...ask one, "you're a peon, aren't you?"
Pingback| 2.1.10 @ 7:02AM
New York Adult Entertainment: Calling All Adults | New York Escorts Today! links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Kitty| 2.1.10 @ 7:07AM
The best part about "Catcher in the Rye" was its part in the Mel Gibson movie "Conspiracy Theory."
...
MOS was 71331| 2.1.10 @ 11:25AM
"Catcher in the Rye" also played a part in the 1965 William Wilder movie "The Collector". The Britain set movie's central character, played by Terence Stamp, was a lower class clerk who'd won a small fortune in the football pools and used the money to buy an isolated country house and create a secret apartment in which he could imprison a kidnapped upper-middle class art student, played by Samantha Eggar. At one point in her captivity, the Eggar character suggests the kidnapper read Catcher. He does, and, amusingly, his reaction to the book is even stronger than Thornberry's. He thinks Holden is nuts. (Quite a diagnosis from a character obviously nuts himself.)
Richard Baker| 2.1.10 @ 7:09AM
Read it after High school. Snore.
2Anglico| 2.1.10 @ 7:41AM
Thanks for the heads up. I almost bought a copy this weekend due to all the publicity. Thankfully the bookstore was out. Semper Fidelis.
Curly Smith| 2.1.10 @ 7:44AM
I have a somewhat similar take on the dreadful book. It's the antithesis of the Horatio Alger stories, the "Rags to Riches" stories where hard work and dedication can overcome every obstacle. "Catcher" is a "Riches to Rags" story, it tells you how to become a loser in 200 lousy pages.
Kitty| 2.1.10 @ 8:27AM
EXCELLENT review! Absolutely PERFECT!
My mother was a high school librarian and had to read it when studying for her masters. She wasn't impressed. Next, my grandmother decided to read it to see what all the fuss was about. She wasn't impressed, either, which was not surprising since she was widowed in 1933 with one child in college, one headed for college (my mother), and the third child still in grade school. Because of her thrift and determination, all three earned their college degrees. My grandmother had no use for the Holden Caulfieds. She dismissed the book as a waste.
Last year, I finally decided to read the book. I don't think I made it through two chapters before I quit.
...
Ned| 2.1.10 @ 8:18AM
Would a couple of weeks at Parris Island take the catcher out of the rye or the rye out of the catcher?
Either result might make something useful out of him. Perhaps the sequel could be called "Lean Green Fighting Machine." I'm sure it would be a much better read.
Dan Hirsch| 2.1.10 @ 9:43AM
Yes, yes, yes...but will you work for food?
Paris Wisconsin
MOS was 71331| 2.1.10 @ 11:27AM
Can't we delete these crimping tool ads from discussion chains?
Rocin| 2.1.10 @ 9:12AM
Crimping Tool is definitely adding an uber-salingeresque touch of irony here.
Pingback| 2.1.10 @ 9:13AM
Los Angeles Adult Entertainment: Calling All Adults | News For Los Angeles Escorts. links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Anastasia Mather| 2.1.10 @ 9:13AM
I don't know how I escaped reading this trash in high school, but I later read it as an adult and wanted to slap Holden upside the head until he shut up.
Anyone who holds him up as some kind of adolescent hero need to spend some quality time in rehab, on the street or in some kind of military basic training.
LaneyB| 2.1.10 @ 9:26AM
I remember reading the book while in high school in the early sixties. Didn't like it then, and didn't like it any greater when I re-read it a few years later. It offered excuses and placed blame on every institution and every other human being for the angst and situation of the main character. That a whole world accepted this as great literature was perplexing to me. At heart the story was one long whine with a central character whose negatives were many and positives were zero. Sounds like Salinger himself.
Margie| 2.1.10 @ 2:56PM
Sounds much like the blame America First Howard Zinn's book!
Pingback| 2.1.10 @ 10:02AM
Boston Adult Entertainment: Calling All Adults | All The News For Boston Escorts. links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Chris Matthews| 2.1.10 @ 10:08AM
For a moment, I forgot Holden was white!
MOS was 71331| 2.1.10 @ 11:29AM
And a thrill ran up my leg when I recalled Holden was!
Galen| 2.1.10 @ 10:30AM
I read Catcher when I was 20 and thought it a snore. Question? Why is featured on lists of obscene books, and people actually jailed for putting it on a reading list?
Parris Island 293| 2.3.10 @ 3:34AM
I believe that's an urban legend.
TURK| 2.1.10 @ 10:44AM
Wasn't there some connection between J Lennon and/or his assasin and catcher?
A current guide to parenthood in conflict with the days of those of us from the 40's and 50's is the abhorrence of the term-Children should be seen and not heard! A 30 something in the family hates those words. Salinger the hippy recluse, contributed to the atmosphere that spawned the current crop of leftist brats currently running the country AND to the stifiling politically correct atmosphere that screws us up.
astorian| 2.1.10 @ 11:08AM
I was a teenager growing up in New York City i nthe Seventies. When I was required to read "Catcher in the Rye," I didn't relate to Holden Caulfield at all, and was rather bored with the story. In fact, the ONLY memorable moment for me came when Holden spent one night sleeping at Port Authority bus terminal.
Anyone who remembers how dirty and crime-ridden Manhattan was in the Seventies will grasp how horrifying that concept seemed to me! But of course, in the early Fifties, a kid could do that, knowing he had nothing more to fear than, perhaps, a copy poking him with a nightstick and telling him to move along.
Some stories I've read indicate that J.D. Salinger was a genuinely weird guy, but even if he were the sanest, healthiest, most normal man on Earth, hee STILL might have been well advised to go into hiding in the woods in New England.Every psychopath on Earth loved "Catcher in the Rye," and thought Salinger was "the only person who understands me." Can you imagine the scary fan mail Salinger must have gotten? Think of Kathy Bates in "Misery," multiply that by a thousand, and you have an idea of the kind of admirers Salinger attracted.
Even if he were the model of normality, he'd almost HAVE to become a hermit, just to avoid meeeting his fans.
Tony in Central PA| 2.1.10 @ 11:19AM
Glad I watched TV as an adolescent instead of reading this rubbish that so many of my peers claimed was a " great book ".
MOS was 71331| 2.1.10 @ 11:31AM
Ditto.
Rocin| 2.1.10 @ 11:32AM
Alternate theory folks: It was a GREAT satire about the whinieness of a vacuous youth, and Salinger went into hiding out of embarrassment when people took it seriously.
Manya Shochet| 2.1.10 @ 11:38AM
I, too, found "Catcher " hard to take, even as an angst-ridden adolescent. I confess, I never actually finished the thing until I was over 40 and stuck without reading material.
It is, however, the basis for the greatest literary parody in existence, Dan Greenburg's Salingeresque take on "Goldilocks", entitled, "Catch Her In The Oatmeal". Now THAT was worth reading!
PittsburghPete| 2.1.10 @ 12:22PM
For english lit students everywhere, Holden wears his hat backwards because thats all catchers do. That should get you at least a 'B'.
jcm| 2.1.10 @ 12:31PM
Read it in high school 37 years ago. Got a thrill from the 4 letter words, liked the satire, agree with Rocin. But his preoccupatioin with his little sister Phoebe's rear end and skinny body was creepy. "Catcher" was just a diversion in that class, luckily it did not eclipse the rest of the syllabus, which included Joyce's "Portrait," Agee's "A Death in the Family," and Graham Greene.
Seek| 2.1.10 @ 12:40PM
Maybe "whiny" youth have something to whine about. And maybe by re-reading "Catcher in the Rye," we can recall our own interior monologue at that age. Yes, the book is overrated. But it by no means is useless or destructive. To draw a straight line from J. D. Salinger to Charles Manson is, to put it mildly, a stretch.
Englit| 2.1.10 @ 12:58PM
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
So much for the legacy of this supremely phony writer.
GregA| 2.1.10 @ 1:23PM
As I think back on my days as a far-left, youthful, jazz musician, admiring Holden Caulfield and the Glass family, I am profoundly thankful for growing up, getting a real job and being saved by Jesus. As others have mentioned, too many of the political elitists in power today have taken Salinger’s characters to be ultimate role-models when they should be deplored. I particularly note Zooey Glass, as he chain-smoked and bathed in a tepid, fetid, bacteria broth of his own self-righteousness and self-importance.
I wonder if J. D. was happy that the Glass family had risen to such heights: Nancy Glass, Whiner of the House; Harry Glass, Senate Whinority Leader; Eric Glass, Whiner General; Barack “Zooey” O’Glass, Whiner-in-Chief. The list is endless.
Grzmlyk| 2.1.10 @ 1:27PM
I was about 14 when I read it and I didn't get it. It hadn't occurred to me that there was phoniness in the world. I lived in a WYSIWYG universe.
Then, from the time I was about 15 till I was about 25, I WAS Holden Caulfield - and I'm not proud of it. Angst was my constant companion, self-righteous indignation at the way the world works was my excuse for sullenness, petulance and ostentatious suffering.
Finally, I grew up. Well, for the most part. I still have a lot of bullshit to make up for.
I think Salinger misunderstood phoniness. We all play different roles in our everyday lives; this is the way society is organized, and there's nothing inherently phony about it.
However, today many on the left for whom Salinger is a touchstone don't recognize the irony of their affection for people like Obama (or Al Gore, or John Kerry, etc.) who are 100% phonies.
It is the phoniness that is a product of moral vanity and its twin sister "white guilt" that are so corrosive to our daily discourse (I CARE so much about our planet, but of course I'll still keep my SUV as long as you get rid of yours).
Yes, phoniness exists on the right, too - but it is its enshrinenent in the zeitgeist that has brought America to its knees.
I'm guessing if he were alive today, Holden would be a gas guzzling, CO2-spewing, mandatory recycling cheerleading, Green-jobs hectoring, Keynesian scold.
brutus6| 2.1.10 @ 4:31PM
Grzmlyk, haven't seen any of your thoughtful prose in a while. Welcome back.
Simon Templar| 2.2.10 @ 5:18PM
Grzmlyk, Your comments are always interesting to read and usually nail things right on the head. I would only add that this book had a tremendous influence on a generation that can not be understated. I too read it and remember how it was held up to be a masterpiece by liberal high school and college teachers. It really sums up the psychology of an entire generation. It went something like this...the grown up world is phony and corrupt so therefore there is really nothing to do but indulge myself because now I have justification and the false piety of somehow seeing myself as superior and therefore the right to do whatever I deem correct and acceptable. Thus, 58 million abortions, 5o percent divorce rate, billion dollar pornography business, 3 trillion dollars of failed mortgages, billions of consumer debt...and on and on...yeah...if it feels good do it.
Liberal Reader| 2.1.10 @ 2:03PM
Thornberry --
I think you make an (understandable) mistake here, taking Holden to be a spokesperson for Salinger, the author.
Nowhere does Salinger stipulate that the reader's sympathies must coincide with Holden's. Indeed, the novel's climax comes when Phoebe, Holden's kid sister (who seems years older than Holden), persuades Holden not to run away and to go home to face the music with their parents.
(By the way, where ARE Holden's parents? Part of this novel is not so much a celebration of Holden's "rebellion" as a critical look at the detached parenting style that leaves him very much alone in the world.)
Salinger gives us Phoebe, and Salinger also gives us a Holden who -- though prone to whininess -- recognizes his sister's wisdom.
Remember as well: there are really TWO Holdens. One is the narrator (who changes as he tells his story) and the other is the main character, who is considerably more intolerant and "whiny" than the narrator. We are allowed by the novel to see that while the story may go "nowhere" from a particular point of view -- sorry folks, this isn't an episode of 24 -- it is a time during which Holden makes a small step towards maturity.
Spinny| 2.1.10 @ 3:55PM
Oh please spare us your BS, Liberal Reader. Save your "crap rap" faux intellectual nonsense for some dopey, doggie liberal chick you're trying to pick up at an upper west side cocktail party. YOU BORE!
Liberal Reader| 2.1.10 @ 6:53PM
Spinny --
As usual your response is witty, substantial, erudite, and deeply informative. I particularly like the way you helped us gain more insight into literary texts than we might already have had. I also like the generosity of your response, your ability to entertain doubt in your own position that is the hallmark of an educated mind. And of course your sense of humor is, as always, a pleasurable accompaniment to the wisdom and learning you have to share!
Spinny| 2.2.10 @ 8:50AM
You prove my point. You are indeed a typical, insufferable liberal. No sense of humor and no ability to see the folly in your own obviously snobbish and self-satisfied demeanor. Additionally, you seem to need to advertise your supposed intellectual gifts , your refined and nuanced mind with a scolding and haughty tone while dropping words like "wisdom" and "insight". I would be willing to wager that you are, like most self-impressed liberals, nothing more than another mediocre mind masquerading as a person of true intellectual accomplishment and erudition (a word you like). You probably went to some decent school, got a degree in some "cream puff" major. Hung around a bunch of people of nominally-above-average-intelligence. Learned to sound "smart". Achieved reasonable grades. Found a decent job working for "the man" somewhere. But ultimately, have done nothing gutsy or original with your life. Seriously, you really should lighten-up, see the humor, if not the self-parody, in your own words. Oh, and try to find that doggie liberal chick with a "crit lit" degree. With your pseudo-intellectual "rap" and your towering self-regard, its the only way you're gonna get laid, man. Really, trying to wax eloquently on truly bad literature is no way to go through life, man. Peace!
zombyboy | 2.2.10 @ 5:52PM
LR, agreed.
I'd also note that throughout the story, we hear about the reason that HC is losing his marbles--and it's something that most people seem to ignore when they talk about the book. He's lost his brother Allie and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.
It's a story about a terrible grief and a boy too young to know what to do with the emotions and thoughts in his head.
And while it might not be a poetic presentation, the book brings the voice of Holden to life. It's a beautiful bit of writing.
Dean| 2.1.10 @ 2:06PM
Our class was assigned to read Catcher in the Rye in high school, but in my own adolscent rebellion I refused to do so. I recall my high school English classes as abysmal; they would have certainly killed one's desire to read if it weren't strong before enduring such classes. I treasure my personal library, which leans heavily toward military history. I am currently reading a book about the Civil War battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas.
John II| 2.1.10 @ 2:09PM
So anyway I was sitting there in the library waiting for Phoebe and I notice this book on the shelf next to the goddam water fountain or something, and it's got this title that really kills me. "Catcher in the Rye" or something. So I start reading it just to kill time until Phoebe gets there, but I can't get past the first couple pages--it's just all this phony Oliver Twist crap about some kid running into phonies all the time. No action. So I went next door and kept an eye out for Phoebe while I got into this pretty good video game. Lots of action.
Spinny| 2.1.10 @ 3:50PM
BRILLIANT POST! John II....you've totally NAILED the petulant stylistic tone of that low-brow piece of literary GARBAGE!.....very funny, Sir!
JD| 2.1.10 @ 2:53PM
I read "Cacther" in high school in the early 70s and even though I was an insufferable, whiny teenager even *I* hated Holden Caulfield, the tedious "style" of the narration and the almost complete lack of plot. Forced to write a book report on it I scrawled it in longhand on the morning of the Saturday before it was due, and popped it in the teacher's mailbox on the way to a family party with my folks. The paper was a very negative review written in a fair imitation of Holden's voice, down to the "goddamns", though mercifully much shorter than the book. I think I got an "A", which is a bigger joke than the paper was, and much funnier than anything in the novel.
The only worthwhile thing I read about Salinger's death was this bit in "The Onion", America's Paper of Record:
http://www.theonion.com/conten....._mourn_j_d
Regards,
JD
(Not Salinger)
Margie| 2.1.10 @ 3:31PM
I still remember some boy in school slyly telling me the "joke" of the meaning of the title of the book. "Catch her in the rye, get it?" Uh, yeah, sure..ha...ha. (Not impressed). I remember trying to read it decades ago but it couldn't hold my interest, not one iota.
Meanwhile, during Summer school one Summer, I will never forget the great Mr. Jasper, who turned me on to several of the authors of old. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Alan Poe, Brett Harte, and several others. Because of that interesting teacher, I got interested in Literature. Even Tolstoy, one of my favorites.
Pingback| 2.1.10 @ 4:25PM
Manhattan Adult Entertainment: Calling All Adults | All The News For Manhattan Escort links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Anne| 2.1.10 @ 4:39PM
I thought Holden was kind of whiny, but he's supposed to be. All teenagers go through the same sort of cynical, jaded phase, myself included, and so I thought he sounded like an authentic teenager. Or are all teenage characters in literature supposed to have the mindset and maturity of adults? Shall we slap a no-whining rule on fiction now?
John II| 2.1.10 @ 6:35PM
I think you missed part of the article, Anne. The point is, there's really no such thing as an "authentic teenager." Nor do real adults (or real people on the way to becoming adults) have "mindsets."
There ARE, however, authentic human beings depicted in great literature, including Huck Finn. Holden is not a particularly authentic character, but rather the tightly drawn emblem of a certain mild pathology peculiar to a certain era. "Catcher in the Rye" might serve as an illustrative text in a social history class (I know of at least one instance in which it did, and it's apparently treated that way by legions of high school teachers stuck with English classes they don't know how to teach), but it ain't literature.
How do I know all this? Well, partly because I'm a teacher who lives in a house full of books, but mostly because I helped raise a house full of kids, and not one of them went through a "cynical, jaded phase" between age 12 and 20. And I'm acquainted with many families whose parents, if asked about their kids' "phases," would have to shrug and report the same thing.
Liberal Reader| 2.1.10 @ 6:50PM
As a teacher perhaps you should entertain -- if only for one minute -- the possibility that Holden is not meant to be a "real" portrait of an "authentic" teenager anymore than Hemingway's "old man" is supposed to be a "real" portrait of an old man. They're NOVELS, man, not lectures or essays or policy white papers.
John II| 2.1.10 @ 8:16PM
Your incoherent contempt intermittently fascinates me, LR. But it passes quickly. (The fascination, I mean.)
Occam's Razor| 2.8.10 @ 7:37PM
Sorry, Anne. I was focused on getting into med school from age 14 on. I wasn't cynical nor jaded, nor am I cynical now about medicine, and I've lived a fascinating life (practiced in New Zealand among the Maori, in Alabama treating the Chain Gang, in Minnesota treating Ojibwe).
Holden was a twerp with all the advantages open to him which he blew.
michigander_sandusky| 2.1.10 @ 5:55PM
J.D. Salinger? Naw, give me someone who writes about real heros, perhaps Stephen K. Ambrose.
Andrew B| 2.1.10 @ 6:05PM
Somehow, my education completely excluded J.D. Salinger. I can't imagine why I never had to read his stuff, but somehow my wannabe hippy English teachers left if off the syllabus.
I think that is just as well, as my father was a huge proponent of the No Whining School of childrearing. If I had pulled the Holden Caulfield sort of mopey, self-indulgent crap, Dad would have left me in the woods to die. For which I am eternally grateful.
Liberal Reader| 2.1.10 @ 6:47PM
Some of you have speculated that Holden was a kind of liberal-in-training.
I don't know about that. One critic said he probably ended up homeless and derranged on the streets of LA. Who knows?
But here is why so many of you don't like him:
He did NOT grow up to be a good consumer.
He was NOT comfortable with the phony smile at the seller's counter that animates consumer capitalism.
He sought genuine human connections that are simply not available in market places. They are found in friendships, in the home, in the church, in the school -- but Salinger's novel does a great deal to show how these friendships are cheapened, deadened, and drained of their life-giving power by the inexorable power of capital and the heartlessness of markets.
It was this message that is the novel's hidden goldfish.
All of you KNOW somewhere inside yourselves -- if you can prevail on yourselves to turn down the Fox News for a few minutes -- that the alienation and lonesomeness of life cannot be remedied by profits or purchases, and the more power we give to markets, the more we are in their sway, the more difficult it is to find the human contact of the home, the church, the school, the friendship that we really need.
Lullaby's, Legends and Lies| 2.1.10 @ 8:04PM
Exactly Lib-R, you nailed it!! He was a Liberal in training, and that's why the book, sucked so bad.
You want to be able to cheer on the main character in a book, you don't want to be praying every page, that he gets run over by a car, just so you can get to get to the end of the story in a hurry. And I was praying for a car!!
F-Holden and the Catcher In The Rye, and that other force fed book from back then too, On The Road. Uggh!!
John II| 2.1.10 @ 8:10PM
As usual, LR, your uncanny wit, graceful expression, and depth of insight leave me without words with which to respond. Besides, who can refute a sneer?
JimE| 2.1.10 @ 10:12PM
LB,
More babbling jibberish fromHolden's former lover, did you two meet servicing drunken men in the bus stop toilet?
Bohred| 2.2.10 @ 4:43AM
LR,
You really need to reach down deep within yourself and pull your head out of your ass.
Spinny| 2.2.10 @ 8:57AM
DOES EVERYONE AGREE WITH ME THAT "LR" REALLY HAS TO LIGHTEN-UP AND GET A LIFE??
Simon Templar| 2.2.10 @ 5:35PM
The alienation and lonesomeness of life cannot be remedied by collectivization or socialistic ideals, and the more power we give to central planners and nanny statism, the more we are in their sway, the more difficult it is to find the human contact of the home, the church, the school, the friendship, the liberty, and self fufillment that we really need. I think this is a little closer to the truth...ya think?
zombyboy | 2.2.10 @ 5:57PM
And here's where I go back to disagreeing with you.
God, you're hard to like.
Occam's Razor| 2.8.10 @ 7:33PM
As a psychiatrist who works with the poor and indigenous, I can tell you that there is nothing ennobling or helpful about poverty. Capitalism enables pleasurable free time, which allows for useful hobbies and reading time. LR is a fool, but then again, he's a Liberal, so I repeat myself.
Liberal Reader| 2.1.10 @ 9:50PM
The "phoniness" that appalls and obsesses poor Holden is understandably a anxiety provoking quality of modern life for conservatives.
Conservatism -- modern conservatism -- is riven by a contradiction between its zealous and almost brainless celebration of consumption and market excess on the one hand and the solid, traditional, customary institutions of western culture: the home, the family, the church, the university, the public square, and so on.
The decent God-fearing impulse of the conservative is to join his conservative ancestors -- the conservatives (Burke, Johnson, Ruskin) who came into their own during the Industrial Revolution in England who were disgusted by mass culture and hypercapitalism. No true conservative is to be found revelling in Las Vegas with a bunch of tarts strutting up and down a stage, and everyone knows it is the BUSINESS of mass media that makes crass and cheap everything it touches.
John II| 2.1.10 @ 10:43PM
But LR: You seem to forget that all the great (relatively speaking) dystopian fiction of the 20th century (with the possible exception of the not-so-great "Space Merchants," but I'd have to think about that, and right-wing troglodytes like myself don't think, recollect?) I say, all the relatively great dystopian fiction is not about evil big business; it's about the degrading consequences of vast power assumed by big gum'mint: Orwell's "1984"; Zamyatin's "We"; Huxley's "Brave New World." To name the most obvious that you MIGHT be at least generally familiar with.
Of course, all these writers were of a soft-left persuasion like yourself, but they didn't seem so worried about evil markets as they did about evil central controllers with Messianic illusions and a distinctly preferential option for the violent enforcement of their illusions.
Boy, those were the good old days, when liberals really were liberal.
Today, of course, they're just ignorant snots with an errant sense of superiority over small businessmen like my sons. But I'll bet you all my retirement benefits, such as they are, that any one of my sons and my daughter could cite Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas in a way that would at least leave you speechless, if that's possible for so cultivated an ego.
Whenever I read one of your vacuous posts, LR, I am given greater confidence that I made the right choices in this brief life. Thank you for sharing.
David Sherman| 2.2.10 @ 12:11AM
For someone with a lifespan like J.D. Salinger's, you would think he would have at least the literary output of Robert B. Parker. Some have proudly hailed Catch in the Rye as their 'coming of age' novel. For my my money, nothing beats The Sea Wolf by Jack London as a coming of age novel.
Pingback| 2.2.10 @ 6:55AM
The American Spectator : Calling All Adults | EducatorsArea.Com links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Henry| 2.3.10 @ 3:09AM
This debate has freed me from a long held guilt. When I was a kid all my friends were debating “catcher”as though it was the latest in secret. I tried to read it, but couldn’t relate, and abandoned the book after a chapter or two. I was reading “Great Expectations”at the time, which still lives with me, especially the scene where Pip is so cruel to Joe in London.
At the time I was working waiting tables so that I could attend Medical School, and just didn’t understand what Holder was complaining about.
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Occam's Razor| 2.8.10 @ 7:29PM
When I took a freshman English course at TCU, a passage from Catcher in the Rye was being read by a coed. She started her discussion by saying, "what I think SHE (emphasis mine) meant was..." whereupon I interrupted by noting that the passage was from a male, and from Catcher. (the voice is distictive.) But, 30 years on, I'm wondering if "she" wouldn't be more appropriate. His tone is not all that masculine.
I've read Starship Troopers by Heinlein 50 times. I've not read Catcher again since I was a teenager.
explosion proof light | 11.15.10 @ 9:23AM
Actually, Abraham Lincoln was just as radical but in a different way. Ditto FDR.
Converse | 8.12.11 @ 4:20AM
is good