Catcher in the Rye

Holy shit. I just realized...he's the Michael Jackson of contemporary literaure, isn't he? (Which means Joyce Maynard = Emmanuel Lewis, right?)

Anyway you are all being way too hard on a good not great novel.

My friend Ranney teaches high school English and one of his extra-credit projects was a video interpretation of the book. The results were pretty hysterical--Catcher in the Hood, Enter the Dragon in the Rye, that sort of thing--and the students really loved the part with the teacher, turning it into a heavy seduction scene. One even had the teacher playing Barry White in the background, coming on to Holden in a kimono and offering a scotch on the rocks to loosen him up. It was downright upright.

oh, nevermind. I knew I was gonna hate this thread...

Thanks for sharing. I remember when I was like you.

Amazing that a thread on a www mentalist geek site, about this book, has elicited such a heavily negative response. In a way that may be admirable: better than being predictable and credulous.

Still, naturally I love it - just in the way that everyone does. Except it's now clear that 'everyone' doesn't.

-- but it's set in the *1940s* - the world of the book is really contemporary with, say, Cary Grant's peak years, Atlee / Cripps / Orwell's last years -- etc: an age before most of our conceptions of Alienated Youth really belong. (Caulfield wears a tie almost throughout.)

I think it's interesting that those who do like Catcher, like it a LOT, and feel that no one else understands it the way they do, and those who don't, hate it just as strongly. That could be the reason it's not quite part of the canon yet - we don't have this kind of love-hate complex over The Scarlet Letter, yknow?

Dillingham is about right, esp. re. the (maybe unhelpful) polarization of opinion.

Surely there need not be an either / or choice of Sympathy / Mockery. The book, or whatever it is we do while reading it, can accommodate both - alternately or simultaneously.

Strange - I never knew this ("authorial attitude to narrator") was a big debate re. CitR - it used to be the big debate re. JJ's Portrait of the Artist. The apparent impossibility of solving, or agreeing on, such apparently basic questions is not encouraging.

and it's so true, it's not that he doesn't have the opportunity to be part of society, it's that he's prejudging the people who would genuinely help him on a solid path

poor holden

The only human contact he could reach was with his little sister, who was too young to—to see that, she knew that he was in trouble, but she had no conception of—of what the anguish and trouble was

breaks my heart all over again

that's amazing, jd, thanks so much for posting - remember all of that faulkner stuff surfacing & had never got around to really exploring

http://i.imgur.com/Q8ZtzoM.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/7Z79d8Yj/IMG-1581.jpg

Street find
Kids these days, they don’t even read CIIR

I picked up Crying of Lot 49 at a Buy Nothing "free yard sale" today.

Is anyone assigning Catcher anymore? A few years ago, it came up in a conversation I was having with a Children's/YA lit scholar, who dismissed it with a "ugh," which makes me wonder how it is regarded these days.

15 years since he died, 6 years since his son said his unpublished stuff would be published, but still nothing. I wonder if we'll ever find out what he was writing during those 50 odd years of not publishing

It got an enthusiastic talking-up on Backlisted a few years ago, which made me curious to reread.

I wish I’d been assigned it at school, instead of Lord of the Files, or I’m The King of the Castle, or Mayor of Castebridge (twice)

Reread it right around the time Rushmore came out (reminded me of Catcher). Not pleasant.

Is anyone assigning Catcher anymore?

I would assume that it would be among the first to go in a book ban

I wish I’d been assigned it at school, instead of Lord of the Files, or I’m The King of the Castle, or Mayor of Castebridge (twice)

we did both lotf and catcher in the rye.

we did The Spire instead of Lord of The Flies, that is a very odd book to read aged 17.

Most of my high school English class despised it when we read it (early 90s). I remember it was far more readable than anything else on our reading list, probably because it was one of the few books set anywhere close to the present day. Everything we read seemed to be about war, even Catcher is probably a war story underneath.

reading about him and joyce maynard and the underage girls he fell for kinda ended any interest i had in him. taking joyce maynard to a doctor to have her hymen stretched so that they could have sex......ugggghhhh....also forcing her to give him oral sex.....later for you, dude.

https://www.bustle.com/p/what-writing-about-my-abusive-relationship-with-jd-salinger-taught-me-about-silencing-womens-voices-2951259

https://ccsalinger.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/j-d-salingers-women/

I have no interest in rereading it at this point in my life and no wish to defend Salinger the person, but I will say that first reading this at 14 when I was stuck without a car in the middle of cornfields was one of those keys unlocking a wider world for me.

(i did like that book when i was in high school because i liked the use of slang. i liked that kinda "real" talk in books back then whenever i came across it. which is why last exit to brooklyn kinda blew my mind when i discovered it. i didn't know that you could do that. it was definitely inspiring. augie march too. and then miller and celine. poetic slang. well-written slang. not just transcription. people think it would be easy to write a book like last exit and they have no idea how wrong they are. all people i no longer read by the way! but they left a mark for sure. if i could be a novelist though i would still want to be stanley elkin. he did it best for me. he got me high on it. he could be a better poet than a lot of poets.)

writing a coming-of-age novel that's adopted as canon is probably a pretty lucrative accomplishment... thinking of all the school libraries buying hundreds of copies of Catcher and Lord of the Flies, many of which are lost or destroyed so they need to keep ordering more

Add A Separate Peace to that list ^^^^^

Ugh, a Separate Peace

yeah i had to read all of these in high school. it was better than James Fenimore Cooper, whose stories were the most boring thing i had ever laid eyes on at the time, FU Natty Bumppo. i wouldn't be surprised if i have said this before on ILX bc i have been saying it for decades. hated those stories.

the contemporary fiction that stood out to me most in my hs assigned readings was Joyce Carol Oates' Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
worst award goes to some short story called R*pe Fantasies that i am scared to google but don't remember the author.

i wonder if anyone reads The Chocolate War anymore.

Do they teach Perks of Being a Wallflower in schools now? Haven't read the book, but I love the movie. Charlie's teacher lends him a copy of Catcher at one point.

watching this in school was always a treat. saw it more than once!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=387nRTNV964

Did Chocolate War in school also.

(that Owl Creek film was a unique one in the Twilight Zone canon, they basically licensed it and had nothing to do with the actual production)

We read Go Ask Alice in Grade 8. We read a completely fradulent book.

OMG that book is SUCH bullshit

I remember Flowers for Algernon being one of the better books I was forced to read back then

Never forget Charly!
Go Ask Alice and Sybil are two of the best fraudulent bestsellers

i loved go ask alice.

At 12, I did too, especially the film (and all the covers-I-didn't-know-were-covers of "White Rabbit" and "Dear Mr. Fantasty" and "It Ain't Easy"). And I was scared straight! (For the nex three years, anyway...)

the full Go Ask Alice movie is on YouTUbe

(I'd forgotten it has both William Shatner & Andy Griffith!)

We didn't get assigned Go Ask Alice but I definitely read it in the school library! Also Catch-22, which I was jealous that other classes got as assigned reading when I was stuck reading the Red Badge of Courage and the Sun Also Rises

we did I Am David by Anne Holm when I was about 14, and I absolutely hated it. I had been put down into the second lowest English set for never doing any homework or saying anything in class, and we covered a few pages every lesson, it seemed like an insult having to read something so simple.

not assigned in school, but this exploitation novel scared me when i was a kid. i just thought the cover was cool. it turns out being a pill-popper is so not cool!

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1247700748i/6618983.jpg

Ugh, a Separate Peace

A Separate Peace is a good queer YA novel. Americans seem to hate it, though: Bill Konigsberg even takes a subtle shot at it in his contemporary queer YA novel Openly Straight.

I revived this thread to chat more about set texts at school

Books You Had To Read At School

I don’t think you could pay me to revisit this book.

Saw a great T-shirt on the subway today: "i think i even miss that goddamn maurice," small type, all lower-case. Had to ask where the quote came from--oh yeah, that's right.

Bought this for my friend's 17-year-old daughter who hates everything. So some kind of self-defeating tautology (or something). Whether or not she ever gives it a try, who knows.

I missed my window for reading this. I only read it in middle-age, based on reputation, and my basic reaction was "Holden, you need to get a grip and get out of your head, kid."

A new friend from med school said "you must have really loved catcher in the rye as a teen", and I am still recovering from the burn

She was obviously right

(xxpost) Reread it right around the time Rushmore came out (reminded me of Catcher). Not pleasant.
― clemenza, Tuesday, 25 February 2025

I was 37 when Rushmore came out.

I think I bought it not entirely for the obvious reason, the hope that my friend's daughter would relate to Holden, but also that she might recoil a bit, and maybe see how she might appear to others at times.

Maybe I should reread this. I haven't been able to finish a novel in a few months, and I LOVE Catcher in the Rye.

Buy your friend's daughter The Bell Jar next.

I reread this last year - in my mid 30s - and liked it more than as a teen.

I've had Franny and Zooey on my mind to reread. Friend recently pointed out The Royal Tennenbaums was just Wes plagerising the Glass family minus the genuine spirituality