J. D. Salinger

[RUI]

Without going into all that David Copperfield kind of crap, I first read Catcher in the Rye back in 1984 and no other book had ever had such a strong effect on me. I was 17 and had to read it for my high school/secondary school English final exam but was postponing the assignment because, well, I was a teenager, life was full of many other much more interesting things to do and, furthermore, the book was in English and reading it seemed a near impossible task at the time. But then I picked it up and (with the help of an OALD) got immediately hooked by Holden’s (Salinger’s) prose. This guy was just too real to be true! I didn’t go much to classes so I knew nothing about the author and the novel; I didn’t have any Cliff’s Notes or anything and I’m glad because even though I missed many of the hidden and deeper meanings of the novel I had a much truer and innocent experience. To me, literature wise (and then some), life after HC began that month of May.

I read Catcher in the Rye many times after that and studied it in depth at university and, yes, I’m aware of all the (bogus) conspiracy theories that got stuck to it. It makes me really sad – and mad – that now that Salinger died what you read about is Chapman and the Lennon murder…

I don’t want to sound corny or phony (two words I first learned in the novel); I guess Salinger was at peace in his reclusion for many years now, as much as a writer like him could be at peace in this world. I’ll just pick up his masterpiece and read it one more time – it is still as definite now as it was 60 years ago.

 

[hambone8611]

I have been meaning to read the catcher and the rye for years it is sad that it took his death to cause me to commit to doing so right after this currant book.

 

[Pupik]

Catcher in the Rye was enjoyable as a 17 year-old, terrible to re-read as a 27-year-old.

 

[Blitz187]

Catcher in the Rye was enjoyable as a 17 year-old, terrible to re-read as a 27-year-old.

I am going to have to agree... with this statement.

 

[Omnis]

Wasn't he working on some other book? I wonder if he finished.

 

[Duke]

Catcher in the Rye was enjoyable as a 17 year-old, terrible to re-read as a 27-year-old.

I am going to have to agree... with this statement.

I'm not going to agree. I couldn't even stand it when I was 17. The entire time, all I could think to say to Holden Caufield was "shut UP, you whiny punk!" The entire miserable experience could have been avoided if his fictional parents had spanked him a few times when he was 7.

 

[Blitz187]

I'm not going to agree. I couldn't even stand it when I was 17. The entire time, all I could think to say to Holden Caufield was "shut UP, you whiny punk!" The entire miserable experience could have been avoided if his fictional parents had spanked him a few times when he was 7.

Yes that too.. But I guess I enjoyed it when I was 16 or 17 because I was more naive and innocent back then.... I re-read it at later age and I just didnt like it at all and wondered how I could like it in the first place... Its kind of like if I watch an old Jean-Claude van Damme movie, say Bloodsport or Kickboxer.... When I was little I loved those movies and thought they were awesome... now if I happen to catch one on TV I dont understand how I couldve liked that crap AT ALL...

 

[Omnis]

The only thing cool about Catcher in the Rye is how it influenced the development of the laughing man in Ghost In The Shell S.A.C.

 

[RUI]

Reading your comments I have to say that I really hope people realize that it’s perfectly possible and reasonable to like a novel (or a movie, for that matter) without liking or agreeing with its main character’s views and opinions. On the surface CitR may be a bildungsroman – although, because Holden doesn’t really come-of-age, a sort of frustrating one – yet the novel is most notable in my opinion for proposing a non-conformist attitude towards the establishment, something even more remarkable when we take into account that it was written at the beginning of a conformist decade like the 1950’s. It’ also a novel about the loss of the purity (and the liberty) of the original American dream. Holden carries that burden on his shoulders like a martyr and he obviously succumbs to it. Who wouldn’t? And who like him would resist the appeal of sex and capitalism? Not me, and not many of you, I can see. Yet I hate unanimity and so I’m sort of thankful for every Holden character out there.

 

[YSSMAN]

I've had Catcher sitting on my shelf for nearly a decade since I last read it, and I'm tempted to go back. I really enjoyed the book when I was a Sophomore in High School, despite not fully understanding everything that Sallinger was talking about. Everyone loved it or hated it, and I haven't done enough reading of his work to have a totally legitimate opinion.


Howard Zinn died yesterday too. He was one of my favorite (crazy) historians.

 

[RonPrice]

Many writers, artists, poets, people in the world of culture and the arts, go into seclusion after their early successes. In a radio program today, Arts Today, two such writers were mentioned: J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon. Others go into seclusion later in their careers. It is part of a general pattern which the historian Arnold Toynbee calls "withdrawal-and-return." Others call the axis along which specific changes or rhythms take place 'approach-and-separation.' Sometimes the artist will withdraw and never return. Sometimes he will return or approach in a more moderate way than he had originally. I have, recently, withdrawn or separated from quite an intense milieux of employment and community work and I have returned in a moderate way. Various factors predisposed me to go inward by the last years of my middle age, the years 55 to 60. This process of a withdrawal into solitude is hardly observable except to friends and relatives with whom one has some close connection by birth, by marriage or by lengthy association. In the case of J. D. Salinger it was observable because he had become a famous writer and the world wanted contact with a person who had become by degrees a recluse. Insight comes from an inner gestation, a Socratic wisdom associated with knowing yourself, a personal growth. Such was the view of Salinger. For Salinger this social reversal brought drama, change, intensification and new landmarks on a personal quest. It was a personal quest which ended today. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 29 March 2001 and updated on the day of Salinfer’s death: 30/1/’10.

Shocking public events
have inspired this poetic,
catastrophic happenings
to someone born in 1944,
to someone who tried to
find the Kingdom come
with power and has now
seen nearly half a century
of its slow establishment
around this global world.

Here are enough themes
to occupy time, energy &
the genius of a dozen men:
historians, sociologists and
philosophers—an inspiration
from another realm, a most
wonderful and thrilling motion,
fifty years of it, drying out my
intellectual eyes with a series of
barren fields and psychically
winding my mind with a new
fertility that surpassed all that
I had experienced in life, filled
my days with a revivifying breath
or I would have died in a wasteland
without a wimper amidst stony rubbish.(1)

(1) T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland, line 19.

Ron Price
30 March 2001
updated: 30/1/’10

 

[mazdaman]

I read Catcher in the rye freshman year of highschool and loved it!

 

[Duke]

Yet I hate unanimity and so I’m sort of thankful for every Holden character out there.

But Holden never actually thinks for himself or grows - all he does is reject the status quo for no other reason than that it is the status quo. That over-romanticized "rebel without a clue" attitude is just as stupid as unthinking conformity.

 

[RUI]

I’d say that in his quest for authenticity versus phoniness – something he sees only in the innocent children – he does learn to “let go”, thus understanding that the fall is unavoidable, that it’s the nature of things, and that no one really needs a catcher in the rye.

 

[Pupik]

But Holden never actually thinks for himself or grows - all he does is reject the status quo for no other reason than that it is the status quo. That over-romanticized "rebel without a clue" attitude is just as stupid as unthinking conformity.

Compared to most of the dry-as-dust stuff that we had to read in public schools, it was a bit of a welcome change, from the personal perspective of a middle-class teenager form the suburbs who'd rather read Autocourse and CAR magazine and watch Hollywood's relentless barrage of action movies, than try to dissect the Scarlet Letter (or at least, be told how and why to dissect it). Obviously, I hated nearly every reading assignment that took more than a week. Assigned reading for fun was a rarity for school (although a number of short stories were still of interest).

Re-reading Catcher in the Rye again took me about 5 years, and I hated nearly every minute of it, for which I'd tried hard to enjoy it once more. Yeah, you grow up sometimes, and you outgrow your ways of thinking. I hated it simply because I, even in my darkest of hours and days, was never quite the self-hating animal that Holden Caulfield was. He hated everything, and that's both funny and pitiful once, but not repeatable, unless you're in serious need of Paxil. I'd hardly been on much of a quest for total independence at the time I'd first read it, and by the time I'd been there and visited it several times, I couldn't go back to feeling like Holden did.