J.D. Salinger and "The Catcher in the Rye"

[tekla]

Dean Moriarty screws over Sal Paradise at every turn, but he does it with such soul and life that you can't help but love the bastard.

Not only that but Sal (Jack Kerouac) goes on to write the very book that makes Dean a hero for doing that.  Kinda awesome in a sick kind of way, but that was Cassidy, reckless in everything and something not quite realist, but not really a romantic either.

[Iolanthe]

Even with its considerable flaws, The Catcher in the Rye is still a million light years above the insipid, sub-literate, brain-dead YA rubbish that's sucking the vitality out of American literature like a sea lamprey on a pickerel.

~Lannie~

[Renate]

... insipid, sub-literate, brain-dead YA rubbish ...

May I suggest then:

MTF Juvenile Fiction
Almost Perfect (2009) - Brian Katcher * Amazon * WorldCat
Luna (2004) - Julie Anne Peters * Amazon * WorldCat

FTM Juvenile Fiction
Parrotfish (2007) - Ellen Wittlinger * Amazon * WorldCat

[tekla]

I'm pretty sure that even though CitR was written about young adults, sort of. . .  it was not exactly written to be a juvenile fiction book.

[Iolanthe]

I'm pretty sure that even though CitR was written about young adults, sort of. . .  it was not exactly written to be a juvenile fiction book.

I concur. Neither was Lord of the Flies, Captains Courageous, or even Huckleberry Finn, classics all.

In my (doubtless curmudgeonly) view, the current "YA" genre designation hints at intentionally-dumbed-down plot, prose, and characters, so as to be more easily accessible to marginally-literate teenagers.

And what's with the vampire obsession? 

~Lannie~

[tekla]

Yeah, that Vampire deal sucks, except for Bram Stoker.

[Iolanthe]

Yeah, that Vampire deal sucks, except for Bram Stoker.

Indeed. Although, as I dimly recall, Salem's Lot wasn't bad, if not one of SK's best.   

~Lannie~

[Alyssa M.]

I read CitR as an adult, and found it terribly painful read, not in the emotional sense but in the "God, when does this get better" sense. I've read Huck Finn about half a dozen times, the first time when I was about eleven or twelve, and it just doesn't get old. Bram Stoker -- I read his little collection of journal entries and memoranda in Jr. High and it still sticks with me.

It depends on what you mean by "YA" fiction. I think "YA" ends sometime in junior high. Madeleine L'Engle's great, but I would hope that by high school one's reading level would have advanced to Shakespeare and Hawthorne and Dickens and Austen and Hemingway and Faulkner (with a healthy dose of trash for cheap thrills -- Elmore Leonard, Nora Roberts, Stephen King, etc.). In other words, adult.

CitR is definitely at an "adult" level, but with subject matter only a surly adolescent could love.

[Jamie-o]

I got strong-armed into reading it by a teacher I didn't have much respect for, so that may have biased me against it from the beginning, but yeah, I hated it too.  300 pages of some stupid kid making life difficult for himself and whining about it.     One of the biggest wastes of paper ever written, in my opinion. 

Maybe people weren't as jaded in 1951 when it came out, so it seemed more avant-garde at the time?  Like a number of other modern classics.  The sort of thing that was revelatory at the time but now comes across as being completely predictable - the sort of thing that makes you slap your head and say, well ... DUH!

And as for the YA argument - It's like pop music.  Yes, a lot of it is designed to be highly digestible, and completely disposable fun.  But some of it is actually very well crafted, and has depth that it usually doesn't get credit for. 

[tekla]

Maybe people weren't as jaded in 1951

If you would even think about writing that, then you don't even have a clue.

[Jamie-o]

You're right, I don't.  It's well before my time.  Please enlighten me.

[tekla]

Nah, that would be missing the point of On The Road, which is you have to find your own enlightenment.

[Mr.Rainey]

I liked it but then again I am as jaded as Holden.