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So, J.D. Salinger died today. I saw a comment on an online article about his death and works where the commenter basically said that they hope no one ever gets movie rights to "The Catcher in the Rye," because it just wouldn't work in any format other than the book.

I read "The Catcher in the Rye" in high school and I absolutely hated it. So, my reasonings for not wanting anyone to get the movie rights are just a bit different. I thought that book, like so many others we were assigned, were just dreadful and depressing. Really, those books could teach some new tricks to emo song writers.

Did anyone else out there hate it as much as me? Did anyone else out there love it? Did anyone else just not work up that much of an emotional commitment to hate it or love it?

Me, and that was three readings, high school, college and grad school.  The original emo HC was just a whining creep.  Though JDS was pretty much straight on the beam with what can only be seen as amazing prescience as to how society was changing, and what the end effect of that would be.

I don't know about movie rights, though I suppose that who ever inherits the estate is going to have a lot harder time turning that money down than he did.  And - for the record - JDS was not a 'recluse' like the press says, he just didn't do interviews, did not do media, and didn't want to lecture college courses (filled with hundreds of little HCs) but he was married several times - at least twice - and had friends and all that.  He just didn't want to spend the rest of his life explaining what he had written.  And, given the people, like Mark David Chapman who worshiped that book, I would not want to meet them either.

Though I would be very interested in reading the 15 manuscripts he allegedly has written but never published.

Quote from: Shades O'Grey on January 28, 2010, 06:23:57 PM
I read "The Catcher in the Rye" in high school and I absolutely hated it.

Me too, and what a relief to finally meet someone who agrees.

What really bugs me about this book is that so many will sit around talking about what a good book it is, how well written, how life changing.

If you offer even one speck of criticism, they nod knowingly at eash other and dismiss you because they say you don't understand it.

I understand it fine. It's crap.

I read it in HS, and it was boring.  Plus it was required reading.  But I reread it a few years later and enjoyed it.

Hmmm..

Call me crazy, but I completely adored Catcher in the Rye, in fact it was my favorite book for a long, long time.  I read all of his other short story collections and loved all of them as well.  The stories he wrote about the Glass family were absolutely great.  You may want to look into them if you liked the movie The Royal Tenenbaums, which I feel was based on the Glass family.

I really wish Salinger would have written more novels.

Although, thinking back on the type of character Holden was, I do wonder if I would enjoy Catcher in the Rye now because my tastes have changed a lot since I read it.  I can't stand depressing stories anymore and I don't like anti-heroes either.

I really wish Salinger would have written more novels

He did, or fiction short stories, we don't know about most of them, he just never published them.

see:
http://www.deadcaulfields.com/Unpublished.html (http://www.deadcaulfields.com/Unpublished.html)

I liked Catcher in the Rye.
Of course it has some of the failings of any juvenile literature.
I thought a lot of it was believably written and some wasn't.
I like that it brought out the whole uncertainty of becoming an adult.

Very interesting!  I'm not sure that any of those were full-length novels, but I'd love to read them just the same.

Salinger was so enigmatic, you really wonder what all we'll find out about now that he's gone. 

Quote from: Jen on January 28, 2010, 07:47:22 PM
Hmmm..

Call me crazy, but I completely adored Catcher in the Rye, in fact it was my favorite book for a long, long time . . . Although, thinking back on the type of character Holden was, I do wonder if I would enjoy Catcher in the Rye now because my tastes have changed a lot since I read it.

It's a very Romantic novel written primarily for an adult audience. Toward the end Holden passes the catcher duty to 'lil sister Phoebe; ya think *just like him* she might be more suitably equipped to better "cope" too? lol ;D

There's so much truth in this disaffected novel of youthful alienation and rebellion that rings just as clear today as 50 yrs ago; indeed the recurring themes in Western Literature can be traced as far back as Molière & Roussau and aptly demonstrate just how little "modern societal" attitudes have emotionally progressed in the last 400 years!

I loved CitR, and was extremely happy to see Ghost in the Shell mention it.

I have a Laughing Man hat (among other GitS memoribilia), I liked it so much. Maybe because on some levels I identify with that book.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article7008061.ece (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article7008061.ece)

Yay for hope!  I'm excited...

I guess a thousand page, single spaced, 10 point type apology for ever unleashing Holden on the rest of us would be too much to hope for.

No, I bet we get - was it Marcel Proust - who wanted everything burned when he died, only to have it published and having decades of English Majors curse his relatives for not carrying out his wishes?

OK, if were going to play Bullwinkle's Poetry Corner here, I'll give my totally objective analysis of CitR.

There were two super selling, must read anti-hero stories written in the 50s,  CitR, and On the Road.  Both were written about the same time, and about the same subject (life in the late 1940s, Post-War America - from the standpoints of people who had not been in 'the war'), though OtR was published about 6/9 years later.^*  Though both would gain great (and almost totally undeserved popularity) in the 60s and 70s as portrayals of the Great American Anti-Hero, they could not be more different.

One, was written by a gifted rule follower, who dotted every 'i' crossed every 't' and couldn't tell a story if his life depended on it.  The other a long, rambling disjointed tale that is perhaps the most awesome massacre of the formal English language ever, but one hell of a story with people (most of them real) that you really want to believe in.  One, CitR, is written in the first person, and comes across as a whiny and sniveling screed, the other, written with pseudonyms and in a more literary style created a character (Dean Moriarty) a the holy con-man with the shining mind who in real life, as Neil Cassidy, was even more awesome than the book paints him as being.

Both deal with 'alienation' but the effects of that alienation is so totally different that its hard to believe that the results have the same roots.  Where HC is born and bred into society that he feels does not 'accept him' DM is none of that.  Both reject societies conventions, but DM takes that bull by the horns and says 'well, screw them,' and then goes on to screw everything that moved, including Sal if I remember right.  Poor HC, buys a hooker and only bores her into charging him twice as much NOT to have sex with him as she would have had he just got his rocks off.  Talk about pathetic.  Yeesh.

Where one group, OtR, sees opportunity in that rejection of social norms, the other person, HC, sees belonging as critical.  DM understands what the norms are, and how exactly he is rejecting them, and what the price and payoff for that is, the other wants the freedom to reject, but would deny that same freedom to others who might reject him for making those choices.  In so doing, HC has neither.

And he never will.

Because HC is the very definition of a solipsistic inner life lived by and only for the self.  Oh I'm so lonely, Oh I'm so rejected, Oh I'm so miserable - no one will ever understand me.  Boo Hoo.   

DM creates community as he goes.  Sometimes for a night, sometimes for a week or two, sometimes for beyond his life.  DM, in real life as Cassidy, is a pretty central force in the creation of the counter-culture as we know it, HC can't create anything beyond himself, because to HC there is nothing beyond himself.

One is a kind of Holy Grail for losers, the other is manifesto and how-to book for rebels.  Given that, it's an easy choice.




* - depends on which time line as to the writing of OtR you want to take, there are several.

I don't think Holden was meant to be an inspiration or example of how one should try to live, but rather just a depiction of a realistic person dealing with their own self-destructive nature.

I remember liking the book as a very good char driven story- disliking Holden for many of the things he did, but feeling sorry for him anyway.

It probably resonated so strongly with me because a lot of his issues with society were similar to my own, especially when I read it.  I could identify with him on some levels, especially when he was in an introspective mode.

I think you are right Jen, and that alone explains the 'recluse' nature of old JD in his life.  Given the people who 'resonate' with that book, I sure would not want to meet with them either.  I think - and it's only my thought - that he wrote it, not as a hero story, but as a cautionary tale, but so, so, so many people took it wrong.

I too was affected by the book when I read it as a teenager.  It has a message that a certain amount of rebellion can lead to a different perspective on life, and I think that is a healthy message for youth.  Obviously unbalanced people who read it are going to be affected differently than most of us.  But the book is a classic!

But the book is a classic!

So is Mein Kampf, that does not recommend it.  Really, be Dean, not Holden.

Quote from: Virginia87106 on January 29, 2010, 07:03:38 PM
Obviously unbalanced people who read it are going to be affected differently than most of us. 

That explains it. That's me to a tee!! :D

And....

Mark David Chapman, who shot John Lennon, when apprehended, had a copy of CitR in his pocket.  Matter of fact, after killing John Lennon, Chapman dropped the gun and proceeded to take out a copy The Catcher in the Rye, and calmly started reading, while waiting for the police to arrive.

Better yet, when asked why he killed Lennon, Chapman replied "If you want to know why I murdered John Lennon, read The Catcher in the Rye."

John W Hinckley, Jr., who shot Ronald Reagan so that Jodi Foster would love him forever?  When the police entered his apartment later that day, what book was on the table?  Do you have to guess?  The Catcher in Rye.

It was also linked to the Boston Stranger, and the Son of Sam.  Again, why would the author of that book ever want to meet with anyone who liked it?

9 out of 10 serial killers love that book.

There are 18,000 hits for "catcher in the rye serial killers' on Google.  So I'm not alone in thinking that.

And there are 97,400 for serial killer cookbook.

Oh my god, stop eating food right now. Everyone, STOP EATING FOOD.

Go cold turkey? :P

I absolutely hated Catcher in the Rye. Maybe I was too old for it. I read it mostly because I knew a girl who absolutely loved it, and also because it figures strongly in Six Degrees of Separation, which is a pretty wonderful play. (In the play, the connection with serial killers and other sociopaths is noted.) But, wow, what dreadfully dreary writing, and what utter solipsism and pointless despair. Holden is probably the most aggressively uncompelling figure in all of literature.

Now, On The Road -- that's just one of the most wonderful manic trainwrecks ever to be jammed between two pieces of cardboard and put on a library shelf! It's a terrible piece of writing, and every character is more or less a basketcase and an aimless bum. 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. The book spoke to me when I read it at age twenty or so, and it was awful to think that the overgrown adolescents portrayed in that book were ten years older than I was. I thought surely I would have some better handle on my life by the time I turned thirty. So much for that theory.

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.

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~

Quote from: Iolanthe on March 24, 2010, 10:55:09 PM
... insipid, sub-literate, brain-dead YA rubbish ...

May I suggest then:

MTF Juvenile Fiction
Almost Perfect (2009) - Brian Katcher * Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385736649) * WorldCat (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/258767483)
Luna (2004) - Julie Anne Peters * Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316011274) * WorldCat (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53880041)

FTM Juvenile Fiction
Parrotfish (2007) - Ellen Wittlinger * Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416916229) * WorldCat (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/69020860)

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.

Quote from: tekla on March 25, 2010, 08:25:09 AM
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~

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

Quote from: tekla on March 25, 2010, 08:51:51 AM
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.   (https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webdifference.com%2Femoticons%2Fdracula.png&hash=2b2480e8d1a7e8bdf101112619dddb4a21118795)

~Lannie~

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.

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. 

Maybe people weren't as jaded in 1951

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

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

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

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