Catcher in the Rye?

[Mothernature]

I just finished reading Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salanger. Anyone care to discuss it? Is this book intended for adolescent readers? I tend to be gravitating toward books that appeal to a younger audience lately. I think I must have needed to read them but somehow missed out on them in H.S. So now I feel a need to go back and do the make up work. So, anyone who has read this book and cares to chat, what do you make of it? Is this a story written by a troubled teen being treated for depression in a mental institution? Do you think it goes deeper than that? Why do you think he hated to movies so much? Why do you think he was so put off by "phonies" all the while he made up lies and pretended to be interested in people that were a bore? What did you think of the ending?

[khrisday]

This is one of my favorite books of all time, but it has been a while since I have read it again.
I don't think the book was necessarily intended for younger audiences, but it certainly does strike a chord with them.
The viewpoint is that of a troubled teen in a psychiatric hospital, however the author was not. Does the story go deeper than that? yes, definately. I think it speaks not only of the angst of the young, but of humankind in general. I always thought that his hatred of the cinema was a bit of a refection of the authors own personal biases. J.D. Salinger refused to do any PR for his work, lived the life of a recluse, and was livid when one edition of Catcher was printed with a picture (of Holden) on the cover. Holden seems to be having such a difficult time navigating the social world, that cinema is just one mopre fake and confusing thing. It almost reflects what society as a whole looks like to him.

[Gemini]

I should read that book again! It's been at least 15 years since I read it last, but I do remember that I liked it.

[famousmockngbrd]

I remember reading it as a preteen and thinking it had nothing to do with my life. It was all about the angst of the priviliged class and etc. existential bs which seemed to me an indulgent exercise in navel-examining. Just MHO.

[MFuglei]

Jen that cracks me up!

I've tried to read Catcher in the Rye a bazillion times. Seriously - I've read nearly all of it half a dozen times but never ever have I finished it.

While to some Holden seems so wonderfully teenager-y and angsty, I find him annoying and I cared so little about him I couldn't finish the book.

So some 17 year old kid gets kicked out of prep school blah de blah blah. When I was 17, I wasn't sure if I'd have dinner each night or a roof over my head in a week. I didn't have time for angst. Perhaps you've struck upon why Holden annoys me so much. . .

[mammastar]

I remember reading it in junior high as an English assignment and finding it really irritating, pretty much for the same reasons already mentioned. Glad to know I'm not alone (although maybe I should revisit it sometime, you never know).

For the post-reading essay assignment, I wrote a rant about the fact that every stereotypically negative female character in the book was blond, which seemed rather statistically improbable, and what I thought about that (hint, guess what colour my hair is?). It cracked my English teacher up...I wonder if I still have it in a box somewhere -- ah, memories!

[sohj]

Ah, finally a discussion about a novel...

Well, Mothernature, thanks for starting a discussion on a novel that actually got picked up. (I'm one of those Luddites who doesn't watch TV, so I often find little on this forum to interest me...no snobbery here, just no knowledge of the topics .)

We were assigned Catcher in the Rye in 8th grade (1979) and, while many of my classmates seemed to really identify with the character(s) in the book (upper class all female private school in SF, a third of the class or more was a daughter in a family in the social register), I really just did NOT "get it". Still not sure why. Haven't reread the book, but still do remember it vividly.

At the time, I wondered if Salinger really remembered what it would be like to be a teenager or if he was projecting his fantasies of childhood as an easier/simpler time onto a character who was at the worst part of adolescence. I also wondered if I would be so screwed up when I was 17. Later, when I was 17, things were screwed up, but it sure didn't feel like I could assign the same reasons to it as Holden/Salinger did.

I also wonder, too, like you do, if it was intended for adolescent readers. I suspect not.

It seemed to be a novel about depression. And, in my experience, adolescence can have a lot of depressed periods. I wonder if it is a function of the raging hormones, or something more "zeitgeist"-related.

I also wondered if it was more applicable to or approachable by young men rather than young women. I've got no personal reference point to judge THAT one by!:

And, as famousmockngbrd and MFuglei mentioned, the social class issue seemed a bit hard for me to get over. And I'm partly a product of that environment (and labor unions and a lot of other complicated things) but I, like many of my classmates, frankly, was aware that I moved in a priviledged world and that the rest of the world was different. I did have trouble accepting it as "the great american teenage novel". Personally, I think I vote for S E Hinton's The Outsiders as that: . But, then again, this is a complicated country and I don't know if there really could ever be a definitive choice for that.

So, what did YOU think of the ending?

[Mothernature]

I like the way the discussion is going so far. Many of my impressions of the novel are being explored. I did not come from a family of priviledge either. Unlike the others however, I find Holden's character compelling. I can't imagine having so little interaction with my family. The whole boarding school concept twists my noggin. At a time in their lives when kids need the most guidance, parents pack them up and send them off to school to figure it out for themselves.?: I also felt like the grief he experienced from losing a sibling so young was not adequately addressed by his family. To me that was a turning point for the Character.

OT"I think I vote for S E Hinton's The Outsiders as that ." I just had to add that S E Hinton is a family friend and her movie was filmed here. I got to meet some of the cuties who starred in it (I was in elementary school.)

[sohj]

I've seen a lot of people who have just as little or less interaction with their families as Holden has with his in the novel. I don't think that is limited to people who are sent to boarding school, either. I've seen that across all the social and class boundaries.

warning -- off topic tangent: Perhaps the idea of boarding school is hard to fathom for some; but, I went to one am certain that students there are not left "to figure it out for themselves." Many girls at my high school got, I think, more attention from the house parents, teachers (most of whom lived on campus), and various deans/advisors/administrators than they ever did at home. Maybe that is a sad commentary on their families; however, I think that boarding school is a great idea for many people. For me, it was a place of very strict rules .... THAT NEVER CHANGED! They were all written down! You knew (if you had bothered to read the rule book) what they were. There were specific punishments that you would incur if you broke the rules. And, you lived where you "worked", so to speak. You didn't have to depend on a parent to get you somewhere. If you wanted to play a team sport and needed to be at practice for two hours a day then get your homework done, you could, because you didn't have the commute time back home to deal with. At some point, some things have to be figured out by a kid. Better sooner rather than later and having a chance to do it without having a claustrophobia-inducing parent around (or, rather, the perception of such by the teen) while still being in a safe space is not a terrible thing.


Anyhow, back on topic. Yes, I think you're right about the grief issue. His family was fairly closed down anyhow and couldn't acknowledge their own grief and, obviously couldn't see it in anyone else, either.

Once upon a time, I did hear an interesting interpretation from someone (years ago, and the person was a good deal older than I): Holden's passivity and total out-of-touchness with himself or the rest of the people around him was a metaphor for the state of the people of the US in the post-WWII era who had convinced themselves that everything was now OK because we had "won" the war and were having such a long period of prosperity; but, everyone was uneasy at some subconscious or unconscious level because they were ignoring the damage being done to our society by the loss of civil liberties during the cold war and because they were ignoring the huge inequities in the world that were ongoing despite the "vanquishing" of the "forces of evil" (ie: Hitler and Mussolini). And Holden's family didn't want to acknowledge his angst because he was bringing up those things that frightened them the most. Just as the US "mainistream" culture would marginalise anyone who said "Hey, look! There's a problem there!"

[annakiss]

I just read this book again a few weeks ago. I still love it. I always identified with Holden even though I wasn't rich and am not a guy. This time around, I was quite irritated at the way female characters were treated, but I can also understand that it wasn't about them anyway. My favorite female character is Phoebe and she was just a really cool kid with a lot of spunk who was simply brilliant and not bogged down by adolescent confusion the way that Holden was. The reason the book was so loved was that for once, a teenager was depicted honestly. The writing is so dead on without being pretentious. I find all of J.D. Salinger's work to be like this, which is why I love him even if he hides out in New Hampshire in the woods. There's a great investigation of the book in "Six Degrees of Separation" (either the film or the play). They talk a lot about the book being about paralysis. I can't remember exactly what they say at the moment, but I know that there's a dissection about the fact that Holden is so disgusted by "phonies" and yet lies all the time. I wish I were articulate at the moment...

[ainsleyx]

Annakiss, ITA with your entire post. I have loved the character "Phoebe" for so long, that I named my 10 yr old DD that too.