Catcher in the Rye

oops, em! i didn't mean you put me to sleep like hawthorne (or rambled like faulkner :( :() i meant melville reminded me of him.

Oh LOL. Well, I've been told that before so I guess I assumed. Yeah, I agree with you there too. Seems like another case of critics stamping something wordy with an "A+" because they're afraid they don't understand it -- Emperor's New Clothes complex.

Wow, looking at GMT it is pretty early, 4 AM. Wow. Anyway, I would like to say that everything about that books seems to be a statement of F-U to society. maybe Im wrong, but the language may be an outlet for that rebellion. There was, if I remember correctly, alot of controversy over the book, so maybe that was the purpose. Oh yeah, and Im 18, but at sixteen I was nothing like Holdon (or however you spell his name) was. Or 17. And I like the idea of illiterate brits. Its encouraging when you live in a land of people who worship literary greats like Eminem and Tupac and Slipknot... *sarcasm*

ah, but there are american brits who like tupac.
but they may also appreciate brautigan, tolstoy, twain (because of his wit and the shared b-day) and a host of others.

ROFLMAO you are, as Kik once said, "a little bitty drunked," aren't you az? :D

if i drank i would be. i get punchy this time o' night for some reason. :D

LOL. It's quarter of midnight here. My brain's just beginning to wake up -- I won't be punchy till at least 5am. :D

me too! and usually wide awake until 3 :D but tonight am sort of foggy brained. :eek:

Fayefaye... I had no idea you were my age... I imagined you in college already.

anyways.. yeah, like I'm like in uh... High school man, and I'm like 17, and I, dude ya know have a uh... whaddyacallit ... big vocabulary, man uheh heh heh....

seriously... I know big words... antidisenstablishmentarianism.... SO THERE HA!!!!

:-D I do admit that about 50% of my classmate's creative writing starts out with "it was a dark and stormy night" or "I felt scared as I walked into the gloomy house" ... but to bash our collective vocabulary is to insult your future employers.... ... ... ... it must be getting late or something so.... one more big word.... Hunnuhhunnanakua. yeah... I can't spell... but thats some sort of Hawaiian fish we had to learn about.

Fool, at least PRETEND to be articulate. :)

A huge proportion of my peers are somewhat ... *cough* WELL..... But that still doesn't justify the statement 'it's ok.... sixteen year old's vocabulary. They're all pretty dumb'

Is that what this was all about? I wasn't quite following. Why does Holden have to be an example of one of the articulate ones? It doesn't mean he was supposed to represent the best and the brightest, or even the norm. Just one individual teenager, who I guess happened to have less-than-stellar communication skills.

What's interesting is when it works the other way-people assume that if you use big words you're pretentious. I nearly wiped out 'prima facie' from an essay because I didn't want to come across as grandiloquent, and took 'elucidate' out for the same reason. And then you see people who use words all the time just to sound smart... it's kinda funny.

*smiling at use of word 'grandiloquent' in a post about wordiness*

wait a second... I use words!! :eek:

Simple... he's a dude feeling insecure. Imagine that, an insecure teenager. Freud might say a simple security blanket complex. Red hat = feel more stable sexually. It's like that in all he does. Trying to prove himself to the world as well as to the reader. He doesn't have it all together, and the beauty of the book is... who does?

I got it! the red hat means he is gay! he is expressing it through the bright, inappropriate colour and style of his hat.

j/k

seriously though, there is nothing like highschool english classes to destroy good books and make you hate them forever, or until you get older and start to appreciate them a little more. I just despise overanalyises. How many times has Lord of the Rings been analysed, when its basically just a great story?

I know this thread seems a bit on the dead side, but i really didnt want to start a new one...

Anyway, I've just read catcher in the rye, after a friiend got it for my birthday. First thing my dad said when he saw it was "great book to slit your wrists to".

I think I missed something, because I didnt find it depressing at all. He's just an average, whiney, arrogant teenager, who can't accept responsibility. He observes the world with one eye shut - unable to see that theres other angles to actions, and never seems to consider his own actions or longer consequences. I have no sympathy for him, and I would put his acting at 13 rather than 16. The events etc. arent depressing, they're just BORING.

(I write this as an eighteen year old, if you're wondering)