Catcher in the Rye

[mayneverhave]

In the past, I've linked The Catcher in the Rye with other 1950's "angry-young-men" works like John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" and the film "Rebel Without a Cause".

[Mag Master 21]

I'd say it's pretty timeless and not necessarily indicative of a certain decade in American history.

[bounty]

Hey

I'm currently writing an essay on 'The Catcher in the Rye' and how it realistically (or unrealistically) portrays the time period in which it was set (1940's).

What are your views on the subject? Is it a useful narrative in studying this period of America history in terms of culture and society or is it shrouded by Holdens pessimistic view of the world?

aysim i agree with the last poster that holden is more or less a timeless character and that the book itself is not indicative of any particular period in our history. at the same time, id add, i think the book is terribly over-rated, the main character has little or no redeeming values, and the author's writing is tediously repetitive. every legitimate chance i get i criticize the book---if anyone can enlighten me as to how this book deserves the status it apparently has, id be happy to hear the argument.

[JoeLopp]

bounty, it may be due to the first cultural appearance of a youth wearing his ball cap backwards ...?

[Mag Master 21]

aysim i agree with the last poster that holden is more or less a timeless character and that the book itself is not indicative of any particular period in our history. at the same time, id add, i think the book is terribly over-rated, the main character has little or no redeeming values, and the author's writing is tediously repetitive. every legitimate chance i get i criticize the book---if anyone can enlighten me as to how this book deserves the status it apparently has, id be happy to hear the argument.

It either speaks to you or it doesn't. When you read a passage or a play or a poem or a novel or whatever written word appears in front of you, it either clicks and you become one with the words, following every syllable with eagerness to reach the next... or it falls flat, and you find yourself going through the motions with the hope of moving onto something with more pull.

What does this mean in the end? There is nothing I or anyone else can say that will suddenly make the characters, prose, plot, pace, etc. click in your head if it already hasn't. It is clear you just don't get the allure, but that's fine. There are countless novels that everyone on this board seems to think is God's work, yet I find mind-numbingly boring, unimaginative, and lacking any writing skill whatsoever.

[John Goodman]

aysim i agree with the last poster that holden is more or less a timeless character and that the book itself is not indicative of any particular period in our history. at the same time, id add, i think the book is terribly over-rated, the main character has little or no redeeming values, and the author's writing is tediously repetitive. every legitimate chance i get i criticize the book---if anyone can enlighten me as to how this book deserves the status it apparently has, id be happy to hear the argument.

It is simply the best character study of a teenager ever written. Salinger is not repetitive (if you've read what else you've written) but Holden himself thinks and speaks in such a manner. If you cannot appreciate just how great the novel is, then there's nothing else to say.

[Apocrypha75]

Read it. It's okay but I was left wondering how it garnered such praise. It's probably just me.

[dfloyd]

It was one of the first books I delved into in the early 1950s. I particularly remember Holden's allusions to books he had read, one of which was Hardy's The Return of the Native. I thought, 'What an odd name for a book.' I didn't read Hardy for many years after, but I think reading Catcher ... was an intro to literature.

[mayneverhave]

This was my favorite book growing up (not though I'm hardly very old even now).

My feelings toward the book have cooled somewhat, the more critical and analytical I get, but the novel still has a pathological affect on me.

[Mockingbird_z]

I read it being already a grown-up, but luckily I had the pleasure of reading it in original and the book impressed me a lot. I liked the way Holden spoke about his sister, I cold feel that he loves her and i just knew that what He felt was sincere. Great book, no doubt.

[Vicarious]

It is my favourite book for many reasons. I wrote my A Level essay piece on childhood and used Catcher in the Rye and The Wasp Factory for comparison. I fell in love with it. I was going through a horrible stage where I felt very confused (about my sexuality, what I wanted to do with my life and how I felt about my friendship group) and the book just tore at my heart strings.

[serendipity86]

What would be Maxist critics of the Catcher in the Rye?

[serendipity86]

That's it! Existentialism was partly a response to the pre-WWII fascination with Ferdinand de Saussure's Structuralism (in which each identity takes on its meaning on the basis of a relationship with other parts of an overall structure). The Existentialists spear-headed the movement that the Postmodernists (or, more precisely, Poststructuralists) became famous for. Jacques Derrida (Deconstruction), Jacques Lacan (Psychoanalysis), Michel Foucault (New Historicism), and Judith Butler (Queer Theory), as well as William V. Spanos (Postcolonialism) are some of the big names in the field of Poststructuralism. Here's a brief explanaton of the three different schools and their relationship with each other:

Structuralism preaches the doctrine that signs (words, for example) operate based on a system of differences. Words correspond to certain ideas . . . obviously we couldn't have just one word to capture every meaning, because the word would be too vague and would, subsequently, become useless. On the other hand, we could not have 1,000 different words that all mean the same thing, because, practically speaking, it wouldn't make any sense to use so many different signs to represent one idea. So we generally have a system of one idea per corresponding word . . . sometimes words share many different meanings (e.g. 'dull', 'grace', 'fly') and other times one meaning is signified by many different words, but the whole system is generally balanced. Those are the bare bones of Structuralism. You can apply this theory to anything that has an identity (this theory has been applied to everything from Economics to how the Human Mind operates).

Hi. Thank for sharing your ideas.

I have a question. Are the Cliffnotes and Sparknotes considered structuralism approach? Thanks

[serendipity86]

What would be The New Criticism's view of Catcher in the rye? Thanks.

[joao_oliveira]

I believe it was pretty innovative piece of work, specially if Salinger didn't think or write in that way. I've read "Nine Stories" and it's not that he always sound like an angry teenager, though his writing style is very simples. Maybe many people think that it is very easy to write like this, but if this books was a pioneer, then I think the author had some merit.