Catcher in the Rye

I totally agree. I love this book to. It's required reading in some parts of America, and should be compulsary here to IMHO. It's quite subversive for the period in which it was written and incidently was thought by some (including myself)to be the 'trigger book' used by the CIA to brainwash Mark Chapman into killing John Lennon...

'I think books are always so much better if you look at the stuff beneath them.' I agree with everything you say except that. I really enjoyed CitR (although Franny and Zooey is much better), but I feel blessed never to have been 'taught' it. When I spoke to some of the people who'd studied it, and been shown 'symbols' and hidden meanings, I felt totally gutted. It ruins the book, rips the guts out of it. I read a psychoanalytical break down of it that claimed Holden wanted to sleep with his sister, and so this became converted into a death-wish by associcated guilt. Someone's teacher had even told their class that D.B. stands for 'Dead Brother'. Salinger was into purity, simplicity and Zen. To reduce the book to 'themes' is to totally miss the point. If you've read it, you've understood it. If you've analysed it, you've overshot by a million miles. Read his later stuff, and enjoy it. Just don't spoil it by thinking all over it.

This is another one of those classics I've never read. Oddly, it was not taught in high school in my day (60s), at least not where I grew up. It was actually banned from some libraries in some places for a time. Amazing in retrospect. It's on my list. I agree about not over-analyzing. I arrived at college as a literature major, but I was so desperately turned off by the "deep thinking," that I switched to history. Maybe I should have stuck with literature. They had a wonderful graduate department, had I continued on with it. Too late now, of course.

I'm very unconvinced about books being 'taught'. There's a guy in New York called A.J.Weberman who was a lecturer in Literature at some college. He became obsessed with the writing of Bob Dylan and did courses analysing the 'hidden' meanings in his stuff. He even took groups of students to Dylan's studio in Greenwich Village and hounded him. When Dylan told him there was no 'hidden' meaning in Mr Tambourine Man, Weberman called him a 'fucking liar'. It came to a head when Dylan caught him going through his dustbin late one night looking for evidence. Dylan gave him a bloody good hiding for his trouble.

I enjoyed Catcher in the rye by simply reading it in bed one night. I knew all the chapman-lennon history...but the point is, it's a bloody good read. By anyone's standards.

I read a brilliant article about Weberman's school of 'garbology', Missi. Dylan actually tried to reason with him initially. Weberman was convinced Dylan had started off a rebel but sold out to the Man. The story of Dylan cycling after him and knocking the seven shades of excrement out of him is hilarious. The Chapman link provides an interesting context to the book, but honestly, those kind of specious links are precisely why Salinger became a recluse in the first place. People seem to get all silly over his writing.

Surely, it's pretty much accepted that for some people the book itself is a joy, while for others the analysis and discovery of 'hidden meanings' is a joy. It shouldn't really matter what the author wanted, but what readers get out of it. I would resent being forced to analyse Kurt Vonnegut, but equally resent being told I'm not allowed to enjoy analysis of 'The Wasteland' and must only enjoy the poem itself. I could argue that one begs analysis while the other doesn't, but if someone else gets their pleasure from analysing Vonnegut and reading the Wasteland, who am I to say they're going about it all wrong?

well said Hen.

I dunno about over-analysing books - it helped me to understand it a lot better because there's some quite complicated physcology stuff there - I don't think Holden wanted to sleep with Pheobe though! The good thing about being taught how an author has constructed a book is that it shows you how to do it yourself, if you wanted to. Before I took Higher English I thought that books were just written and that was it but when you take them apart you realise how intricate they are and how much work goes into them.

I sort of agree with Hen... To me, there's no 'oughtness' to reading. Read how you like. If you've read it, you've understood it. That's it. I would suggest that the reason The Wasteland can fail is a poem is because of the wanky nest of literary allusions... *if* they're what you're looking for. If you sit back and enjoy the rhythms and cadences of the poetry, you've done enough. I would hate to impose a style of reading on my readership. One of the things I'm focusing on as I write my current novel is what I'm implicitly asking of the reader. I'd like the readers to feel a sense of play and innocence when they read. They can be furrowed-browed vivesectionists if that's what they enjoy, but I'd hate to think they were doing that because that's how their English teacher told them you have to read stuff. Just read stuff. There. You've understood it. It is a convenient world.

What a good thread! I found that analysis of books during A Levels put me off reading. As someone who spent hours of every day reading that really teed me off. I had always assumed I was do English at University - but ended up doing Politics and reading huge amounts again. However, Catcher in the Rye was a book I read whilst at Uni and thoroughly enjoyed. It opened my eyes to the wonders of the modern American novel and from Salinger I went on to Vonnegut, Brautigan, Mailer, Jong etc. It's a life changer and should be read by one and all!

See... I have to confess I've been somewhat disingenuous. In contrast to what Tony says, I found that the structured 'working through' novels in late GCSEs and A-Levels vastly increased my love of reading, my preparedness to tackle 'difficult' texts and how far I was prepared to experiment in my own writing. But, I kind of feel like, at last, I've got to the stage where I feel confident 'just' reading again. It's like I've had to work through all that analysis dingus just to earn the right to be simple again. I think 'just reading' in a kind of Zen sense is the way forward in terms of books, but I guess I ought to respectfully acknowledge my debt to all those teachers who helped me learn analytical skills, if only so I could better shed their trappings.

I have just read "Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H.Lawrence" by Geoff Dyer. Dyer makes it clear that he much prefers Lawrence's travel and criticism books to his novels and stories. Dyer loves to analyse texts and come out with theories about life, love, and literature. He worships Nietzche and writers like that. I wouldn't really recommend "Out of Sheer Rage", really. It strikes me as the literary equivalent of "Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned". In other words, I suspect that its main purpose might be to fulfill a contract the easy way. But I'd thoroughly recommend Dyer's novel "Paris Trance" (1999), which is a wonderful love story written in fine simple prose - as good a contemporary novel as I've read. (It also contains some rather glib musings about time and photography, but they didn't spoil it for me.) As for "Catcher in the Rye", I enjoyed the opening and then lapsed into a boredom so acute that I never finished reading it. I wouldn't dare criticise him, though. My blind-spot, obviously.

Agreed 100% on Paris, Trance ...

Funnily enough, I remember not enjoying Catcher much on the first read. I suppose I expected a conventional plot structure. The novel apparently appeals to neurotic sociopaths, however, so perhaps d.beswetherick is the only sane one amongst us.

I loved 'Catcher' first time round - does that make me a neurotic sociopath? that would certainly explain all those people out to get me that no one else sees :b

Catcher's great but.. I don't know.. I'm kind of bored with that whole era of American Literature at the moment.. I'm sure I'll get back to it at some point.. I think because it is so STANDARD now. In terms of university we always had these American Lit courses ..and it was ingrained into you ..Hemingway, Salinger, Mailer, Kerouac.. thru to Pynchon.. it was like some bloody Mantra. Henry Miller doesn't seem American to me ..even though I know he is. Give me people like Genet or Celine anyday.. well perhaps not anyday.. it's just what I'm thinkin right now. It's funny.. when I look back on this list I think all these writers, bar Mailer and Pynchon perhaps.. they're all bloody arch-stylists! I must be shallow. Who's tried to read Pynchon by the way? Think I'll check into a nuthouse for FOUR months.. try and get through Gravity's Rainbow!!

You can't get away from "hidden meanings" in language since language is by nature metaphorical. A dog is not the real dog in reality. We accept that the real dog has been magically transformed into a dog in the semiotics of language. The real dog impresses upon the signifier "dog" a meaning that is contingent upon its existence and thus, moves one toward an essence or a "permanent meaning." Through language, one immediately appropriates a real life thing such as a dog into a personal semiotic. Although you may argue that in an ideal society, a personal semiotic is simply one's interpretation of a social semiotic, you need not argue that in a society that is strongly individualistic. Language then develops a subtext because your experience of a dog makes you say certain things like he's like a dog or he is a dog. If one gives a negative inflection to such a metaphor or a simile, then you can say that he's like a cur, he's a rabid dog or a wild dog, a weird dog or a hot and sexy dog. Words will never mean exactly what you want it to mean, not even for yourself for the meaning of those words will permutate as you become more intimate with the interworkings of language and experience. Dylan has the right not to reveal the meaning behind his writing, but he is not GOD... he can't say that his words simply mean what they say and therefore, precludes any interpretation because they are an "EXISTENCE" as concrete as say, a stone or a tree or a human being. Catcher in the Rye is a great read and a great book because it really exposes our negative attitudes toward a society that uses us for what it wants of us and then constantly degrades us. [%sig%]

The moment in which "The Catcher in the Rye" became real for me was when Holden Caulfield is talking to that girl, I forget her name. He's talking to her, and then she breaks down and begins to cry. She does not know what to say, and Holden begins to kiss her. In Heathers, Veronica takes a shower with all her clothes on when she needs release from the pressure that the Heathers are putting upon her identity. The public face breaks and the private face comes out and it is cleansing itself of all the repressed hatred for one's public face. There is an artist who makes masks: she once said that during one of her shows, a child saw a character washing his mask. The child said that the character was washing her soul. I think the child got it right. In visual art, the real face would be the mask and the character's face would be the public face. The scene hit me hard because it made complete sense: Holden Caulfield was so desperately trying to score with a girl because so many of the boys at his school made him feel like such a bastard. In order to be one of them, you had to score. They didn't give a damn about the girl though -- only about the way that the girl polished their image. When she began to cry, for once, he was kissing his soul. If the character of Holden Caulfield is to be seen as a character who is shocked by the homosexual advances of his teacher and does not know how to respond to them, then the author would have re-envisioned the character as a female. Her tears then, are his tears after he has absorbed the traumatic experience. The traumatic experience is, of course, not one experience, but a series of experiences that end with the unsuccessful seduction of Holden by the one teacher whom he felt understood him. [%sig%]

Just got this out of the library to read for the first time on my hols - well, I liked it enough, but I suspect its status is due largely to the exam boards who are on the lookout for texts which are not too long or demanding and which average teenage students can relate to. Of course, the book's famous for the number of cases in which redneck morons have tried to get the book banned in American schools; although it's fairly tame by today's standards, there's enough sex references, alcohol abuse, "profanity" and debunking of American ideals/idols to work them into a frenzy.