The Catcher in the Rye By J.D Salinger
Thoughts on this book?
kind of phoney
I was compared to Holden Caulfield by my high school English teacher. I didn't realize at the time that it wasn't a compliment.
>>7565796
That killed me....
>>7565786
>>>r/books/
>>7565801
It really did.
>>7565801
thanks, you're a real prince
>>7565786
rape
>>7565800
If you wanna know the truth, I feel identified with Holden. I'm lonely and depressed, I really am.
>>7565823
Rape... Probably what Mr.Antolini wanted to do to Holden lol Like who the fuck touches your head while you are sleeping?!?!
The book had a lot of symbolism
It's overrated.
I mean it's a good book, who seems very appealing for teenagers. However, the introspection of Holden is a bit unsatisfying and his opinions seem shoking for an adult in the 50s (when the book was published) which makes them appropriate for a teenager from the same decade. He's right about the phoniness of the adult world but he's not the hero nor the rebel he thinks he is. I think the book adresses not only the superficiality and falsity of the adult world, but also the lack of attention and caring adults offer their children.
>>7565786
>Depressed kid has pedo fantasies about chasing kids in a wheat field.
>Bums around town.
>Learns to live with it.
I didn't get the appeal of the book.
>>7565786
see #1 OP
>>7565854
clearly
>>7565786
It's really good, funny, relatable, sweet without being saccharine, has some accurate depictions of teenagers in the way say YA novels don't
>>7565862
I wish you /pol/tards had the balls to kill yourselves so the rest of the world didn't have to put up with this autistic bullshit.
It fucking sucks.
Fuck Holden. Fuck Salinger.
>>7565900
thanks for the discussion
>>7565899
Salinger is pleb trash get over it
>>7565931
You see, if you had brains (which you surely don't) you'd understand that the emotion you were feeling [anger] was derived from your own inability to comprehend basic literature, and not from the literature itself.
I actually do have an emotional response to literature. You're the one who doesn't. Want to know how I know? Because in order to get an emotional response from literature...you have to understand it first.
I've never read this book, but as far as I'm concerned it is just a well written book about an edgy kid that Anericans read in highschool...
Why exactly did Nabokov love Sallinger so much? Navokov was a smug old prick that hated almost everything? This surprises me also because Sallinger and Nabokov were contemporaries...
>>7565951
Give it a try sometime
>>7565946
>implying an emotional response doesn't imply understanding
autismintensifies.gif
>>7565951
It's a good book... Try it
I've read a majority of Salinger's short stories and have concluded that he has no discernible talent and refuse to read his angsty teen novel.
>>7565951
Salinger too was a smug old prick that hated almost everything. But Nabokov had more talent in his smug old prick then Salinger did in his whole gangly stupid perverted body.
>>7565958
>implying an emotional response doesn't imply understanding
The fact that you just say "it sucks. Fuck this and Fuck that" is what is doing the implying.
Top pleb.
>>7565985
I'd have to say from a depressed person's point of view it's a relatable story, I personaly felt identified with the character, Holden. I think it has good symbolisms and you end up feeling sorry for the guy... You know cause he is so lonely and just wants to talk his shit through with someone.
There are some connections that can be drawn between Holden and Americans as a nation after the world war. The american dream, the lengths that they had gone to, to separate themselves from Europe, from their past, and to create a new culture, without the impositions of Old Europe, was finally dead, and many of the authors at that time deal with the Past.
Holden is essentially wanting desperately to go back to the past, when his brother was alive, his other brother wrote good things, he played checkers with a girl, so on.. His rebellion against everything else is a rebellion against the future and a present which no longer is similar to his past. Everything is phony, his brother is dead, the other one sold himself to hollywood, the girl is now dating an idiot. He hates the future, and, like some americans, wanted nothing more than to go back into the past (obviously an highly conceptualised past, that didn't actually reflect a reality).
In the end when he goes to the carrousel with his sister, he listens to the music and says something like, that's the good thing about carrousels, they never change.
The idealised America of its inception, a land to discover, that was theirs as they were its people, of individualism, freedom from state, church, money, where people built themselves by their own hands, etc... The America of the Cowboy, of the Ranch, etc.. World War II, put the last nail in its coffin, and many authors, Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut and even others later like Annie Proulx or Toni Morrison, deal with it. The Idealised Past confronted with the terrible Present (Future).
Is anything else by him worth reading?
Actually, same for Nabokov, what should I read having read lolita?
>>7565830
>>7565900
Why don't you read something else by him, you chucklefuck
>>7566175
1. Catcher is his worst; I think Raise High.../Seymour is his best.
2. Read Pale Fire or Invitation to a Beheading.
>>7566193
cool, cheers
