The Most Overrated Books Showing 1,301-1,350 of 5,680

[Monty J]

Vons wrote: "I'm left confused, what is this thread really all about?"

What? I thought I was channeling Holden? Ya know. Goddammit.

[Kallie]

"Anne Hawn wrote: " Brave New World and 1984 were written to expose policies of governments that, if continued or expanded over time would result in something similar to the societies portrayed i..."According to Nadezhda Mandelstam, even Stalin couldn't completely control his world let alone those pesky individuals who would continue to think and write poetry and escape his clutches (and she writes about those who did not escape, notably her husband). NM's memoirs did not become available until the late 60s and I'd far rather re-read them than 1984 or BNW, both written decades earlier; maybe the world has become too complex for a similar novel -- I don't think The Handmaid's Tale was Atwood at her best -- except in the genre category. But I would welcome contradictions, recommendations.

[Geoffrey]

"Vons wrote: "I'm left confused, what is this thread really all about?"

Or maybe it´s just that people have run out of things to say about Nick´s alleged homosexuality but enjoyed the message thread so much they continued to bloviate.

[Krystal]

Let me add:

The Giver
The Grapes of Wrath

[Von]

I'm am sorry for jiving in. I might as well review the previous comments first.

[David]

Message 1359, Mark,

It's really hard to let go. I did 23 rewrites (when I stopped counting) on my first serious novel, plus all the revisions I did on the first 100 pages agents want. I still find mistakes when I have the guts to read some of it.

[Petergiaquinta]

Kallie wrote: "I don't think The Handmaid's Tale was Atwood at her best"

No, probably not her best, but go back and revisit that book and think about how just in the recent past here in America the resurgence of Christian fundamentalism points us again in the direction of what she is writing about. I think of Mitt and Anne Romney in the last election cycle of being sickeningly close to what Atwood was describing. Perhaps Santorum was even more spot on, but he had less a chance at being elected.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying in America we're on the cusp of tipping over into a Republic of Gilead anytime soon...but back when I was a lad, America seemed far removed--light years--from that future. Today, well, I could see us heading there, and that's the brilliance of a writer like Atwood (or Wells or Verne or fill-in-the-blank); she's sensitive to a possibility that most of us aren't even thinking about at the time...

Despite the crap Clive Bundy spews about not believing in government, he and his people would sign on to the Sons of Jacob in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

[Holly]

Years after first reading 1984 and Brave New World I picked up The Handmaids Tale and found it to be far more disturbing than either of the former two novels. Atwood knows how to scare a woman.

[Mark]

Monty J wrote: "Justin Wilson imitation ..."

Monty:

My career, such that it is, has been almost exclusively in public television and radio. You may recall that Justin Wilson's series of cooking shows were a public television offering.

That persona was entirely formulaic on his part. In real life, he didn't talk with that pronounced an accent and the colorful expressions and such, along with his trademark painful elongation of the word "guarantee," were all shtick (not that there's anything wrong with that).

So you might say that even Justin Wilson himself was doing a Justin Wilson imitation.

Another illusion shattered. When will it end?

[Monty J]

Mark wrote: "Justin Wilson himself was doing a Justin Wilson imitation."

Somehow that doesn't surprise me.

My secondhand exposure to him came the summer of 1964, when Wilson, like Zig Ziglar, was only available on 33 1/3 rpm LP platters. Both have had remarkably resilient careers.

The early JW stuff was pretty raunchy as I recall. Hence my boss Traynham's fascination with him. I was shocked by some of it then. Now I wish I had a recording.

[Kallie]

Petergiaquinta wrote: "think about how just in the recent past here in America th..."

Too true. Atwood did foresee the dystopian 'woman as vessel' nightmare and some actually live that or are at-risk.

[Mark]

Monty J wrote: "Wilson, like Zig Ziglar, was only available on 33 1/3 rpm LP platters ..."

Madre de Dios! I had no idea he had a stint as a comedian before the cooking show gig.

The hits just keep coming. Praise Goodreads!

[Renee]

Paula wrote: "Id agree with most, and I think you covered it well-

I will vehemently argue DaVinci code, I LOVED it, thought it deserved its hype.

I'll issue a minor harrumph over Gatsyby's making the most o..."

I'm with you on Stieg Larsen's series...

[Paul Martin]

Petergiaquinta wrote: They have no real meat on the bones; they don't bleed when you prick them; they only represent an idea or an ideal.

That's well put. That's what annoyed me a bit about Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath; a powerful book, but I just felt that he was a bit flat compared to the rest of the family (particularly Ma Joad). I know the novel in itself is a heavy-handed allegory (in a good way), but still.

[Mark]

Paul Martin wrote: "the novel in itself is a heavy-handed allegory . . . "

But is it? I only ask because someone, rightfully I now think, questioned my previous assertion that CitR was allegory. I don't know if it was here or in the "Is Nick Carraway gay?" thread because they've both begun to blend in my mind.

Maybe it was Petergiaquinta?

Allegory, I think, is defined by a precision in which there's little, perhaps no, nuance. Symbolism can be a bit looser with this character symbolizing man's greed or maybe man's self destructiveness or whatever. Allegory is more exacting where this little pig represents Trotsky and nothing else and this little pig represents Stalin and nothing else (for those who believe Animal Form is allegory).

Allegory is unambivalently monogamous to its referent.

Symbolism, on the other hand, is not at all opposed to sleeping around a little.

Am I right?

[Paul Martin]

Mark wrote: Allegory is more exacting where this little pig represents Trotsky and nothing else and this little pig represents Stalin and nothing else

I don't know much about this, but where exactly does it say that an allegory is when a certain thing thing represents one, and only one, other thing?

Do you mean to say that a sentence such as "this little pig represents, among many other things, Trotsky, and is therefore an allegory" would be contradictory?

[Anne Hawn]

Kallie wrote: ""Anne Hawn wrote: " Brave New World and 1984 were written to expose policies of governments that, if continued or expanded over time would result in something similar to the societies portrayed ..."

Thanks to everyone who gave me titles for the next "Brave New World and 1984. I've marked them and checked out one.

I think it may be hard to pick out the next unique voice who can distill what is going on now and cast it into the future.

[Mark]

Paul Martin wrote: "I don't know much about this, but where exact..."

That's my sense of it, or my instinctual understanding of it. I quick went to look up the term online for confirmation and, as is typical online, was greeted by a swamp that said varying contradictory things six ways to sunday without nailing anything down.

"The rhetorical strategy of extending a metaphor through an entire narrative so that objects, persons, and actions in the text are equated with meanings that lie outside the text." That's from grammar.about.com.

I think the example Petergiaquinta gave was John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, something I've managed to escape the fate of reading all these years. The site I cite above also gives that as well as my Animal Farm example.

From University of North Carolina at Pembroke's Glossary of Literary Terms, I found this:

"allegory (AL-eh-GOR-ee): a narrative that serves as an extended metaphor. Allegories are written in the form of fables, parables, poems, stories, and almost any other style or genre. The main purpose of an allegory is to tell a story that has characters, a setting, as well as other types of symbols, that have both literal and figurative meanings. The difference between an allegory and a symbol is that an allegory is a complete narrative that conveys abstract ideas to get a point across, while a symbol is a representation of an idea or concept that can have a different meaning throughout a literary work (A Handbook to Literature). One well-known example of an allegory is Dante’s The Divine Comedy. In Inferno, Dante is on a pilgrimage to try to understand his own life, but his character also represents every man who is in search of his purpose in the world (Merriam Webster Encyclopedia of Literature). Although Virgil literally guides Dante on his journey through the mystical inferno, he can also be seen as the reason and human wisdom that Dante has been looking for in his life.

As far as nailing it down completely, we'd have to become literary grad students. And that's only admission into a club where you can endlessly argue about shit like this while boring your sexual partners, I suppose.

Maybe the difference that I'm striving to explain is that (as I see it) allegory is where, yes, there's a one to one correspondence between the symbol and the referent and that probably has sway over how the symbols interact with other symbols in a given work.

Perhaps, for example, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse is a allegorical explanation of Buddhism.

Here's more evidence to suggest that the poor job I'm doing of explaining this might be verging on something approaching correct:

"An allegory is a concrete representation of an idea or concept in a direct, one-to-one relationship. No ambiguity exists at this level. There is a clear interpretation of each allegorical element. For example, in "Young Goodman Brown," Faith is the name of Goodman Brown's wife. Faith, the character, equals faith, the concept, in an unambiguous relationship. The character of Faith, then, is an allegorical element of the story and not a symbolic element of the story.(Candace Schaefer)"

Found that on Tyler Junior College's site (it's in Texas, but hey ...).

In general, I tend to put more stock in the academic sites rather than the stupid Yahoo answers or ask me another sites, which are just a bunch of click bait shite and onions and are generally hastening the downfall of civilization as we know it (not that it needs any help, nor was ever that great to start with).

Others will no doubt chime in. I offer these meager and meandering thoughts as a fellow learner, not as a teacher, mon frere.

[Petergiaquinta]

In my ancient hard copy of A Handbook to Literature (Odyssey Press) it specifically says this:

"It is important that one distinguish clearly between allegory and SYMBOLISM, which attempts to suggest other levels of meaning without making a structure of ideas a formative influence on the work as it is in allegory."

So that seems to validate Mark's earlier sexual analogy.

(It's interesting that the Handbook seems to have dumbed down the language of its distinction between allegory and symbolism over the years, if indeed these are the same two "Handbook" sources.)

[Monty J]

Mark wrote: "Found that on Tyler Junior College's site (it's in Texas, but hey ...)."

Hey! Small world. A high school friend of mine's daughter teaches creative writing there and she's just published her debu novel, Painting the Moon by Traci Borum. Great kid.

[Paul Martin]

Well, I guess the information that Mark carved out of the internet-machine together with Petergiaquintas ancient handbook (I imagine a massive stone slab with near-unreadable inscriptions) solves the puzzle, if there ever was one!

[Alex]

Guys, you have to be kidding, The Catcher in the Rye is one of the best novels I ever read...

We can discuss about the others, but I don't think Moby Dick it's in the same category than Da Vinci Code or Twilight.

[Cosmic]

I don't consider myself academic enough to argue this, but I think that the CiTR is an allegory. How and why? As simple as I can make it is this:

Holden is a car http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden
Made by GM.
http://history.gmheritagecenter.com/w...
Holden Caulfield identity is veiled (caul - David Copperfield page 1)
Holden likes to shoot the bull. He loves Bull markets over Bear markets and the Survival of the fittest, symbolized by Mr. Spencer is, justification that might (or money and power) makes right.
Allies can be seen as allies and Phoebe as feeble.

Of course in our discussion I suggested at the masons being "written" in to the allegory.

The ducks are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DUKW

Which is consistent with the scene in the Natural History Museum. Where he talks about the Eskimo fishing for a fish and the ducks flying south but if you look at the upside down (they would be going north, I suppose) they go faster. This is in chapter 6

The carousel is the stock market.
The hat is a people shooting hat.

Holden didn't like Somerset Maugham and he was a spy in WW1 and went to work for Hollywood after the war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somer...
It is interesting the amount of literary ambulance drivers there were (it was a core, I didn't know about this. Did you? I wouldn't have even cared if I had not read the Catcher...but think about the propaganda after the war...and who tells us our history of the war anyway?

Holden stays in the dormitory called Ossenburger...to me I see "OSS in (Han)burger
"It has been suggested by some historians, e.g. Jörg Friedrich, that the mass-bombing of civilian areas in enemy territory, including Tokyo and most notably the German cities of Dresden, Hamburg and Cologne by Western Allies, which resulted in the destruction of more than 160 cities and the deaths of more than 600,000 German civilians be considered as war crimes.[325] However, no positive or specific customary international humanitarian law with respect to aerial warfare existed before and during World War II.[326]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wa...
How did religion play a role? It was the Christian's that were for a nation called Israel as this would follow the prophesy as the progression of the second coming of Christ. They saw the migration of Jews to Palestine as a fulfillment of this prophesy. I don't think that most Jews in Germany were for Zionism. They were worried that they would be sent to Palestine and I think it didn't for with their religious beliefs about living among other nations. I am not trying to be a know it all on this sensitive subject but just as a reference The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance 1st Paperback mentions that his Jewish banking family did not support the Zionist. I think if I lived a very cultured life in Germany that Palestine would not be a very inviting. This is another subject and I hate to muddy my discussion of the Catcher with this.

It is Mrs Aigletinger that takes you to the Natural History museum. And it is AIG-letting-her (America)?
How much was stolen from the Jews and all the countries in between that an insurance company could know about? And where it was?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American...
Was started by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneliu...
He worked for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_o...

There is a lot more in the Catcher than I have gotten to
Different motifs/symbols to explore such as "phony" and "that kills me" and the "window" which i think could reflect back to David Copperfield and Uriah Heep. The car motif (Holden) is also suggested in the short story that Holden talks about here:

"My favorite author is my brother D.B., and my next favorite is Ring Lardner. My brother gave me a book by Ring Lardner for my birthday, just before I went to Pencey. It had these very funny, crazy plays in it, and then it had this one story about a traffic cop that falls in love with this very cute girl that's always speeding. Only, he's married, the cop, so be can't marry her or anything. Then this girl gets killed, because she's always speeding. That story just about killed me."
http://www.unz.org/Pub/LardnerRing-19...

In this story the clue to "rye" and car (if Holden is a metaphor for that) is significant in this story.

I think that an allegory is something that has more than one way of looking at the story. If you read it one way (literal) you will get a different interpretation than one read figuratively. But the deal is that the author clues you in that there is more than one way to read this book. (I think that I read that Moby Dick was an allegory...hmmm I am going to write about that in a separate post.

I have not discovered everything and I think that is you are going to shoot down my argument then you need to shoot each one of them down individually.

I think there is a thread of logic that creates enough patterns to convince me that the CiTR is an allegory.

[Alex]

I'm not saying CiTR it's not an allegory, and I know most authors adds "hidden" meanings to their works, but I always remember when Mr. Quino, the author of Mafalda (a comic at Argentina) told this story:

"One critic once said Mafalda's father was always working with his plants because I was trying to show how the people should come back to the nature, to the small things. The true is, been Mafalda a child I needed the adults to kneel so I could better compose the drawing, childs and adults in the same proportion. That was all"

[Paul Martin]

Cosmic wrote: How and why? As simple as I can make it is this: -insert massive wall of text-

Hehe, good ol' Cosmic.

Interesting, though.

[S.W.]

OK, Grad students. Let's introduce the concept of Roman a Clef. Is an "allegory" more in your face obvious while a Roman a Clef is more subtle (ie requires a key to unlock the hidden meaning? Has Cosmic found the key?

[Cosmic]

Paul Martin wrote: "Cosmic wrote: How and why? As simple as I can make it is this: -insert massive wall of text-

Hehe, good ol' Cosmic.

Interesting, though."

I guess I figured that the more examples you have the better the argument you have. I am not trying to push anyone's buttons, like our friend Rachel. I am looking for some honest discourse.

I don't know why my post on here are labeled a "wall of text". There are others that spend just as many words saying cute things but not necessarily significant information.

Is this just an easy jab at me? And what for? Cause you didn't think it up first or didn't read about it in a reputable review? Can there be diverse opinions on this forum or does it always come up for a vote, after you diss me with "massive wall of text." (I admit that when I got started more and more examples came to me and I ran a little long on my "simple" example. Forgive me and take what you like and leave the rest.) But couldn't we just talk about the Catcher and not me.

Good ol' Cosmic

[Paul Martin]

Cosmic wrote: "Paul Martin wrote: "Cosmic wrote: How and why? As simple as I can make it is this: -insert massive wall of text-

Hehe, good ol' Cosmic.

Interesting, though."

I guess I figured that the more exa..."

Sorry, it wasn't a critique. I love these long posts with meat on their bones. No jab intended.

The curse of written communication - an intended good-humored comment is perceived by the recipient as mean-spirited.

[Mark]

Cosmic wrote: "I don't know why my post on here are labeled a "wall of text". There are others that spend just as many words saying cute things but not necessarily significant information ..."

Cosmic:

Your posts are great.

Yours,

a fellow wall of text creator.

[Beatriz]

- Any list that has both Catcher in the Rye and Twillight in the same category is not legit. Many people don't understand Catcher in the Rye (even though this is one of my favourite books, not everyone feels the same when their growing up, and that's ok), but Twillight is just a thousand levels below. I didn't know people actually considered it serious work. I'd prefer 50 shades to Twillight any time, just because it's not pretensious enough to call itself literature.
-I think The Great Gatsby is rather outdated these days, and the story is a bit dull. I don't get why people keep comparing Fitzgerald and Hemingway. May be I just don't get Fitzgerald.
-The Wuthering Heights and The Unbearable Lightness of Being are missing from that list.
-Just because someone else understood it differently doesn't mean the book isn't worth reading. That's using pseudo-intectual excuses to justify your own lazyness. I haven't got through Ulysses or Moby Dick, but someday I will- and only then will I be able to judge properly. (Except for Twillight. You don't have to read Twillight.)

[Cosmic]

S.W. wrote: "OK, Grad students. Let's introduce the concept of Roman a Clef. Is an "allegory" more in your face obvious while a Roman a Clef is more subtle (ie requires a key to unlock the hidden meaning? Ha..."

Thank you! I had not heard of that term before. I am self taught and did not go to college. So my peers are my university.

Paul Martin no hard feelings. You did say it was interesting.

I know that I write a wall of text, out of insecurity, just because (although you cannot see it, I know it) that there is no diploma hanging on the wall with my name on it, admitting that the great wizard has stuff my head full.

Mark, I was thinking about you yesterday. I remember reading in one of your posts that you had entertained the idea of not letting your children watch television. I did that too...only I trade the tv for a brio train set when my oldest was two years old. When he was 8 we moved to Boston. Up until that time Sesame Street characters meant nothing to him when he saw them. But I knew that SS had a lot of Boston setting in it so I got a tv and let them watch that...knowing that we would not always live there and perhaps on our wanderings around the city there would be other connections they could tAke with them. So reading your post that says you spent most of your time in public broadcasting made me smile. I really enjoy Boston. One of the best cities I have lived in. Where intellects meet derelict and converse on a wide range of subjects. Or maybe the derelict was a disguised professor, or a lawyer that just never quite made it?

Anyway I wish you wouldn't handle me with kid gloves but don't just stick a label on me and send me to the corner.

Time for lunch.

[Mark]

Cosmic wrote: "SS had a lot of Boston setting in it so I got a tv and let them watch that ..."

To the extent that I've ever thought about it with any diligence, I've always imagined Sesame Street to be more of a fictionalized New York City than a Boston. Interesting that you got Boston out of it. I suppose they succeeded in creating an "every" city in a way.

I'm quite close to Boston and yet somehow so far. I always enjoy trips to the city, but I rarely make them.

[Petergiaquinta]

S.W. wrote: "OK, Grad students. Let's introduce the concept of Roman a Clef. Is an "allegory" more in your face obvious while a Roman a Clef is more subtle (ie requires a key to unlock the hidden meaning?"

That old Handbook of mine calls a Roman a Clef: "A novel in which actual persons and events are presented under the guise of fiction."

So it's not allegory at all; these characters aren't representing abstract concepts or ideas, or "equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative itself." The characters from a Roman a clef are instead representing real-life characters. My Handbook suggests that The Sun Also Rises is a good example of a Roman a clef. Another book that comes to mind is Capote's Answered Prayers; back in the '80s it pissed a lot of folks off because the real people being depicted by Capote were so thinly disguised.

I'd say Catcher could only be called a Roman a clef if you could pinpoint characters like Stradlater, Mr. Thurman or Carl Luce as real people that Salinger knew and dropped into his story...and then Holden would have to be Salinger, I guess, and that collapses the entire concept because while Holden shares some common ground with the author, he clearly is not the author.

[Cosmic]

Mark wrote: "Cosmic wrote: "SS had a lot of Boston setting in it so I got a tv and let them watch that ..."

To the extent that I've ever thought about it with any diligence, I've always imagined Sesame Street ..."

Well at the end of every episode of Sesame Street don't they say that it was produce by Boston PBS? I just assumed it was Boston.

We lived at Temont and Mass Ave, South Boston.

I am originally from Tennessee. Nothing in the south looks like the north, and if it did they would tear it down and put up a skyscraper or convention center and hang a piece of the molding from the historic building on the wall of the bank, with a photo. When I went to NYC I was disappointed. All I saw was the tunnels of plywood construction as I walked down the side walk. Either I was in one or there was one on the other side of the street.

I don't know if it holds true now but if you lived in Boston you could get dollar passes to the museum's (children, Art, aquarium and one time Harvard's natural museum a month).

My four year old son at the time named Beacon Hill (as you walk past the Patriots cemetery, "Sesame Street". He is a real wise guy. Then when we went to visit our friend on Beacon Hill, closer to the court house, he said that was "Tickle Street".

They should hire four year olds to name their streets.

[Cosmic]

Petergiaquinta wrote: "'d say Catcher could only be called a Roman a clef if you could pinpoint characters like Stradlater, Mr. Thurman or Carl Luce as real people that Salinger knew and dropped into his story...and then Holden would have to be Salinger, I guess, and that collapses the entire concept because while Holden shares some common ground with the author, he clearly is not the author. ..."

I agree with this, because although I think that some of the characters are reference to real historic people I do not think he was trying to disguise them. I think he was using them as a reference for the text and role that he put the character in.

Mr Spencer (Herbert Spencer, "survival of the fittest") the history teacher. But is it really a question of survival of the fittest when we talk about how the American killed the Indians or how wars are unfair...how life is a wonderful game if you have all the might behind you, but if you are a target (Jews in WW2) then what's a game about it?

I think that Salinger pregnated meaning into this text by naming the history teacher Mr. Spencer.

I really did not know that much about WW1,WW2 and our Revolutionary War till I read The Catcher and tried to figure out what the meaning behind the ducks was. To say it was something psychological was illogical because of the taxi driver's conversation with Holden. The taxi driver understands the question, even though you and I don't (part of the iceberg effect, that Hemingway developed and Salinger used.

However I do agree with one thing that was mentioned in the Roman a clef and the Catcher. That WW2 was a popular war. Salinger came home and wanted to write a war and peace kind of book about a popular war. A war that got us out of the depression (so they say). So he thinly disguised it's message by using names and literary references.

What do you think about that?

When I think of Stradlater I think of a politician. When I think of Ackley I think of either the religious right politician or the church.

I wonder what other people's think their significance is?

And have we settled on a type of writing yet for CiTR? Could it not be a composite like James Joyce?

[Monty J]

Petergiaquinta wrote: "My Handbook suggests that The Sun Also Rises is a good example of a Roman a clef."

Agreed.

CiTR probably is as well, but Salinger wasn't talking much. He did say before refusing any furrher interviews that the book was "very much" like what happened to him and felt cathartic to write. From a Youtube interview with a former classmate we know that Pency was based on Valley Forge Military Academy and that there was a guy like Stradlater in their dorm and there was a student who bailed out of a dorm window, but wasn't killed and that Salinger was on the fencing team.

[Mark]

Cosmic wrote: "Well at the end of every episode of Sesame Street don't they say that it was produce by Boston PBS? I just assumed it was Boston...."


Actually 'Boston PBS,' equates to (I assume) the way a civilian such as yourself refers to "WGBH." They do, in fact, produce a the lion's share of PBS distributed series, along with WNET or, as I believe they are still branding themselves "Thirteen," which most people identify as NYC's ptv station, although their FCC license is actually in New Jersey!

I'm not the best historian of public broadcasting in the United States even though I've worked in it for the last twenty years, but if I'm recalling what history I do know correctly, Sesame Street was always produced by the Children's Television Workshop (which at some point, perhaps at the beginning of the aughts, was renamed Sesame Workshop). In fact there were two years of funded research (I think Carnegie Foundation money) that went into the concept of an educational series for preschool children before they went into production. Initial production was funded by the Carnegie and Ford foundations and Uncle Sam. Those were different times, eh?

The highly recognizable animation and audio of the WGBH Educational Foundation logo is at the end of many an icon series of public television (Masterpiece, NOVA, American Experience, Frontline) and plenty of good children's programs too (Arthur comes to mind as a relatively recent example or at least one I can recall from when my kids were watching public television kidvid. ZOOM may hit chords of nostalgia among some of the folks in this thread), but Sesame Street was never a WGBH production.

[Paul Martin]

Mark wrote: "Cosmic wrote: "Well at the end of every episode of Sesame Street don't they say that it was produce by Boston PBS? I just assumed it was Boston...."

Actually 'Boston PBS,' equates to (I assume) t..."

Fun fact: When the NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) started their own production of Sesame Street, called Sesam Stasjon, in 1990, Kermit Love (who was the main puppeteer and costume designer on the original Sesame Street and Muppets) himself travelled to Norway in order to properly train the puppeteers who were going to be in charge of the production in the years to come.

That's artistic integrity!

[Mark]

Paul Martin wrote: "started their own production..."

Good to know.

Not entirely their own, btw. If I may indulge in a little bit of home team pride (to the organizations that make up public media nationally and internationally, not to America--that's a different subject entirely). As of eight years ago, I believe the number of Sesame Street versions produced for and by countries other than America peaked at twenty or so. A good deal of these, maybe the majority of them, are co-productions with Sesame Workshop (formerly Children's Television Workshop). Others are done more independently by the country in question through licensing agreements. Sounds like the NRK version definitely was a co-production.

Although it's now a commonplace part of the television environment, the show was groundbreaking in its time.

[Paul Martin]

Mark wrote: Sounds like the NRK version definitely was a co-production.

The article on wikipedia is a bit confusing. It says that "In 1987, NRK approached Children's Television Workshop about the possibility to make a Norwegian co-production of Sesame Street."

While a bit further down it states that "Unlike their predecessors from all over the world it is set in a railway station near a town instead of the traditional Sesame Street neighbourhood."

Furthermore, the Norwegian wiki article states that "at the time, it was NRK's largest commitment to produce pedagogic entertainment for children

The last quote has got to imply that NRK in many ways were, to a certain degree, free to decide the content of each episode? If the purpose of the show was to educate Norwegian children, I cannot imagine that they'd let an American private broadcasting company influence the content?

I don't know much about the production of these shows, though, so bear with me.

..and, I guess this has absolutely nada to do with The Cather in the Rye, but, well, so what?

[Mark]

Jason wrote: "never mind the fact that he was pretty much a pedophile..."

First I've heard about this. I'm skeptical.

Could one of our learned scholars provide third party evidence for or against with attribution?

[Mark]

Jason wrote: "Sorry, i took that comment out. It had no place in the discussion, but the information is out there..."

Yeah, well the information is also "out there" that the world is indeed flat, that the holocaust never happened and that the current POTUS is a radical Islamist.

In the digital world of the interweb, there's very little information that isn't "out there." Just because bull shit exists doesn't mean it's any less false.

And I don't see how you can equate having a "creepy" feeling about a person (after seeing a film and a secondhand conversations with someone who had read the person's biography no less) with them being "pretty much a pedophile." That's a serious statement.

But, to tell the truth, I wasn't ruling it out as a possibility nor was I trying to defend Salinger's reputation. It's the first I'd heard of those kind of allegations, so I was curious as to whether anyone had any substantive information to back that up or if you were just talking out your ass, so to speak.

Now I know.

[Mark]

Jason wrote: "http://topics.nytimes.com/top/referen..."

I hate to beat what appears to be a dying horse, here, Jason. And I'm not trying to pick a fight either, but although I see some evidence of aberrant and unpleasant behavior listed in that article (and I'm sure some of it has been disputed), I don't see any references to pedophilia.

I hardly think the assertion that Salinger "as an older man had pen pal relationships with teenage girls" equates to being a pedophile.

Did I miss something specific that you read in that article?

[Paul Martin]

http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/feature...

I've never heard about this before. Here's an interview with one of his girlfriends who defends him. She was 18.

The only reference to pedophilia is the statement that "a fan once called him a pedophile."

Not very solid.

[Paul Martin]

Jason wrote: "I have writer heroes too, guys... and yes, sometimes they even get away with murder (William S. Burroughs). It was just a dumb comment i made. i removed it."

Haha, I'm not angry or offended in any way. Just eager to find out if there was something to it.

[Mark]

Jason wrote: "ok, cool :) i'm really a nice guy... i swear."

Jason, I have no doubts you're a nice guy. I am too. I was just trying to determine, as Paul said, how substantive the assertion was. One of the reasons, I think, this thread is a interesting as you remarked you found it to be is that there's a high internal standard set for commentary. I probably am an unofficial guardian for those high standards that goes overboard. I've been called "the intellectual Rottweiler." So I'm just trying to say in character and play a role that others have, at times, found useful.

Peace.

Thanks.

[Monty J]

Jason wrote: " i kept waiting for a big payoff, but none ever came."

I refer you to my analysis on the subject: http://redroom.com/member/monty-heyin...

[Monty J]

Mark wrote: "J"the intellectual Rottweiler." So I'm just trying to say in character and play a role that others have, at times, found useful."

Indeed, you have saved me the trouble many times, for which I am grateful.

[Mark]

Jason wrote: "Mark- if what you state in your review is all there is to getting the book..."

Geez, you're going to make me feel like such a chiding scold, but I think you're addressing this comment to "Monty" not to me ("Mark"). I've yet to review CitR on Goodreads. And with Monty and others on the case, what's the point?

Among the Thugs was absolutely brilliant. I think what I liked about it best was that I randomly stumbled upon it and had no familiarity or preconceived notion about the author or the book. Just started to read it and ... wow.

The scene where the thugs are on the bus in Italy, if memory serves, and they are just desecrating the normal daily rhythms of this town. Finally someone on the street gets sick enough of it to foist a bottle at the one of the bus's window. And the hooligans are indignantly shocked! As I recall, one or several of them can only repeat "The bastards!" over and over in a flabbergasted way. That was delicious irony. Here they are defiling the public life of the citizenry, yet when someone throws a bottle in their general direction out of frustration ... "the bastards!"

[Beatriz]

Many people who dislike the Cather in the Rye say that the problem is they kept waiting for something to happen, like a "big payoff" and nothing ever happened or changed. But the thing is, though, that's pretty much what happens when you're a teenager. Did you want Holden to actually do something? What can he do? He's only sixteen and there are all these stupid rules. All he can do is complain about how meaningless they are. And he feels trapped and depressed and no magic stuff is gonna happen so that he'll finally be happy. Because, in order for him to be happy, he has to accept the world the way it is. So the whole point of the book is showing that he can't see a point to anything anymore. It's thoroughly philosophical and I guess only people who have felt this way think it's one of the best books ever.