The Catcher in the Rye
discussion
The Most Overrated Books
Bia wrote: "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, ..."Well said. A lot happens, but not of a heroic sort and there are no epiphanies, etc. Holden just has to live with what he is seeing and feeling. (I should say, learn to live with it, and learn that he has to learn to live with it. Ugh.)
Bia wrote: "So the whole point of the book is showing that he can't see a point to anything anymore."Ah yes, Bia is right to a point...there's a whole generation of readers who want Holden to pull a bow and arrow out of his ass and start shooting like a boss. And without getting back to the whole Rachel discussion again, that's partly why books like Hunger Games and Divergent are such a load of crap...in those books sixteen-year-old protagonists do all kinds of amazing things, so why doesn't Holden stop whining, suck it up and just punch the bejeezus out of Maurice...what a pussy!
But where Bia is wrong is in saying that "nothing ever happened or changed" by the end of the book. It's subtle but it's enriching and real, and that's why it's better than your typical YA thin gruel. What Holden finally begins to realize by the end of the book is pretty profound. We live in a flawed world. We have to stop expecting perfection and accept what we have even though it might not be what we would really like. We aren't going to overthrow the Capital. Sorry, Katniss. We have to accept this flawed reality of our world and ourselves and move on because the only alternatives are death or insanity, two real possibilities for Holden. The Holden who tells us the story and the Holden who is the subject of the story are two very different characters. Look at the carousel scene and re-read the last page and you'll find tremendous growth there.
Remember what Hemingway wrote? "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places." We can't say for sure, but it seems like on that last page Holden is stronger now at those broken places.
Bia wrote: "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."Modern readers have become conditioned by commercial-driven TV to have a short attention span and to expect hyped-up action driven plots. This has spilled over into film and theater as well.
Even when we watch the Superbowl, we are unaware that what we are seeing is not real-time. There's a few seconds delay while computers clip out the slow stuff (guys walking back to the huddle, etc.) and speed up the action by clipping out frames. We think it's real time, but what we're watching is a hyped-up version of a game in progress.
Same with baseball, but even more so. Baseball used to be boring and require a lot of color commentary to make it interesting. Now what we watch is Hyper-baseball. Since that's all that's available, it's all we know.
The collective unconscious has been massaged to accept altered reality as reality.
The psychological impact of all this is too overwhelming to measure. The Baz Luhrmann version of TGG is a classic application of this frenzied concept of "reality," where you lose sense of the demarcation between what is real and what is done for effect. I saw the flick a second time just to see if I saw what I thought I saw. I enjoyed it, but I won't see it again.
It's gimmickry. If a director can't hold an audience with a great script, set and acting talent, lower yourself to gimmickry. I much prefer classic films (American Graffiti, Casablanca, etc.)
Garcia Marquez notwithstanding, realistic fiction in traditional novel form may seem slow and uninteresting because of what TV as done to our sense of perception. This is one of the reasons I gave my TV the boot five years ago. I care too much about realism in literature to have my mind massaged. I even limit my radio exposure. I get my news from newspapers and the Internet.
But I'm digressing.
One of the beautiful things about CiTR is the way it provides a panoramic view of an urban teenager's life in New York City. It's the richness of these details that make the story real while characterizing Holden. But people who have been mesmerized by TV all their lives would probably find these details boring.
It's the richness of these details that make the story real while characterizing Holden. But people who have been mesmerized by TV all their lives would undoubtedly find these details boring. " And the length, listening to that voice throughout, characterizes Holden. There are wonderful short stories, but not many leave such indelible impressions of a character, in a story that is not dramatic in the usual sense. It seems to me that usually such stories are linked, by character or place, to other stories in a collection.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "Ah yes, Bia is right to a point...there's a whole generation of readers who want Holden to pul..."I don't think it was really such an epiphany. I do think the ending is optimistic in a "it sucks but you gotta love it" way, but you have to notice that he only reaches that conclusion after having told the story. Holden is someone who "holds on" to things that happened in the past because he thinks that if he changes he'll become some sort of phony.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that he doesn't 'grow' as much as he 'points out'. He does have a realization, but that doesn't mean he's going to start enjoying life- no: he likes the irony more than the experience. It's therefore about the ilusion of meaning and how we depend on it to live. And that, he's OK with.
No, Holden does grow. Look at the way he talks about DB on the last page, about DB's girlfriend, even about Stradlater and Ackley. This is not the same Holden in the story. This is a Holden who is no longer just holding on to an unrealistic view of the past and an intolerant rejection of "phonies"; he shows on that last page the possibility of accepting these flawed people for who they are, and that's growth. It's subtle, but it's there. And that's life.
Bia wrote: "...he doesn't 'grow' as much as he 'points out'."I think that coming to the realization that Phoebe loves him unconditionally, and that he loves her just as much, is major growth. This is the climax scene, with Holden sitting in the rain "practically bawling" as he watches her ride the carousel (with "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" playing) after she threw a fit and made him promise not to run away.
The capacity to feel loved and to be able to love another human being is a major, if not THE most important step, in emotional maturity.
Ah, so now I understand why I kicked the TV habit as well. Thanks Monty. I did without the idiot box from 1974 until 1980 and then again from 2009 to the present. It´s an addictive waste of time. I was spending too much time watching crap.
Petergiaquinta wrote: " he shows on that last page the possibility of accepting these flawed people for who they are, and that's growth. It's subtle, but it's there. And that's life."Precisely. And it's Phoebe who triggers this change and it's the subtlety that makes the book such a masterpiece and puts it over the head of most teenagers who are looking for something magic to happen, like a flying broom or an invisibility cape.
Monty J wrote: "we are unaware that what we are seeing is not real-time. There's a few seconds delay while computers clip out the slow stuff ..."It's such a fine distinction to make that no one in this forum may see it as worthwhile, but I don't know if Monty's explanation is necessarily true. I know enough about television production to be dangerous. And what I do know is probably now antiquated.
But I think the technology of live television makes a seven or ten second delay inevitable. If you really count every second that takes place between what happens "in reality" and what we see on TV, physics demands a lag. If the editing of live television could or did exist at the level Monty suggests, would any of us have seen that half glimpse of Janet Jackson's star studded right boob? And would the suits want to pay for that "advantage"?
I suspect the NFL telecast's compression-to-create-excitement results from a different structure than what you suggest, Monty. They have more isolated and constantly working video cameras than Carter has little liver pills. Then a director tells a switcher which shots he should "take". That's an oversimplification. The coordination, native intelligence, know-how and technical competence required to pull it off as well as what we watch on any given Sunday is mind-boggling, even if you don't like the end results.
Look, I liked CitR and all this discussion about it has motivated me to place it on my mental reread list once I've gotten through some of my other big reading projects.
But let's put realism into perspective here. Realism is, in fact, not reality. Consider the fourth chapter of Ulysses: A middle aged Jewish citizen of Dublin is up and about in the morning. He talks to the household cat. He walks to the Butcher's shop to buy a pork kidney. Goons at a full sized woman's ass, if I'm recalling correctly. Oh, he also picks up the mail. He comes back home and makes breakfast and tea for himself and his wife. He talks with her a bit. Then he goes to the outhouse and takes a shit. That's the reality of it. But thanks to stream of consciousness technique, literary allusions and a whole host of swirling forms of what have you--there's a lot more than that going on. Is that a departure from realism or is that realism?
Any artifice (a term broader and less subject to debate than "art") involves a reordering of reality. Whether that's a heightening or lowering is a matter of debate and taste.
And what we all consciously perceive as reality may not even be reality. And our consciousness itself may be overrated (Ah, the topic in a new guise!).
The much vaunted opinion that we all have of our own consciousness, Monty, may not be as well deserved as any of us would think.
If anyone would like to go down that particular rabbit hole, I recommend two excellent books. I have yet to finish either of these, but I return to struggle with them from time to time:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
So what am I on and on about? Please don't interpret this as one of my Rottweiler attacks. It's not. It's an invitation to discussion and, perhaps, to consider a different perspective.
I detect more than a whiff of an aesthetic reactionary posture in your post about advanced technology's application to story-telling, Monty. And that's fine, obviously. Love you just the way you are, as Billy Joel said. And that same phenomenon has, at times, tempted me into screeds about how we're becoming drooling apes slavering over the prospects of the next explosion or flash of bright lights, our hands clutched tightly around our bruised and callused genitals. (OK, I exaggerate there, but it's how I sometimes get my jollies).
Is the purpose of art and the job of the artist to push back against these kind of inevitable developments? Or is to tackle them head on and meaningfully put them in the context of the human condition (even if that becomes a depiction of a mitigation of humanity)?
I sense the energy of my argument here (and I've tried to soften it into questions for discussion instead) far exceeds the points Monty originally raised. I just don't know that I entirely buy this decay of the story view and would like to kick that ball around a bit.
Ulysses was a response, in part, to technologies like low cost, mass produced printed material and cinema. Naked Lunch was, in part, a response to the hitherto unimagined systems of control that post WW II technologies made possible (a lot of readers overlook this and, in an unfortunately reductive way, see it as only one man's poetic screams from the depths of heroin addiction).
When home VHS viewing was all the rage amongst consumers and before television had gone HD and plasma, most film makers reduced the panoramic scope of their work. VHS sales had become a key after-market for American films. So why spend time on the two thirds of picture to the left and right of the center that people watching at home were never going to see anyway? Now that the dreaded 3D is all the rage (fuck you, James Cameron), film scripts deliberately feature shit that zooms and pops out, etc. The international film market is now where the money is. That's why action adventure, smash 'em up a-go-go movies are the mainstream norm.
When you know this stuff, it doesn't weaken your abilities to appreciate storytelling even if you consume the kind of stories these developments are creating. The economic determinants from which artifice is never (and art is rarely) free doesn't have to atrophy your attention span or your aesthetic judgement. As long as you attempt to understand them rather than lament the fact that the good old days are gone.
I do my fair share of that kind of lamentation, too. Note that above I gave James Cameron a well-deserved "fuck you." But I can watch Iron Man II all I want and it's not going to deaden my ability to appreciate CitR or A Farewell to Arms or fill in the blank with something even older if you'd like.
People seduced by sensationalism and shiny objects versus purposeful art and what's under the surface of things would be that way regardless of the prevailing technology.
To strike an elitist (or misanthropic) tone and paraphrase Mark 14:7, "the idiots you will always have with you and you can't change them no matter how hard you try. But you won't become one of them merely by looking upon what they look upon. Because you will always see more than they."
You know?
MarkGood to see that you are helping the apostles out re: Mark 14:7. The Christ story was always missing something.
Mark wrote: "You know?"Sure 'Nuff 'N Yes I Do!
Hey Mark, happy publication of the King James Bible today, the version God himself wrote. Nonetheless, I don't think he'd have a problem with your paraphrase there...
Petergiaquinta wrote: "No, Holden does grow. Look at the way he talks about DB on the last page, about DB's girlfriend, even about Stradlater and Ackley. This is not the same Holden in the story. This is a Holden who is ..."-I don't think you got what I said. What I meant was Holden only appreciated them after telling the story. After it seemed to have some meaning, after it happened. Yes, he's able to apreciate the characters, because his mind is able to create an unrealistic version of what happens. It's like Kurt Vonnegut says in Slaughter House 5 when they're arrested in the middle of the war and "nobody had any good war stories" because they were in the middle of war. When he got out of it, he wrote a book. For the same reason Holden wrote: to give it some meaning. (The thing is, though, there is no meaning to war. )
-Of course he loves Phoebe and realizes he can't just leave her in a world with a bunch of phonies (after all, he's supposed to "catch" her:
“ What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.”
Hence the title; of course.) But I'm saying he won't magically start enjoying people and life in general. If he accepted the world of phonies as it is then why would he bother to "save" Phoebe from something that would be, as you think it is, inevitable?
No, he doesn't grow to become a happy accepting person- what you could say is that he found a point to himself. And that's mostly why he wrote too.
Monty J wrote: "And it's Phoebe who triggers this change and it's the subtlety that makes the book such a masterpiece and puts it over the head of most teenagers who are looking for something magic to happen, like a flying broom or an invisibility cape"Precisely. A..."
Ok. I feel the need to defend Harry Potter now because there's much more to it than flying brooms and talking hats. In fact, I doubt there could be any plot more subtle and thought-through than Harry Potter's: the hidden treasures in that text vary from character's names referring to multiple historic figures to actual hidden clues about the plot. Not to mention the astounding character development throughout the books and the philosophical conversations with Dumbledore. The magic is actually background (after all, it was said multiple times that it wasn't the solution to any of their real problems).
Let us be clear, I'm not saying it's a better book than Catcher in the Rye or whatever. I can't judge anyway because I grew up with them. It just upsets me that some people think Harry Potter is just a silly book about magic or a boy overthrowing the Capitol, when it was actually the reason why an otherwise video-game obsessed generation got into reading classics and history books in the first place.
I don't know why but I just somehow couldn't get through Midnight's Children and Fountainhead.And as far as Harry Potter is concerned, I think it's a really good literary work both for kids and adults. I read it for the first time when I was doing my schooling and even now when I go back to it I am impressed by the way it depicts importance of friendship, belief, optimism and standing up for what you believe to be true without it coming off as a lecture.
Calling it just a book about magic or a book for kids would not do this series justice.
Bia wrote: " ... when it was actually the reason why an otherwise video-game obsessed generation got into reading classics and history books in the first place. "I haven't read the series, just the first book, aloud, to my kids when they were quite young. So I can't speak from experience, but I do know that the series managed to do what the marketers call "cross over." In other words, it had a popularity that exceeded a generational one. If it inspired you to read deeper into history and the classics, that's great. I instinctually doubt that it had that pronounced effect on even a wide swath of whatever your generation is.
This seems like the classic case of correlation being mistaken for cause. I'm sure a lot of people of your generation who had a predilection to read cut their teeth, so to speak, on Harry Potter. Then, as their predilection would dictate, they sought other, arguably meatier, material.
That's not the same as saying Harry Potter had this transformative impact on a generation. This I seriously doubt, of it or of a lot of other books that people of other generations might make the same claim about.
I find it interesting that some people just completely balk at any element of fantasy in literature. Years ago I was shocked when my mother told me she hated The Wizard of Oz when she read it out loud to me as a child. My mother and I are both avid readers; unlike her I love a good ghost story and books like the Harry Potter series. Mom still sticks with novels that have plots that could have come from a news story.....with one exception: She read romance novels for many years.
I am not going to say anything bad about romance novels; I just don't read them because they do not appeal to me. The thing is, though, they seem to be much farther removed from reality than a lot of the stuff I read.
Maybe even the most hard-headed realists need an escape from time to time. How wonderful that literature can provide a haven when the real world becomes unsatisfactory.
I wish someone would do a study on the reasons people have their tastes in literature; how personality traits and upbringing factor in their reading selections. This would be fascinating stuff
I can't understand how people think The Catcher in the Rye is overrated but the rest i agree, especially The Great Gatsby. But no, no way The Catcher in the Rye is overrated, i think that book deserves every praise it gets, but they are all personal opinions, i didn't like Gatsby but someone else may think it is the best book ever.
regarding my earlier statements about how literature can withstand technological disruptions:This an interesting take on that intersection.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014...
I wish someone would do a study on the reasons people have their tastes in literature; how personality traits and upbringing factor in their reading selections. This would be fascinating stuff Great idea. I would be fascinated too. A sample of readers that gives fair results would be difficult and maybe enormous . . . People don't need more yucky, reductive labels for those with whom they disagree.
Mark wrote: "regarding my earlier statements about how literature can withstand technological disruptions:This an interesting take on that intersection.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014......"
"Kidult Boywizardsroman," lololo
That was an interesting read. Thanks, Mark. Are we Gutenbergians?
Bia wrote: "It just upsets me that some people think Harry Potter is just a silly book about magic or.."I'm sorry if it came across that way. I should have said it differently. I meant to just use Harry Potter as a point of reference. The fantasy genre must have a lot to offer because a lot of people read it. The point is if readers have been accustomed to something it can require some adjustment when something radically different comes along.
"Holden only appreciated them after telling the story. After it seemed to have some meaning, after it happened. ... he wrote a book. For the same reason Holden wrote: to give it some meaning."
Why is it important when the transformation occurs? The important thing is that it did, revealing important universal truth, and ideally the reader shares in that transformation or epiphany.
"...he doesn't grow to become a happy accepting person- what you could say is that he found a point to himself."
He doesn't have to become a happy accepting person, but he underwent a fundamental change. Holden realized that everyone "phoniness" in them. (It's a universal truth that every human being has at least two personnas--a polished public personna that they show the world and a different private personna that they try to keep hidden.) Holden learned you have to accept people with their flaws. (It's the flaws that make them interesting.)
"And that's mostly why he wrote too."
Are you talking about Holden or Salinger? In any event, it seems a conclusion drawn from facts not in evidence. Unless I missed something.
A few weeks after his collapse, Holden is in a mental hospital writing about his life. Therapists have been recommending journaling to their clients ever since a guy named Pennebaker published a study on the therapeutic benefits of journaling to make sense of troubling experiences--"this madman stuff that happened around Christmas" (or whatever he said.)
And through his journaling Holden is able to make sense of what happened.
It's a good framing device for the novel. It kept us in Holden's head (painful as it was to be there) where we needed to be for a full first-hand sense of his transformation.
And because of the Iceberg Principle, the AH-HAHs may not be the same for everyone. And, here on Goodreads at least, no one's AH-HAH is superior. And someone may not be able to comprehend the AH-HAH of another.
Mark wrote: "If the editing of live television could or did exist at the level Monty suggests, would any of us have seen that half glimpse of Janet Jackson's star studded right boob?"(There was a star stud? I must have blinked. I remember right where I was at that exact moment, at a restaurant on the Embarcadero, waiting for a take-out order.)
You're making my point. The producers WANTED us to see that shot. Think of the millions of eyeballs that stayed glued to TV sets around the world throughout that half-time show and the millions in advertising revenue at stake.
A corollary point here is that if they can they will. And they can.
Ten seconds in today's computer technology is a lifetime, as proven recently in a Wall Street hyper-trading scandal.
For over a decade we have had the ability to compress and decompress video frames for high-speed data transmission. For a programmer to write pre-editing code that "sanitizes" sports footage to glean out slowness and speed-up the action is like child's play. They can also fill-in frames by averaging. CGI does this routinely in film; coders write algorithms to push pixels around like film editors do manually. Everything is digital now; the possibilities are endless.
I can't prove what I am describing, but it explains what I observed a couple of years ago in San Francisco while watching the Giants win the World Series. We could hear the roar of the crowd all the way across town several seconds before we saw the related action on TV.
And during segments of the Superbowl it looked as if someone were fast-forwarding a video tape. Human beings were not capable of moving that fast. And it wasn't a replay. I think they were just buying time to squeeze in another $3 million ad.
Monty J wrote: "can't prove what I am describing, but it explains what I observed a couple of years ago in San Francisco while watching the Giants win the World Series. We could hear the roar of the crowd all the way across town several seconds before we saw the related action on TV.That, I'm fairly confident, would be the delay I mentioned in my post as something that's a matter of physics. The video/audio signal, even with a live telecast, has to travel from the production facility at the stadium to a satellite to the cable head end (or the tower, if it's over the air). It happens pretty damned fast, but it's seconds behind what the fans see in the stadium.
And what little (teeny weeny little bit) I know about stuff like this comes more from an analog age than a digital one, so some of what I say might be outdated. And my post went beyond the issue of whether there are micro-edits on live NFL games. I'm pretty sure it would be too expensive to be worth it. Easier to "call" a tight show. Real time editing power is put toward the replays and highlights you see.
CBS paid for a lot of legal eagles to get out of the $550K fine the FCC slapped on them (it worked). To think CBS planned that wardrobe malfunction goes a little too far toward tinfoil hat/conspiracy theory territory than I'm comfortable with, but, hey, march to your own drummer, Monty.
I'm more interested in discussing the territory of how new technology does or doesn't mitigate the power of literature. I think my initial post (the one that ends with "you know?") put me squarely on the side of "it doesn't matter" or thereabouts. But the Will Self piece from The Guardian has me thinking more about it.
Monty J wrote: "Why is it important when the transformation occurs? The important thing is that it did, revealing important universal truth, and ideally the reader shares in that transformation or epiphany."Well, may be I find it important because the ending sounded very ironic to me, but, like you said, that's just me. Perhaps he really did grow and was able to find the true meaning of things- although when I read it it sounded like a consequence of the process of writing, feeling nostalgic and preserving the past. Because it might have been the first time that happened, I understand now why you'd characterize it as growth. Nevertheless I did find it to be extremely in character.
(about the "that's why he wrote too", I think I meant both Holden and Sallinger wrote to have the illusion of having a point.)
-On Harry Potter, thank you for clearing that out. I didn't want to offend you or to sound offended, I just wanted to share my experience with it.
- To Mark, still on Harry Potter: I actually think lots of children were intrigued by the many cultural references on Harry Potter and have searched for them, which made them learn something. I know quite a few people who have read Jane Austen because Rowling said she was her favourite writer, not to mention mystery books such as Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Besides, many people think that, just because it's a series "for children", that talks about magic, it's not worth a serious interpretation. If you still have your Harry Potter book, try rereading the Harry- Dumbledore conversations and you'll realize he's a rip-off from Aristotle. See the character development in every book- it's simetrical and almost unrealistically perfect.
These books are so often criticized for not dealing with things seriously, but the real magic of it is that it makes all the serious questions, only in a lightly-built atmosphere, so that many readers can question themselves and seek, later on, answers to these questions.
The only reason people don't see it is because Harry Potter is a best-seller and we're taught that what the majority reads is generally not worth our time.
Bia wrote: "Monty J wrote: "These books are so often criticized for not dealing with things seriously, but the real magic of it is that it makes all the serious questions, only in a lightly-built atmosphere, so that many readers can question themselves and seek, later on, answers to these questions. The only reason people don't see it is because Harry Potter is a best-seller and we're taught that what the majority reads is generally not worth our time...."
Dickens was also immensely popular, and Hardy and Chopin immensely reviled (for Jude the Obscure and the Awakening). That's not what matters so much as how a work of fiction endures, continues to connect with people. We can't know, yet, about Harry Potter. But what I have tried to read struck me as cinematic, I don't feel a connection with Harry as a literary character who lives off the page, or expresses a socio-political dynamic as Dickens, Hardy, Chopin, O'Connor, Faulkner and other authors' characters do. But maybe you do, and that's what matters to you, of course. I felt the same sort of connection to Hans Christian Andersen characters but they did not get near the attention as HP, and I have to say that I don't mind; they were characters with whom I identified as a child and still identify if I am honest. It is impossible to describe Andersen's peculiar magic so I won't try. I could wax indignant because he did not get the literary respect he still deserves, but to what end? Will you read him and share my admiration? Maybe so, maybe not.
Story of Pi - I listened to it. I had to work to finish it. Way over rated. I think Outlander is overrated. And "50 Shades of Grey" is the worst thing I have attempted to read in a decade.Liked Catcher in the Rye when I read it in high school.
Atlas Shrugged is too much work for a rather simplistic theory. But I did read it; also in high school.
Agree that Gatsby is overrated. Always preferred Steinbeck and Hemingway to Fitzgerald.
I liked Twilight but would have liked it better if it wasn't YA. Bella should have gotten laid early and often.
Bia wrote: " I feel the need to defend Harry Potter now because there's much more to it than flying brooms and talking hats. In fact, I doubt there could be any plot more subtle and thought-through than Harry Potter's: the hidden treasures in that text vary from character's names referring to multiple historic figures to actual hidden clues about the plot. ..."I think that you can find the same things in the Catcher as what you have mentioned above. I don't want to create a wall of text or repeat myself, but if you search my name on this thread you will see why I think that the Catcher is not a coming of age story but an encrypted story of war, money and power....conspiracy. How you are suppose to play by the rules but those that rule over you and they are the wealthy that go to these kinds of schools, and gain connections, you don't have the benefit of. Holden says they are a bunch of crooks. Well if you look up names and watch the movie the 39 Steps by Alfred Hitchcock. I think you will at least question what they say The Catcher is about. I think you will see that the Catcher book itself was Salinger's way of saving children (soldiers) from going to war (cliff).
Making me want to read Catcher again. I listened to Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five", and it was very much about children (soldiers) and going off cliffs (war). Certainly a message we need to hear today. I tend to think of Salinger and Vonnegut together. [Edit - I will try to set aside sometime to visit Catcher again with that theme in mind.]
Forney_bill wrote: " I tend to think of Salinger and Vonnegut together. "Clearly, since you just attributed the latter's best known book to the former author.
Mark wrote: "Forney_bill wrote: " I tend to think of Salinger and Vonnegut together. "Clearly, since you just attributed the latter's best known book to the former author."
Ah - thanks. Fixed.
Cosmic wrote: "I think you will see that the Catcher book itself was Salinger's way of saving children (soldiers) from going to war (cliff). "Yes, I very much agree with that. If you read my previous comments, you'll see that I compared it to Slaughter-House Five as well.
Horny Bil wrote "I liked Twilight but would have liked it better if it wasn't YA. Bella should have gotten laid early and often."That's an interesting point. Bella could have waxed philosophical on the different techniques and sexual performance of humans vs vampires vs werewolves. I'm imagining a parody: Fifty Shades of Twilight. Maybe two "wrongs" could make a hilarious "right?"
Bia wrote: "Yes, I very much agree with that ..."To share some general thoughts that are in response to some of this thread's detailed posts about CitR as of late. If no other reason than I like to write.
I believe earlier in this thread we discussed and even agreed upon the basic differences between symbolism and allegory. If I'm recalling correctly, Cosmic has even said that he sees CitR as allegory. He makes no bones about it. Correct me if I'm wrong, please, Cosmic.
I think I'm on record (and I think I might want to change my mind) as saying that CitR contains such a specific and detailed symbolism that it verges on allegory. My statement that dicked around in the arguably non-existent gray area between the two was what kicked off our discussion about allegory versus symbolism.
Monty's analyses (I may have said this before) tend to build impressive analytical infrastructures that encompass most every element of a novel in their pursuit to examine what it means. For example, his analyses of Hemingway's The Old Man in the Sea, which I've read versions of on more than one occasion.
And now we have Bia who sees echoes of Aristotle in Harry Potter. That's no slight. Perfectly believable. Although, Aristotle does have the distinction of saying it first, I suppose.
I get it. I respect it. And I don't want to challenge any of it out of some fruitless contrarianism. But on an intuitive level that's automatic or at least not entirely the result of any intellectual process, I often balk at the specificity. I don't know why, truthfully. I tell myself that at times it feels like reductive exercises that render the works of literature into a series of interlocked algebra problems where we must solve for "X".
Somewhere undiscovered (or at least rarely traveled) in the human mind is that fine line between one of our abilities and one of our urges. The former is our keen pattern recognition that solves so many puzzles. The latter is our innate desire to bring order to chaos that can give birth to confirmation bias. The border between these two areas is as heady as it is muddy and exploring it might result in nothing more than the realization that in the end, what can we really know for certain?
Am I the only one that has this feeling that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar even if there's room to make the case that it's something more? Or that if there's room to make the case, the authors themselves thought they were simply writing about a cigar and nothing more?
Regardless, these kinds of specific and scouring every detail analyses are healthy, I think. At their purest form they exemplify art inspiring people (and isn't that one of the, if not the, main point of art?). The analyses become secondary creative acts.
I know I'm repeating myself when I quote this bit from the recent HBO series True Detectives (which, by the way, Monty, is imho a solid example of TV that's not at all trite). "Do you have a chapter in one of those books on jumping to conclusions?" says Detective Marty Hart to his partner, Rust. “You attach an assumption to a piece of evidence, you start to bend the narrative to support it and prejudice yourself.”
I'm comforted by my repetition, incidentally, because it's a sign that I might have far more consistency in my views than I would have otherwise imagined. The screenplay writing of True Detectives was deliciously "meta." On one level it was a mystery, a police procedural, a thriller, even a bromance that was at first disguised as two lead characters in tempestuous conflict with one another. On another level, and this would be the "meta" angle, it invited the viewer to think about and question storytelling tropes, idioms and mechanisms that have been with us since the epic of Gilgamesh. In that quote from Detective Marty Hart, I think, True Detectives invited viewers to reflect on how much of our interpretation of a story is actually there. And how much of it we provide in a response to it. That doesn't make the latter bad, mind you. But while "the unexamined life is not worth living," rare are our opportunities to also examine the part that does the examination. That kind of thinking may only lead to some sort of circular madness, but I thought I'd bring it up.
By the way, the irony that I'm reading a whole lot into a TV script snippet as a way of essentially asking, "are we reading to deeply into some texts?" is not lost on me. So there's no escape.
Something to think about on a Sunday. And not just any Sunday. Forty-four years ago today, we must never forget.
http://bit.ly/1jsNGTb
Mark wrote: "Bia wrote: "To share some general thoughts that are in response to some of this thread's detailed posts about CitR as of late. If no other reason than I like ..."I see your point. I do feel like I look too deeply into fiction sometimes, and see meaning where the author meant only enough for that sentence.
The reason I think everyone sees different books with the same title is because we read to interprete our own selves and our own lives, that don't have to be similar to the life of the guy who wrote it.
It's that thing theorists say: the book does not belong to the author anymore once it's out there, published. The book belongs to the reader and sometimes the reader sees things that didn't even cross the author's head while writing it.
I think though most of what people do is talk about the intentions of the text, and all we discuss is what the writer meant by saying something- and taht's interesting, because it shows that a part of us still cares. We still have the illusion that one of us could be right, or that the author is right or whatever.
I saw irony in the end of Catcher in the Rye, as opposed to a big epiphany. Perhaps I read to much 19th century literature. Or may be I myself am too ironical-I honestly don't know. I wrote a book a couple of years ago (not trying to compare myself to Sallinger; just sharing an experience) and, while I was rereading it, I realized a bunch of stuff that hadn't even occured me when I was writing. That doesn't mean it couldn't be perceived. That didn't make it any less true, or even more. It was just something else.
Mark wrote: "...sometimes a cigar is just a cigar even if there's room to make the case that it's something more?"Yup.
Hemingway made it clear in an interview that The Old Man and the Sea was just a story about catching a fish and nothing more.
But that doesn't prevent people from making of it whatever they will. Every writer must know this and take it into account.
Hemingway may have THOUGHT it was just a fish story, but unconsciously something else may have been at work. And I suspect it was. And a lot of other readers do as well.
An author may consciously INTEND for the cigar to be just a cigar, but unconsciously something more may be at play. Or not.
Hemingway's Iceberg Principle acknowledges that readers will invariably interpret a story according to their own experience.
Lord of the Flies was written by Golding as a rebuttal to a Pollyanna book, Coral Island, about how boys marooned on a deserted island would behave. He had no clue it would be interpreted as a warning about fascism until that was pointed out to him. (This per a Youtube interview of him.)
After 50 or so rejections, the book was reluctantly published by a minor publisher. Initially the book was thrashed by critics and sold poorly. Once the book's deeper meaning sunk in it began to take off. And history was made.
So, is a cigar ever just a cigar? Yes and no. But literary analysis is sometimes essential to glean from literature a book's "true" meaning, even if the author wasn't conscious of that meaning as he/she wrote.
(Thanks, btw, for the Kent State clip! We DO need to be reminded.)
Bia: "The reason I think everyone sees different books with the same title is because we read to interprete our own selves and our own lives, that don't have to be similar to the life of the guy who wrote it."
Yup.
Bia: "It's that thing theorists say: the book does not belong to the author anymore once it's out there, published."
Double Yup.
Bia wrote: "I actually think lots of children were intrigued by the many cultural references on Harry Potter and have searched for them, which made them learn something. I know quite a few people who have read Jane Austen because Rowling said she was her favourite writer, not to mention mystery books such as Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."This is undeniable, but brings us to another point: how are they reading them? Reading Austen or Stevenson or anybody else is not an end in and of itself, for I have met many people who read Austen because of Twilight, or Hardy because of 50 Shades even, and were completely dissappointed at how different it was from their YA comfort zone, how slow things were, how boring it all seemed. They quickly sank back into their comfort zone, making Harlequin Books' bank account bigger by the day.
We need to consider that most YA books are made to fit people with a certain mindset —a hyperaccelerated cultural mindset that does not have to do with reading alone, but rather with a general view on life. You can't just tell people "Go read Kafka" and expect them to become great readers without a big collective, cultural effort to make people less dependent on immediacy and constant social interaction. And that's not going to happen soon, sadly.
Mark wrote: "regarding my earlier statements about how literature can withstand technological disruptions:This an interesting take on that intersection.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014......"
Regarding the headline of Will Self's article in the Guardian ("The Novel Is Dead"), Ian Gray posted this link to an article by John Barth published a few years ago in The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/a...
In it an ancient Egyptian scribe laments, "Would I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange, in new language that has not been used, free from repetition, not an utterance that has grown stale, which men of old have spoken." (I took the longer version of the quote from The Burden of the Past and the English Poet by Walter Jackson Bate.)
What's that Mr. Natural used to say? "'Twas ever thus..."
Daniel wrote: "You can't just tell people "Go read Kafka" and expect them to become great readers without a big collective, cultural effort to make people less dependent on immediacy and constant social interaction. And that's not going to happen soon, sadly. " I don't think so either and that's too bad. I don't understand how and why high school reading became less challenging. If difficult reading is not introduced in high school, how many students will learn to enjoy difficulty in any sort of learning? I worked as a TA for several anthropology courses; after countless reviews and meetings over poor exam results, I saw that too many students did not read well enough to understand the (simple as possible) exam questions about concepts, etc. I don't think it's a matter of 'I.Q.'; I do think that reading literature, in high school, that required them to stretch their reading ability, and do close reading, would have helped them.
Kallie writes, I don't understand how and why high school reading became less challenging.At the moment, public education is facing a crisis regarding the question of the importance of reading literature and how reading the novel should be approached in schools.
First of all there is a devaluation of reading fiction in general in public education right now; unfortunately, fools who fail to understand the importance of reading fiction are at the wheel of public education, and they are responsible for a de-emphasis on fiction. These monkeys wish to replace as much fiction as possible with what they call information texts. This is happening at the lowest levels in education and working its way into the high schools now.
In addition to that, there is a devaluation in reading difficult texts in the class room or in reading full texts. Because we live in a culture that has devalued reading in general, the response of public education administrators has been to go along with that trend and do their best to de-emphasize the importance of reading outside the classroom. If students will not come to class prepared to discuss 20 pages of Jane Austen, instead of administrators holding firm to the importance of students doing that reading outside of class, they have begun to question the necessity of assigning this much reading outside of class for students. Instead of supporting teachers by insisting that students read and come prepared to the English classroom, administrators have begun to pressure teachers to move to a model of assigning less reading outside of class and reading excerpts in class.
And, because these administrators reject the significance of reading full works of fiction because they do not understand the essential benefits of struggling through a long novel to arrive at meaning and self-understanding, the kind of thing for a young mind that Will Self alluded to in his essay ("the capability of the extended prose form itself, which, unlike any other art form, is able to enact self-analysis"), these administrators driving the focus of public education dismiss the way a novel can help a young person not only better understand the world around him but also understand the vast world inside of himself. If the only thing in reading texts that matters for these idiots at the helm of public education right now is information retrieval, they argue it can be done as effectively and to a greater purpose by reading non-fiction excerpts from newspapers, magazines and essays.
Two words: The Bible. :3
Kallie wrote: " I don't think it's a matter of 'I.Q.'; I do think that reading literature, in high school, that required them to stretch their reading ability, and do close reading, ..."Agreed. A good teacher makes 1,000% difference. I've had some duds and had a real dud teach one of my daughters in middle school. SHE needed to be TAKING math instead of teaching it.
I agree with Peter. Even here in Cambridge, home to Harvard University, the public school system places very little emphasis on literature. Students are not taught how to tackle demanding novels. No wonder so many of them either have no interest in novels or gravitate toward reading purely as an escape.
It's not only that people aren't being taught to tackle dificult novels; it's that they're being actively advised against thinking that fiction can have value. If something can't be measured objectively and sold easily, it flat out doesn't exist for most people.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "Kallie writes, I don't understand how and why high school reading became less challenging.At the moment, public education is facing a crisis regarding the question of the importance of reading l..."
Well said! Bravo!
Petergiaquinta wrote: Instead of supporting teachers by insisting that students read and come prepared to the English classroom, administrators have begun to pressure teachers to move to a model of assigning less reading outside of class and reading excerpts in class.Over here there's even been talk about banning homework in high school - no exaggeration. Didn't go through, but it's pretty telling that it was a topic for discussion at all.
Paul Martin wrote: "Over here there's even been talk about banning homework in high school - no exaggeration. Didn't go through, but it's pretty telling that it was a topic for discussion at all."That's because in Norway it appears you still make decisions regarding public education based on reason and/or common sense.
Here in America, the current trend in public schools is to devalue homework by making it count for very little or nothing at all. The prevailing theory by the egghead idiots in charge is that once the pressure of getting graded on homework is taken off students, they will do it better and smarter because they will be doing it for the simple sake of the love of learning. Test scores will rise exponentially! Let a thousand flowers bloom!
Of course, teachers and parents (who know far more about the work habits and motivations of kids than administrators or the so-called experts) are generally opposed to these trends. However, what teachers or parents want matters for very little in education these days.
The Bible and the KoranAnything by Ayn Rand
Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, and The Sound and the Fury
The Wheel of Time series
Anything by L. Ron Hubbard
19th century chick-lit in general
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We´ve said it before and said it again, many of us who have disdain for TGG do so not on acount of the points that you make but because of perceived faults in the writing and storytelling. I, for one, find much that is sloppy about the writing of this tale, and if you search through all the TGG threads you will find them all. I will not repeat here my criticisms.