The Catcher in the Rye
discussion
The Most Overrated Books
Geoffrey wrote: "No, they are capable of thought, it´s just that you can´t construct many thinking bubbles from a series of bow-wows.Animals don´t relish the pain that they administer other animals. If a leopard c..."
Domestic dogs are not wild animals. We feed them. They don't attack other animals or people as food prey and can't be compared to leopards who attack gazelle because they must do that to survive. I'm not trying to give dogs a bad rap here. I've just known of some who attack for reasons that are not clear, while other dogs would not, ever attack. Maybe it is some left-over atavistic thing. All I'm saying is that we know very little about what goes on in dog's minds. I think the link Monty posted supports that. Was that instinctive? If so, more dogs would risk their lives to save other dogs, and humans.
I'm a bit sorry I included dogs in my spew about the amorality of the animal kingdom. I know several people passionate about dogs as animal companions and clearly Kallie is one. Respect. I had my heart stolen by a Boston Terrier who I lost custody of in my divorce. She's passed away now. Up until the time Lulu came into my life, I had no idea what it meant to love a dog and I would have told you with confidence that I never did and never would.The fact that dogs' evolution itself has been so inextricably intertwined with the evolution of the human species makes them--imho ... which who cares about anyway?--above and beyond my anthropomorphize observation in the previous post.
Doggedly,
mwl
Kallie wrote: "So are you saying that dogs behave instinctively from their particular temperament, and react instinctively to different humans and dogs depending on the 'vibe' they get from them? It still seems ..."Yes they have thought, and we love them and they love us- on this we surely agree. I talk to my dog all the time, he "talks" to me. We do this wherever we go, I don't care who's watching. It's fun and I love it.
Mark wrote: "I'm a bit sorry I included dogs in my spew about the amorality of the animal kingdom. I know several people passionate about dogs as animal companions and clearly Kallie is one. Respect. I had my h..."Get a dog!
Basenji's rule! Can we agree that Goodbye My Lady, Old Yeller, Call of the Wild and White Fang are NOT overrated? Are there any overrated "dog" books?
You make a good point. There are no over rated dog books . But,sorry, Great Danes rule:)
Did not enjoy Call of the Wild at all, but then again, I don't think I was supposed to, really...
That review of Timbuktu makes me sad for not liking it better, and I'm almost tempted to reread it now. I don't think I will, though. My two experiences with Auster left me feeling cold.No one's mentioned I Know Where the Red Fern Grows!
For a real tearjerker also- The Art of Racing in the Rain. Not over-rated, in my opinion.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "That review of Timbuktu makes me sad for not liking it better, and I'm almost tempted to reread it now. I don't think I will, though. My two experiences with Auster left me feeling cold.No one's ..."
I have not read this, very popular with middle school students.
I read a book by Auster where I became deeply intrigued by the device he was using (sort of creating a fiction within a fiction), although I was more knocked out by the possibilities of that as device than by the way he used it. What was that damned book's title?The Book of Illusions!
At first you think it's a story about David Zimmer. Then Zimmer becomes obsessed with scholarship about the silent film star Hector Mann. And the career of Mann is revealed in such detail that he becomes as important as Zimmer.
And then I forget what happens. The two worlds collide in some way.
But I was intrigued by all the detail that went into fabricating the details of Mann's career.
Timbuktu was a lark at times and dreadful at times. Nothing in that book that would make me want to go back to it. The Book of Illusions, maybe.
Whoa, Mark! Did you hit 2000 with that post?I finished Fault in Our Stars last night, a book that's popped up in our thread...I believe it was Brooke who laid into it sumpin fierce a couple of weeks ago...I'm still processing it, but that book calls to question this word "overrated." Is it "overrated" as YA? No, not at all...I suppose it's one of the better books I've read in that minor genre (!) in a long time. It may be a "great" YA book. But a great work of literature...? Too bad the "ha ha" girl is gone...we could have a rollicking discussion about this one!
Kallie wrote: "Geoffrey wrote: "No, they are capable of thought, it´s just that you can´t construct many thinking bubbles from a series of bow-wows.Animals don´t relish the pain that they administer other animal..."
Kallie wrote: "Geoffrey wrote: "No, they are capable of thought, it´s just that you can´t construct many thinking bubbles from a series of bow-wows.
Animals don´t relish the pain that they administer other animal..."
Kallie
You didn´t read my posting correctly. My point was that animals don´t take a sadistic glee in their behavour.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "Whoa, Mark! Did you hit 2000 with that post?I finished Fault in Our Stars last night, a book that's popped up in our thread...I believe it was Brooke who laid into it sumpin fierce a couple of we..."
Man, that book is laaame. Even if we were to accept and forgive the fact that cardboard cutout characters are apparently a requisite for YA novels, Green's use of intertextuality is awful, and his portrayal of sickness ranges from pedestrian to insulting.
I won't deny the presence of SOME of the flaws that others have noted in it, but overall, I loved The Fault in Our Stars. I liked the theme of learning to live life and make the most of the limited time that you have and being able to look back on that time and on your choices without doubt or regret.
Geoffrey wrote: "Kallie wrote: "Geoffrey wrote: "No, they are capable of thought, it´s just that you can´t construct many thinking bubbles from a series of bow-wows.Animals don´t relish the pain that they administ..."
I can read, Geoffrey. My point continues to be that although we like to think we've got them sussed (they are only animals, after all) we don't really know all about their minds and feelings.
Daniel writes that Green's use of intertextually is awful, and I'm not going to disagree; however, I applaud the way he attempts to work other books into the book. I just don't think the novel demonstrates a good grasp of either Sonnet 55 or what Cassius is saying about the fault (not being) in our stars...I don't want to imply that Green's a dummy; clearly that's not so. But his characters don't have a good handle on the books they're reading and discussing.And no, Augustus, it's not a metaphor, you stupid twit.
Here's something though, speaking of intertextuality: I can't help but think that Hazel and Augustus's quest to seek out the author Peter Van Houten grows out of Holden's lines early in Catcher when he tells us, "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though..."
I am going to refocus back to The Catcher in the Rye. I was just reading about the Phoney War. It is relevant to The Catcher because phoney is mentioned in The Catcher 33 times and also my post in this group and in the group BREAKING THE CODE TO THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
I think that the suggestion that The Catcher in the Rye is overrated is due to the fact that it has been misinterpreted. If read in the context of WW2 and deciphered through words, literature, songs, and history it would prove relevant and even prophetic....in that he predicts the Cuban Crisis before it JFK is elected.
Petergiaquinta wrote: " "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though..."Salinger, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Twain, Wolfe, Grey, Conrad, Verne, Wells, Shakespeare, Locke, Goethe, Emerson, Thoreau, Smith, Swift, Karr, Walls, Faulkner, Chomksky, Zinn, Wilson, Baldwin, Olsen, Cheever, Carver... happens all the time.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "Daniel writes that Green's use of intertextually is awful, and I'm not going to disagree; however, I applaud the way he attempts to work other books into the book. I just don't think the novel demo..."I thought Augustus' metaphor was stupid, too!!!
...but I don't think Green intended for the title to accurately embody the spirit and meaning of the Shakespeare quote. He intended for it to be a twist or a play on it. In JC, Cassius was saying that we do have some control over our own destinies. However, in The Fault in Our Stars, there are actually some things that Hazel and Gus cannot control, like their illnesses.
Subtlety is not one of Green's gifts. He couldn't resist the urge to explain everything ad nauseum. It took me right out of the story. YA shouldn't be "dumbed down" and I felt Green underestimated his readers. Or was he really just writing the rough draft of a screenplay for the movie?
Faulkner.Id love to call him up on the phone.
Carrie wrote: "Faulkner.Id love to call him up on the phone."Which one of his works do you like best and why?
I started reading The Sound and The Fury but I didn't get very far. Maybe you can spread your passion.
Carrie wrote: "Faulkner.Id love to call him up on the phone"And talk about..? One of my favorite authors
Monty J wrote: "Salinger, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Twain, Wolfe, Grey, Conrad, Verne, Wells, Shakespeare, Locke, Goethe, Emerson, Thoreau, Smith, Swift, Karr, Walls, Faulkner, Chomksky, Zinn, Wilson, Baldwin, Cheever, Carver... happens all the time. "Happens to me too: Austen, Bronte, Dickinson, Bowen, Porter, Mandelstam, O'Connor, Powell, Bowles, O'Brien, Bainbridge, Malcolm, Ehrenreich . . .
Mochaspresso wrote: "Petergiaquinta wrote: "Daniel writes that Green's use of intertextually is awful, and I'm not going to disagree; however, I applaud the way he attempts to work other books into the book. I just don..."But their illnesses lie within themselves; their own cells rebel against them. I think that's what he was going for, anyway. It's definitely not a stupid book, and miles ahead of the most infamous examples of YA drivel, but I still found it to be superficial in the big scheme of things. My biggest problem with it is the fandom, though. They have created a bulk of cliché statements about the book which are not only false, but completely vexing, i.e.: "It's not like typical cancer stories" (which ones?!), or "It's an unsentimental book about death" (when its sentimentality borders on Nicholas Sparks at some points).
Btw, my biggest problem with intertextuality here doesn't lie in the title or the Van Houten thing. Those are the better instances of it. My problem resides, rather, in the way Hazel spews out poetry by Eliot and Ginsberg, which is supposed to show her as a cultured and interesting figure, but the book offers no actual commentary on these pieces. They only serve to make Hazel look good, to prompt Augustus' "God, you're sexy"s. And I know it probably would not have looked natural to have a teenage narrative voice offer an intricate commentary on Eliot, but please take into account that the readers of YA often seek out bibliographic references of this sort only after they read them in one of their books. Thus, mentioning Eliot and Ginsberg only to reduce them to an inane pseudo-interpretation ("Howl is about drugs") prompts many young readers to face classic works with erronous preconceptions.
Daniel, it was as if Green was trying to sneak SAT material into the story like Venn diagrams and Maslow's Theory. It bugged the crap out of me and came off as condescending. And I agree with your contention that many of the name-drops were not artfully worked into the plot. He needed to show us how these special kids came to acquire this profound knowledge. He didn't set it up well. I'm being overly harsh, I know, but I hate it when YA books get a free pass. YA books should have as much literary merit as other genres---and the good ones do!
Daniel wrote: "Mochaspresso wrote: "Petergiaquinta wrote: "Daniel writes that Green's use of intertextually is awful, and I'm not going to disagree; however, I applaud the way he attempts to work other books int...""Howl is about drugs." Whoa. Is this Green's interpretation of 'Howl'? If so, he didn't understand the poem. Young people get the gist of any writer if they are really affected by the writing. They don't have to ta;l intricate academic speak to get that across. I don't think it's harsh to expect a real connection from a writer referencing other writers -- YA novelist or no.
Kallie wrote: "Daniel wrote: "Mochaspresso wrote: "Petergiaquinta wrote: "Daniel writes that Green's use of intertextually is awful, and I'm not going to disagree; however, I applaud the way he attempts to work ..."In all fairness and truthfulness, The Fault in Our Stars does not actually say that Howl is about drugs. Hazel quips that the guys in the poem take more drugs than she does......which isn't exactly a lie, imo.
Cosmic wrote: "Carrie wrote: "Faulkner.Id love to call him up on the phone."Which one of his works do you like best and why?
I started reading The Sound and The Fury but I didn't get very far. Maybe you can ..."
A Light inAugust was the first Faulkner I read as a freshman in college. I liked it so I read As I Lay Dying which I LOVED! I love the intimate language..it makes sense to me. I love the honesty of the characters,it's all so funny, horrible,and great all in one. Try it, it's a less daunting book than The Sound and the Fury.
Maria wrote: "Which books do you think are overrated? Here's a quick sampling from various internet sites that recommend skipping these:
The Catcher in the Rye
Moby Dick
The Great Gatsby
Waiting for Godot
The..."
All of these books are impervious to criticism about their merits.
With the exception of The Da Vinci Code and Twilight which are trifling popular entertainment, each of the books you claim to be overrated are in fact landmark works of literature, important for a variety of reasons.
Okay, so The Catcher in the Rye has lost much of its revolutionary zeal 63 years later, but only because the anti-hero has become an uniquitous American archetype at this point. THowever, the book still retains its power to inspire young readers because it is a story told directly to teenagers by a teenager. There is much to criticize about Holden Caufield, to be sure. But just because the character is deeply flawed does not mean the novel is without merit.
One thing is for sure every generation of teen goes through its own angst. Dismissing Salinger's novel as over-rated without carefully considering its specific merits and drawbacks is foolhardy. If nothing else, Holden inspires teenagers to tell their own stories, to make their own observations and criticisms about the world they inhabit.
And don't get me started on Moby Dick. It is only one of the most important American novels in history. C.G. Jung called Moby Dick "that great American novel" which it is on many different levels from characterization to economics to social history. I like the novel because I like Melville's dark, sardonic sense of humor. Along with Bartleby The Scrivener, Moby Dick is one of his darkest comedies and a brilliant commentary on the consequences of obessive compulsive desire.
By what measure are you judging any of these books as over-rated anyway? Each of the novels on your list is too complex to dismiss wholesale, so you are going to have to be more specific with your criticisms.
Pjpenscribe wrote: "MOne thing is for sure every generation of teen goes through its own angst. Dismissing Salinger's novel as over-rated without carefully considering its specific merits and drawbacks is foolhardy. If nothing else, Holden inspires teenagers to tell their own stories, to make their own observations and criticisms about the world they inhabit."...By what measure are you judging any of these books as over-rated anyway?
Bravo! Sanity and reason rise from the ashes.
Mochaspresso wrote: "Kallie wrote: "Daniel wrote: "Mochaspresso wrote: "Petergiaquinta wrote: "Daniel writes that Green's use of intertextually is awful, and I'm not going to disagree; however, I applaud the way he at..."No, of course it isn't a lie. That's the thing. Howl is about drugs. The word "Hamartia" is a fatal flaw. But Howl isn't ONLY about drugs, nor is "hamartia" ANY kind of fatal flaw. I'm sure Green's heart was in the right place, and that he tried to condense culture into bite-sized, friendly interpretations that teens could easily get into, but it ends up reducing the range of meaning of the works or terms in question, which is not something to cheer for imo.
That said, I too, like S.W., know I'm being overtly harsh. It was a good read, entertaining, it made me chuckle several times and is written in fine prose. I only feel that it could have handled its themes and resources with far more depth.
I have always, at whatever age, preferred books that didn't 'talk down' or simplify. And there's no need. Whether or not I totally 'get' a book, if it's really good I feel intrigued and try again later.
Pjpenscribe wrote: "And don't get me started on Moby Dick. It is only one of the most important American novels in history. C.G. Jung called Moby Dick "that great American novel" which it is on many different levels from characterization to economics to social history. I like the novel because I like Melville's dark, sardonic sense of humor. Along with Bartleby The Scrivener, Moby Dick is one of his darkest comedies and a brilliant commentary on the consequences of obessive compulsive desire...."
I think that what gives a book merit as not being overrated is that it can be read on many levels. That it can't be completely grasped with the first pass through. That it must be digested...maybe even through five stomachs.
I am read in Ulysses. But while reading it I realized that I needed to read Hamlet, as well as The Odyssey as well as Charles LambThe Adventures of Ulysses which played an important role in James Joyce's reflections as a child.
I think that the same kind of attention is missed when people read The Catcher In The Rye. It is like they don't see the author and they just listen to the commentaries that have been written about this book.
I think if people would ask themselves why did Holden say he would like to call up Isak Dinesen but not Of Human Bondage they could not answer this without some knowledge of the two authors and the books they are popular for.
Many of you have said that there are authors that you would like to call up and call friends. I am sure that through their books you consider them friends. So how can you gloss over this nugget and not be curious about what he is saying?
Books that are living books should make you ask questions. They should lead you to an answer that the author has pondered.
What do you think Salinger's "Moby Dick" was? How did he use his writing to catch him? I would say war WW2 and then wars in general.
So why do I think that he mentions Isak Denison? Because in her book Out of Africa she acknowledges that the white invaders were the squatters on the land of Africa...rather than the Africans. He had empathy for the less fortunate an less for the exploiters.
W. Somerset Maugham on the other hand was part of the British Secret service in WW1. He was a spy. He worked for the exploiters.
Another author that Salinger mentions is Ring Lardner. Now Ring Lardner wrote about sports. His book You Know Me Al: A Busher's Letters
is about how they rigged the games.
What does this have to do with the Catcher in the Rye. Does he talk about life being a game? How was WW2 a phoney war? A game played out on the theater of war?
I there are more references to WW2 and the Bull Market....
Oh yeah I didn't say anything about that did I. Well you see when Holden is talking to the man, teacher, Mr. "Survival of the Fittest", Spencer; he tells us that it is easy to think about one thing and talk to teachers. And what he was thinking about was shooting bulls.
Do you remember that part? Well it does remind me a lot of the streams of consciousness that is in Ulysses by James Joyce.
Just love this group and all the intelligent conversations we have around our favorite and sometimes not so favorite books.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "Whoa, Mark! Did you hit 2000 with that post?I finished Fault in Our Stars last night, a book that's popped up in our thread...I believe it was Brooke who laid into it sumpin fierce a couple of we..."
The movie has been reviewed widely. I thought you might be interested in this article on the author appearing in The New Yorker.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/20...
My book club might pick Fault in our Stars as our July read. I have to be honest, I'm not interested. Nor do I want to see the movie. I think it's all the hype. I keep hearing about it everywhere I go. I find that books that are over hyped, almost always prove to be major let downs/disappointments for me. As an example Pillars of the Earth. I just couldn't do it. I've abandoned the book several times,never finishing. I really really wanted to love it.
Kallie wrote: "Geoffrey wrote: "Kallie wrote: "Geoffrey wrote: "No, they are capable of thought, it´s just that you can´t construct many thinking bubbles from a series of bow-wows.Animals don´t relish the pain t..."
I´ve never heard of an animal torturing another animal.
Geoffrey wrote: "Kallie wrote: "Geoffrey wrote: "Kallie wrote: "Geoffrey wrote: "No, they are capable of thought, it´s just that you can´t construct many thinking bubbles from a series of bow-wows.Animals don´t re..."
The only case I am familiar with is killer whales toying with baby seals before eating them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0qMT...
They did the same with a dolphin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_YN5...
Pjpenscribe wrote: "I thought you might be interested in this article on the author appearing in The New Yorker.http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/20... "
That's an interesting article that provides some excellent insight into the author...I can't fault John Green for what he does. He's getting kids to read, and that's a big deal to me. So I kind of feel like a schmuck for not being open-hearted enough to embrace the novel without applying the qualifier "for a YA book..."
I do have a minor quibble with the article, however; the author calls Catcher "a novel that today would almost certainly be marketed as YA," and I don't think that's true. And if it were in fact marketed that way, I doubt it would sell all that well to the same kids who are reading Stars or Divergent today. Just because the narrator is a teenager doesn't make a book YA material. The Goldfinch isn't YA; neither is Huck Finn, or Rule of the Bone, Russell Banks' modern reworking of Twain.
Geoffrey wrote: "..I've never heard of an animal torturing another animal..."Cats do it to mice all the time. I have seen cats ride the back of a dog and spur it till the dog bled. Didn't kill the dog but got the point across.
Petergiaquinta wrote: " Just because the narrator is a teenager doesn't make a book YA material."I've been to more than writers' conference where the agents unanimously classified a book as YA based solely on the age of the protagonist.
Daniel wrote: "No, of course it isn't a lie. That's the thing. Howl is about drugs. The word "Hamartia" is a fatal flaw. But Howl isn't ONLY about drugs, nor is "hamartia" ANY kind of fatal flaw. I'm sure Green's heart was in the right place, and that he tried to condense culture into bite-sized, friendly interpretations that teens could easily get into, but it ends up reducing the range of meaning of the works or terms in question, which is not something to cheer for imo.That said, I too, like S.W., know I'm being overtly harsh. It was a good read, entertaining, it made me chuckle several times and is written in fine prose. I only feel that it could have handled its themes and resources with far more depth.
I think a very important aspect of intertextuality is how the "literary name drop" fits into the scene that it is occurring in. Imo, Howl was not the most important or most relevant literary reference to that particular scene. The poem that Hazel recites to Gus immediately after the Howl mention (Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock") was the much more profound (...to what is happening at that moment in TFIOS) reference.
FWIW, I like that Green doesn't always ruin a scene by spelling out how the other works mentioned connect with or pertain to what is happening in The Fault in Our Stars. The reader either has to already be familiar with the work or go read it and make those connections for themselves.
Mochaspresso wrote: "Daniel wrote: "FWIW, I like that Green doesn't always ruin a scene by spelling out how the other works mentioned connect with or pertain to what is happening ..."There's a spectrum that runs from literary allusion on one side and intertextuality on the other. I haven't read the book and make no judgement about it, only observe that some subtlety is relinquished when the author opts for intertextuality, period.
Geoffrey wrote: "I´ve never heard of an animal torturing another animal. "For God's sake. I never said they did. I said humans can't define animal minds and label all their behavior as instinctive. Anyway, we are also animals.
Mark wrote: ". . . some subtlety is relinquished when the author opts for intertextuality, period. "I am not sure if Mark means it as I perceive -- as too determined, with the writer visibly designing the character to impress the reader. I don't want to sense the writer's intention too much.
Mark wrote: "Mochaspresso wrote: "only observe that some subtlety is relinquished when the author opts for intertextuality..."Really Mark, what do you mean? You are reading Ulysses and it is full of intertextuality. Each chapter is titled after the book The Odyssey by Homer. The chapter I am reading is referencing Shakespeare, Hamlet and King Lear, specifically. If you don't get the text because you are not versed in that vein of literary reference then you have lost part of the meaning of the passage.
This is an interesting quote from a professor about intertextuality. The paper is called Intertextuality in James Joyce's Ulysses .
"Abstract
Technically accounting, Intertextuality designates the interdependence of a literary text on any literary one in structure, themes, imagery and so forth. As a matter of fact, the term is first coined by Julia Kristeva in 1966 whose contention was that a literary text is not an isolated entity but is made up of a mosaic of quotations, and that any text is the " absorption, and transformation of another"1.She defies traditional notions of the literary influence, saying that Intertextuality denotes a transposition of one or several sign systems into another or others. Transposition is a Freudian term, and Kristeva is pointing not merely to the way texts echo each other but to the way that discourses or sign systems are transposed into one another-so that meanings in one kind of discourses are heaped with meanings from another kind of discourse. It is a kind of "new articulation2". "
"Intertextuality elements include a writer's using other writers' characters, taking quotations from them and paraphrases of other texts, re-telling the original from a different perspective, indicating what happened before or after a text, and making indirect references to characters and situations found in another text5.Sometimes the outline determines the sense of Intertextuality."
I think it is the intertextuality that creates the Iceberg Theory that Hemingway coined.
There is more here and you may find it interesting while reading Ulysses.
http://dm2-word-view.officeapps.live....
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Animals don´t relish the pain that they administer other animals. If a leopard catches a gazelle and begins to destroy it, it doesn´t gloat over the pain it causes its victim. Its behaviour may appear as such as it pauses and gazes around about it as the gazelle is dying but that is not as if it is relishing the moribund creature´s pain, whereas if we to contrast this behaviour with such as our own, Gacy, Gilmore, Hussein´s son Sondja, we see a very cruel ápex of the animal kingdom.