The Catcher in the Rye
discussion
The reason people don't get why Catcher in the Rye is important
Lushr wrote: "Today it's all so obvious, which just goes to show how much the world has changed, and suggests this book might have been a big part of that change."When I look around at the mass of young people with ghastly piercings and masses of tattoos and grunge costumes, my feeling is the book both predicted and caused enlightened discontent.
CiTR came on the edge of the Civil Rights Movement, then the Viet Nam War, with all its political upheaval, assassinations, The Kent State Massacre, Patty Hearst/SLA, Richard Nixon's lies and resignation, Black Panthers, Grey Panthers, Black Muslims, etc.
I think Holden opened the door, showed us how to spot hypocrisy in the upper ranks of power, starting with crummy school teachers like Mr. Spencer.
We have come a long way, thanks to writers like Salinger. Can't wait to read his next book, coming out in 2015.
Still, we have a long way to go. The same greedy extremists (like the KOCH-topus) that led to Viet Nam and Iraq have imbeded themselves within the ranks of power, evidenced by the S&L Crisis, the Energy Crisis, the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis, and Congressional Stonewalling.
We need more Salingers.
I do agree that you need context to get why this book is so important. I liked it, but I didn't think it was THE BOOK."We need more Salingers. "
I'd love to see a book portraying the hypocrisy of millennials.
Try reading When Corporations a Rule The World by David Korten. That pretty much sums up the state we're in. Personally I liked Franny and Zooey a whole lot, in fact all Salingers other books I hold dear, just not Catcher.
Lushr wrote: "Try reading When Corporations a Rule The World by David Korten. That pretty much sums up the state we're in. Personally I liked Franny and Zooey a whole lot, in fact all Salingers other books I h..."
I added your rec to my TBR. But I was looking at something in a less global escale, something about little people, something that screams to smarphone-addicted millenials: "hey, you know nothing"
Maybe I'll have to write this book myself some day ;)
I'm curious about how Franny and Zoey are going to be.
Hmmm... I don't really know where to start, I've been reading a lot of things that might tick your list Cory Doctorow's Little Brother and it's recent sequel. Daniel Suarez' Daemon, and sequel Freedom. But I guess they're quite political, rather than quietly observing the current trends much as Gatsby did.For me The Circle by David Eggers and China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh, the latter in particular were near future observations that I really enjoyed.
But if it isn't sci fi of some kind I won't read it usually, so I'm not the best person to ask on the literary scale, though it think Eggers and his crowd would be the ones to write the book, if you don't!
Monty J I missed your remark earlier, yes I think it is the beatniks of the fifties that really brought critical analysis to the foreground, but perhaps also a good education system, increased global communications and - at first - greater affluence among the populace allowing them to stop and think a bit more about the world and their rights to live in it. A recent Chomsky interview claims this all came to a head in the late sixties and those in power realised less education might lead to a more controllable society. One could argue everything has gone downhill since then, but ideas are hard to stifle. Catcher is one of those ideas that teens held close to their hearts as they developed their identities, their sense of self.
I think that the concept of generational appeal is very applicable to this book. Perhaps to truly appreciate it, you had to have been born before the JFK assassination. I read CiTR in high school (early 80's) for the same reason I read On the Road and listened to the Beatles;
because I had a baby boomer teacher who stressed the social importance of it. From our vantage point it was all history so the meanings and messages in these works were interpreted differently. I just remember being impatient with Holden; thinking that if he had to grow up in Reagan's America he could have brewed up some truly justified angst.
I'll have to pick this book up again and re-read it some day. I'm sure that Holden's story will be much different to a middle-aged matron reader than it was to a blank generation teenage girl.
Amanda wrote: "...something that screams to smarphone-addicted millenials: "hey, you know nothing."Read my short story, "Prince," and let me know if it speaks to you in this way. I am curious: http://redroom.com/member/monty-heyin....
(Msg me your comments if you like. It's scheduled for a revision, after receiving a critique at Berkeley Fiction Review, but it's the content that I am curious about--how it appeals to millennials.)
Lushr wrote: "...Chomsky interview claims this all came to a head in the late sixties and those in power realised less education might lead to a more controllable society. One could argue everything has gone downhill since then, but ideas are hard to stifle. Catcher is one of those ideas that teens held close to their hearts as they developed their identities, their sense of self. "I like your insights. Chomsky is my heartbeat, along with Steinbeck.
"...and those in power realised less education might lead to a more controllable society."
Frightening, but I fear true. It feels as if a Neo-Falangism has been on the rise, especially within the Republican Party.
And thanks for the book recommendations.
I first read Catcher when I was in my 20s and found it hilarious. But I read it for the second time at 53 and what struck me was how SAD the story is. Here we have a kid who is only 17 years old and he's in a psychiatric hospital. He's had a breakdown at a very tender age. I would say keep sight of that when you read this book. Because context aside, any book that shows us different things every time we read it? That's one of the things that makes it a classic.
I don't think Catcher is dated fiction, which is only meaningful within its historical context. It still speaks to thousands of people that feel the same way he did. Nevertheless, the definition of "teenager" nowadays has outgrown itself (with the help of a whole industry) so they don't feel like outcasts and are instead alienated from existencial thoughts. Don't ask me which one is better. What I'm trying to say I guess is people are still phonies. Catcher still makes sense. ANd I think the phoniest thing about it is the fact that we read this book in high school and are supposed to memorize that it "challenged society's views on young people" without actually realizing that we're still there, repeating concepts without thinking, and living without a point. That way people feel like they get The Catcher in Rye: something that made sense at that time. After all, the teacher will never ask you about your own existencial thoughts on a test. They want to know about the dry obvious sociological reasons- the art inside the book has been sucked out of it by society itself, years of reading without feeling, and judging before reading, and thinking without getting.
Catcher is a coming of age book because growing up is about feeling powerless; about realizing how random everything is.
Bia wrote: "...people are still phonies. Catcher still makes sense."It will always be human nature to maintain a polished public personna that is different, less relaxed and natural,than the private person they let their close friends see, and the even more private person they become when they cross the threshold of the space where they live. (And none of these equates to their inner True Self, if they ever become aware of such a thing.)
Holden thought he was being profound by calling out the "phoniness" around him, but he was simply ignorant of human nature. He hadn't lived long enough to understand what he didn't know, and demonstrated his immaturity in a profound way.
This will always be the case with "growing up" and for this reason, among others, the book will never be dated.
(Nice post, btw.)
Yeah lovely post Bia, also Cedricsmom made good points about the tragedy of this healthy skeptic who saw the world for what it was and was institutionalised for it. This still happens today. I'd say that Holden was one of the first True Selfs we'd read in literature. I read Catcher of my own volition in High School, and it is a relief to hear him reacting the same way you (I) do. That constant negative thought stream we all live with in our heads is a biological fact, it's been developed over hundreds of thousands of years, but you would think it doesn't exist at all from the sheen of society.And Bia's point that it's all still relevant is so very true. Today kids are marketed at fiercely, and as Naomi Klein says (No Logo) they have to define themselves with all that marketing noise around them, whether or not they believe it, and whether or not they define themselves in opposition to it. It's still there, and impossible to escape. Holden's time was more innocent in that way but perhaps also more sinister in the fact that there was one unified message being drummed into people and how they should be, any deviation was ridiculed, punished or ostracised. Atleast this was my impression of the time, and why it was so important to have Salinger and Kerouac stretching the world of possibilities?
It's hard to tell what the past was really like, were the fifties really so domineering?
Monty J wrote: "This will always be the case with "growing up" and for this reason, among others, the book will never be dated,"I don't know. Most teenagers think The Catcher in the Rye is dated, because they have the illusion that they can do anything. When I was growing up, I tried so hard not to be a teenager that I ended up exactly like Holden Caulfied- calling everyone a phony not because they were hipocrits, or fake, but because they didn't question things. They just lived. So I don't think being a teenager has much to do with the Kantian enlightment that growing up is supposed to be anymore.
Lushr wrote: "It's hard to tell what the past was really like, were the fifties really so domineering? ."It was an era of naivete. TV was just getting rolling. Eisenhower in the White House, playing golf. Leaving office, he warned us about the Military Industrial Complex. The John Birchers called him a communist sympathizer for it. The John Birch Society was just getting rolling. Communists were infiltrating South America and Hollywood.
Newsreel propaganda at movie theaters had become habitual during World War II; so continued, and nobody challenged what we were being fed. We slipped in and out of the Korean "Police Action" before it really registered.
The Cold War arms race was on. Nuclear testing. Bomb shelters. Air raid drills at school. The Cuban Revolution. Castro. Che Guevara. McCarthyism sprang to life, then died. The Birchers, shamed, quietly gathered strength.
Kids could play out in the neighborhood all day without being worried about abduction. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were hot, along with Howdy Doody and the Mickey Mouse Club.
War veterans returned and took over the factory jobs women had been holding down. The displaced women got pregnant and stayed at home and woe unto the uneducated "divorcee" former war brides.
Ayn Rand published and began promoting her communist poison pill "Objectivism" philosophy in the form of Atlas Shrugged.
Racism was a festering social sore until To Kill a Mockingbird hit the screen in 1960. Until then, nobody questioned anything; so innocence and ignorance primed us for the social explosion of the '60s.
Bia wrote: "...they have the illusion that they can do anything."I have seen this. They don't know what they don't know, and so in their tech-absorbed naivete--those that don't go into combat in some senseless foreign war to protect our dependence on fossil fuels--they thrust forward, heading for the past.
Yes, exactly. A lot of new concepts came up in the middle of the 20th century, and nowadays the system Holden speaks so badly of has learned to use them in its favour.
Bia wrote: "Yes, exactly. A lot of new concepts came up in the middle of the 20th century, and nowadays the system Holden speaks so badly of has learned to use them in its favour."The same system ("machine") Chief Bromden spoke of in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , the machine that got us into Viet Nam, Kuwiat and Iraq. Does anyone else see a pattern here?
Today, Viet Nam is one of the top 50 oil exporters. But we never hear about that in the news, do we?
This idea of teenagers now believing they can do anything. I find interesting, isn't that always the way? Teenagers believe they know. Everything, they're immortal etc... They haven't accrued enough experience yet to know that bad things can happen to themselves.As a librarian I can tell you that google has created the illusion that everyone is an expert and can find whatever they want, many studies have shown that it's not just 1st year students but also (a smaller number of) academics who are unaware of how to access the wealth of academic information out there.
Part of it may also be information overload, Holden is living in a time, as Marty says where television is new, where the main source of news is the radio or the movie news reels. Now the number of sources is overwhelming and difficult to monitor for bias or authority with out some training which I'm not sure schools provide.
But I wonder if people are really stupider or smarter than now or the past. I read a quote someone thought that people were much smarter in roman/Greek (?) times because of the kind of discourses encouraged and philosophers etc. but then weren't Socrates Plato Aristotle commenting on the dumb populace of their time?
If current educational trends continue, we will definitely be seeing a "dumber" generation of youth...current trends emphasize what you are talking about: there is so much information out there, teaching "knowledge" has become an antiquated, elitist concept. Instead, youth must be taught "skills" in the place of "knowledge." And yet, what a sad, hollow philosophy of "education" that it...not education at all, if by that word we mean gaining "knowledge," which is a key step toward "wisdom." I'm using far too many "quotation marks" here, but pay attention to how the people at the highest levels in public education are devaluing the very things that this younger generation needs to be able to maneuver the information overload thrown at them by media, especially online media.
Hmmm.. Interesting Petergiaquinta. I definitely see your point, but given a choice I'd rather see a school teach wisdom than knowledge. If you teach children to analyse and think critically, they will learn forever, as opposed to teaching them "facts" which will probably be full of agendas and propaganda. This doesn't hold true for maths and science though, atleast not at first - students need the foundations, to learn to read and write and evaluate, in English, then in math and then in science. I'm not an educator and I know little about math, I should say! But I am starting to learn about research, teaching students the skills to find info themselves, teach them to analyse it, then teach them to perform their own research at the same rigorous standards as the stuff they've been reading - seems a pretty solid idea to me, but it's aimed at university students. To me Holden had that critical thinking, he could look at something and question it, which isn't a skill everyone has, there are some great quotes about it though:
“The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely "well-adjusted", he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists between antisocial types in their power to see environments as they really are. This need to interface, to confront environments with a certain antisocial power is manifest in the famous story "The Emperor's New Clothes".”
― Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
There's heaps more about outsiders and anti conformists which I think Holden was.
Certainly in Greek/Roman times, and even fairly recently in the "classical education", people had to commit more to memory. This could be perceived as being more intelligent. People also used to write long, multi-page letters (because the time/monetary cost of sending them was so high), and to speak publicly in long oration instead of sound bites.
This "technology has been dumbing us down" effect has been commented on quite a bit (e.g.Nicolas Carr). But it may not be accurate: the world (and the knowledge we have of it) is getting increasingly complex. It used to be possible to be an expert in biology, chemistry, physics, math, philosophy, and history; now, it is impossible to know everything about a single one of those fields. Every expert must specialize.
The ability to find answers or information as-needed is a pretty recent one, mostly because it just wasn't possible until the 20th century. I cannot say whether it is currently being taught -- my experience with public education is quite dated -- but I agree that it is extremely important, perhaps vital.
Education should provide not just the core foundation of knowledge that is necessary to intelligently pursue a question, but also the ability to analyze a channel of information (speaker/book/article/video/whatever) for accuracy and bias, to find competing channels which provide contradictory information, and to synthesize the competing information (or opinions) in order to develop a coherent conclusion.
As for Holden, well, he didn't seem to be able to handle the age-old process of becoming an adult. I doubt he could deal with information overload on top of that.
I'd suggest that Knowledge is a prerequisite for Wisdom, not "skills," as it is used in the current way of thinking. Our schools and their administrators seem most interested in creating a compliant workforce with their emphasis on skills-based education, not a generation of creative and critical thinkers.Holden is a critical thinker; he's reflective and imaginative. He loves literature as evidenced by the easy way he talks about the many books he has read; he's also quite the writer, even if that moron Stradlater fails to see the beauty of the essay Holden goes out of his way to write for him (and on the night that he's been expelled!). Our current model of education won't create readers and writers and thinkers. It caters to the lowest common denominator and turns a Holden Caulfield into just another cog in the machine (if he doesn't have the personal motivation to go beyond the pablum being spoonfed to him in class). Holden hasn't performed well in school, but he has read widely and no doubt part of that is because of an emphasis on literature in the classroom as well as in his family environment.
In the English classroom today, however, skills-based education would remove the emphasis on reading great works of fiction and replace them with non-fiction informative texts. Emphasis on personal reflective writing or creative writing is almost gone from the curriculum, replaced by a formulaic approach to expository and persuasive modes. There is less and less room for people who think differently right now than even in the buttoned-down, gray flannel '50s that Holden rebels against. If you aren't familiar with the concept of "rubrics" and the way they take writing and thinking and stick them into the narrowest boxes possible, then you haven't been paying much attention to public education. As crappy as Pencey Prep and Holden's other schools are portrayed in the novel, they have offered him much more than a public school will offer a contemporary Holden Caulfield today.
Mkfs wrote: "As for Holden, well, he didn't seem to be able to handle the age-old process of becoming an adult."Ah, but he was working at it so hard it caused him a breakdown. Breakdowns, if you survive, often become breakthroughs, to growth.
He had reasons, as do we all, for his crack-up--unresolved grief over the loss of his beloved Ailee and over James Castle's suicide--but he came out of it in good shape, good enough to write about it.
You make a very good point. But a classic from the past doesn't always translate very well into the present or future. Nowadays it's more of a literary historical reference than something that's socially or culturally relevant in the here and now. I don't mean to knock it down, but it was one of those books that just didn't make the mark on me that it's heralded to do. That's just me of course. We're all different and different things appeal to us.
Mkfs wrote: "Education should provide not just the core foundation of knowledge that is necessary to intelligently pursue a question, but also the ability to analyze a channel of information (speaker/book/article/video/whatever) for accuracy and bias, to find competing channels which provide contradictory information, and to synthesize the competing information (or opinions) in order to develop a coherent conclusion."So true.
Something went wrong during the past few decades, otherwise the John Birch Society wouldn't have been able to mainstream their extremist toxic agenda into the Republican Party. Rush Limbaugh wouldn't have an audience, nor would FOX "News."
And Ayn Rand's destructive philosophy wouldn't be central to the mind-set of key people in power within our government (the Paul Ryans and Rand Pauls.)
If these people were thinking clearly they would see the logical consequence of narcissism is a fractured, segmented weakened country--the Haves vs Have-Nots.
Petergiaquinta wrote: " Our current model of education won't create readers and writers and thinkers. It caters to the lowest common denominator and turns a Holden Caulfield into just another cog in the machine (if he doesn't have the personal motivation to go beyond the pablum being spoonfed to him in class)."I've been thinking about becoming a teacher. Your words inspire me.
I'd would love to teach Atlas Shrugged exposing it as a communist plot to destroy democracy.
How does one teach the skill "to analyze a channel of information for accuracy and bias...to find competing channels ...to synthesize the competing information"?This is tough, and I'd argue it is only with a broad context of information and experience that one can possibly do this, and the only way to gain that context is to read both deep and wide, which is what unfortunately the schools are no longer doing. It's tough to expect kids to be able to discern what is good information among all the crap that is available to them. With the loss of the daily newspaper (and say what you like about the political bias inherent in every newspaper, at least there was a quality control at work in the information being presented to readers) and the fact that teenagers do not watch the news on TV, they are left with rumor and innuendo and flat-out crap fed to them via the Internet. Today's teenagers, despite the wealth of potential information available to them, know less than they have ever known in the history of mankind, I'd say. And this is a horrible irony at work here...
Lushr wrote: "This idea of teenagers now believing they can do anything. I find interesting, isn't that always the way? Teenagers believe they know. Everything, they're immortal etc..."I think there's been a shift in the mentality that occurred in/around the 70's and 80's. The difference is that where children were, in the generation or two that preceded those decades, brought up to believe they could do anything, the idea since is that they can do everything. That is, one could grow up to do whatever one chose to do... but there had to be a choice, and it was contingent upon effort. Nowadays, the consequences of choice are minimized or even ignored, and effort to achieve goals is divorced from the requirement for success. People believe they can "have it all" no matter how ridiculous and patently false that concept is.
This isn't particularly a teen thing, of course, but it does lend itself to that age group as they are the focus of so much fantasy marketing. It's part of what has led to this endless culture of Me-ism.
So, I'd suggest that one of the places that modern readers are struggling with CitR is that they have to reach through at least one more layer of phoney cultural bullshit in order to find the reality that Salinger was trying to get at.
YES, good point. You still need somebody to make a decent summary of the information available. Having said that, in the past, there was often just one and not always correct interpretation of everything. Especially, but not only in totalitarian countries, It was also the "teacher's" voice, or " what the leading brains thought". Like Jean Paul Sartre or Bertrand Russell- smart brains, but what a lot of twisting of truth.
So in a way, the teenagers now have more options. ANd the smart ones will pick the right information. Of course, we should help them. But maybe hel them with questions, not answers.Bit like Socrates did.
So in a way, the teenagers now have more options. ANd the smart ones will pick the right information. Of course, we should help them. But maybe hel them with questions, not answers.Bit like Socrates did.
Lucie wrote: "...teenagers now have more options. ANd the smart ones will pick the right information."Yes, and it's the not so smart ones that worry me, for they are ripe fodder for people with an agenda. People like Rush Limbaugh and the Koch brotherhood.
Petergiaquinta wrote: "How does one teach the skill "to analyze a channel of information for accuracy and bias...to find competing channels ...to synthesize the competing information"?""Any decent critical thinking class will teach students to research and evaluate both sides of an argument. Unfortunately this is a university course, so most people will never encounter it.
A media analysis or a research (usually library science) class will teach evaluation of sources. Again, these will be university courses, and unfortunately they will not even be required ones.
Even the students who take these courses may never learn to integrate them into an effective tool for dealing with information. There really should be a class, at the high school level, that covers research and information analysis.
I had an interesting Sociology of Education course which, among other things, examined what lessons and skills the public education system actually teaches.
The core curriculum is usually regurgitated (for testing) by the students with only haphazard retention. What is learned, aside from basic citizenry requirements, is to follow a rigid daily schedule of monotonous tasks with periodic breaks (bell-enforced). In other words, how to be a good factory worker.
This made sense during the industrial era, when the public educations system in the US was formed (around 1890). Unfortunately, there aren't many factory jobs, and those that remain have changed drastically (Amazon fulfillment centers and UPS sorting facilities have replaced actual factories).
Small wonder that public school students are graduating high school without the skills or knowledge necessary to make it in the modern world.
Monty J wrote: "He had reasons, as do we all, for his crack-up--unresolved grief over the loss of his beloved Ailee and over James Castle's suicide--but he came out of it in good shape, good enough to write about it. "Now that I've read Fitzgerald's The Crack-up, I should spend the time to reacquaint myself with Holden's breakdown. Fitzgerald really hit the nail on the head:
And then suddenly, surprisingly, I got better.
And cracked like an old plate as soon as I heard the news.
...
[The cracked plate] can never again be warmed on the stove nor shuffled with the other plates in the dishpan; it will not be brought out for company, but it will do to hold crackers late at night or to go into the ice box under left-overs
Something to keep in mind on my Catcher attempt. You've certainly given me much to look for when I finally get to it, Monty.
The problem with reading these days is that people insist on discussing and analyzing books to death, instead of simply enjoying them and learning what they have to teach.
CitR is a very simple story with a very complex main character. While I read it, I felt like I was Holden; I felt his emotions and saw the world through his eyes.
Also, if you're old enough to worry about being corrupted, it's probably already too late. We're born pure, sure, but die really, really fucked-up. Dying's natural, but corruption isn't, and the sad part is that both are inevitable.
CitR is a very simple story with a very complex main character. While I read it, I felt like I was Holden; I felt his emotions and saw the world through his eyes.
Also, if you're old enough to worry about being corrupted, it's probably already too late. We're born pure, sure, but die really, really fucked-up. Dying's natural, but corruption isn't, and the sad part is that both are inevitable.
Mkfs wrote: "A media analysis or a research (usually library science) class will teach evaluation of sources. Again, these will be university courses, and unfortunately they will not even be required ones."Education begins at home. I used to turn the TV off, or mute it, after a commercial and grill my two daughters on the message they were being fed and how it had been conveyed. Kind of irritated them, but I didn't do it often. Sometimes we would talk about it over dinner later or the next day.
Mkfs wrote: "Fitzgerald's The Crack-up,"Thanks for reminding me about this book. And the quote. I will add it to my list for this year.
For the number of us that felt Catcher wasn't the be all end all book, it's certainly given us food for thought!For me in high school media class taught us to analyse, also in our final years we had to take newspaper stories from various sources, dig further to find out more on the subject, then write an essay on what we believe the best action would be referencing sources, this is still a required practice today, but I don't live in America.
also there's nothing wrong with a rubric, we use them in university, we have frameworks for critical thinking, digital literacy (which includes finding, and using information/articles correctly) communication, and many others. The tool isn't the problem, the content, or lack therof, is.
I haven't read Catcher in over 15 years so all the details escape me, but I will have to reread it after this discussion, I think if one of my good English teachers had been teaching us thus book and leading discussion, then compassion for the outsiders in the class (like me) might have been more forthcoming.
I don't believe in rubrics the way they are being applied in today's American classrooms; they create problems in two very different directions. The writer who thinks outside the box and creates something original and interesting but fails to meet the benchmarks of one or more parts of the rubric will do poorly; on the other hand, the writer who slavishly meets the language of the rubric can write a piece of garbage but still score high. This robotic approach to writing is problematic and does a disservice to students. Teachers/professors should use their own judgment to respond to student writing, not a mechanical list of generalized concerns. A one-size-fits-all approach to grading writing is just one example of the increasingly mechanized approach to education that is sweeping public education in America at the moment.
For a creative endeavour yes a rubric should be valuing creativity. I once wrote a story that only had 3 full stops in it, I was going to get a very bad mark until another teacher pointed out it was a James Joyce style delivery, and kept my good grade.
Some sort of bare bones rubric seems necessary. When a student writes an essay for a particular question or topic, they need to address important points, though not necessarily all, or in a particular style. If they make a connection of their own that's even slightly arguable, all the better. I can't help thinking that a love of reading is primary to solving present education problems, at least in the humanities, but how to inspire that? Inspired teaching is what encouraged me to get through difficult text well enough to think about the subject matter. Then the reward of tackling difficult reading became clear, and promoted an appreciation for the way reading gives access to so many fascinating subjects -- for me, in the humanities; and how do you study the humanities without reading? But I suppose some would say the humanities in general, and in some cases high level reading skill, are no longer essential to the emerging world of technology, business and finance, where people command the big bucks these days. I guarantee, Holden would gripe about that world as he does about the 'phonies' (yet another reason for liking him as a character, imo).
Kallie wrote: "If they make a connection of their own that's even slightly arguable, all the better."This, I would argue, is major goal of reading. It is the most satisfying and lasting effect of a book experience. This is how I first became a reader, and I loved it.
Then, because of academia, for a long time reading became for me too often a chore of scanning strings of words for what it was I thought I was suppose to "get." Or a process of numbing-out from the stress of a high-pressure business profession.
Only later in life did I rediscover my natural approach to reading literature, suspending all expectation and surrendering myself to whatever an author was offering on the page. And what a joy it became.
Monty J wrote: "Kallie wrote: "If they make a connection of their own that's even slightly arguable, all the better."This, I would argue, is major goal of reading. It is the most satisfying and lasting effect of..."
That is what I call reading for the true pleasure of it, Monty. I love making those connections in literature- and losing myself in a book. Part of that is a need to escape some of the reality of my life, but I would like to think it's mainly because I love reading books where I can really connect with an author. Hence my obsession with Faulkner. As I get older I like surprises in literature more, and I would rather work at it than be a passive reader.
Me too, the connections I am making through my recent philosophical and political readings are really resounding here. Kallie's point about the emphasis of business over humanities, this is such a different world to Holden's and David Korten makes very good argument in When Corporations Rule... That it was in the 50s after catcher was published that people started to believe economic growth would solve the worlds problems when all it has done is shift the money I to the hands of the rich at the expense of the environment and our own quality of life. Somehow economics became more 'valid' than basic sociology, which clearly showed we were working longer and harder for a declining quality of life. Arguably, what is the point of a society if it does not atleast maintain, if not improve the well being of it's citizens? If we had anywhere to go, any new lands to escape to, we would! We surely would!
Lushr writes: If we had anywhere to go, any new lands to escape to, we would! We surely would!Holden wants to go West...just like Huck Finn does 100 years earlier. But there is no West now, and in fact Holden does go "West" after his three-day journey through New York is completed. And it's in the West where he begins to heal and get "better."
But that's the ironic tragedy of the ending, isn't it? In the West he hasn't escaped; he's merely learned how to cope with and accept the flawed conditions of the adult world that earlier he refused to enter. Holden has to get better; I understand that. Death or insanity are his only other options. But here's one thing about the ending of Catcher that makes it "important," even a great book: there's such a bittersweet complex irony to Holden's progress in the final two pages. By getting "better," he's learning to accept this corrupted, diminished thing that passes for a "healthy" life in the Twentieth Century. And there's something sad about that, even as we are cheered to see Holden ready to re-enter society on that final page. What makes Holden such an endearing, compelling character has now been softened, toned down.
And what oh what would Holden (or Huck for that matter) make of the sorry mess that is modern life today?
Lushr wrote: "Arguably, what is the point of a society if it does not atleast maintain, if not improve the well being of it's citizens?."Petergiaquinta: "And what oh what would Holden (or Huck for that matter) make of the sorry mess that is modern life today?
Our backs are at the wall. We must turn and face the forces that have put us here. Organize and be the change we want to see.
And it won't be easy.
Nor happen overnight.
Monty J wrote: "Our backs are at the wall. We must turn and face the forces that have put us here. Organize and be the change we want to see." Yes, those of us who think there is much, much more to life than money must (without money) create a momentum that stops ruinous commercial exploitation of the world. Do things have to get much worse before enough people see?? I'm afraid so.
Bertrand Russell in the 1930s said that while we fought for political democracy, the next revolution would be for economic democracy where the people have a say about how the funds are directed and used for the common good. With a picture of OCCUPY WALL ST alongside the quote it seems that the time has come.And thank you for brining it back to Holden, I did think I had a memory or heading out west. Which was the last frontier. There are no more lands to conquer, we are indeed backs to the wall. Thankfully, from the sounds of the discussion we have been comparatively fortunate to not end up in the depths of poverty in some slum in the Philippines, I'm realising how both lucky we are, and yet still unfortunate, as was Holden, a wealth of opportunities were before him, but he could not turn away from the ugly truth, he could not make himself see the world everyone else wanted to see.
I frequently want to say that he was an outsider and that this was what gave him compassion - for he understood firsthand the plight of anyone else outside the prosperous few for whom the system worked. It makes me want to go back and read The Outsiders by SE Hinton again(which was syllabus reading at my school) and see if it has any of the depths we have found I. catcher which I'm going to start rereading now!
And I'm definitely NOT one for ploughing through something painful, my brain simply falls asleep at the challenge these days, it's a muscle I will work up over time, I lost it when I stopped having to read academic articles.
Monty J wrote: "Mkfs wrote: "As for Holden, well, he didn't seem to be able to handle the age-old process of becoming an adult."Ah, but he was working at it so hard it caused him a breakdown. Breakdowns, if you ..."
I like the way you phrased that and looked at it. I personally loved Holden's character - I know he bugged many readers, but I think he had an amazing depth of empathy for others, especially considering his age, gender, and circumstances.
Monty J wrote: "Bia wrote: "...they have the illusion that they can do anything."
I have seen this. They don't know what they don't know, and so in their tech-absorbed naivete--those that don't go into combat in some senseless foreign war to protect our dependence on fossil fuels ..."
You are so wrong. They go into combat to protect YOUR way of life. So that you have the OPTION of using fossil fuels!
I have seen this. They don't know what they don't know, and so in their tech-absorbed naivete--those that don't go into combat in some senseless foreign war to protect our dependence on fossil fuels ..."
You are so wrong. They go into combat to protect YOUR way of life. So that you have the OPTION of using fossil fuels!
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But this is a time when teenagers and antisocial thoughts and being different are all quite common. That was not the case when this book came out.
It is the first of it's kind and changed society as we know it. Teenagers were a new concept, being a malcontent in such a prosperous society the then current society was not openly discussed.
Today it's all so obvious, which just goes to show how much the world has changed, and suggests this book might have been a big part of that change.