Did anyone else just not "get" this book? Showing 901-950 of 1,174

[Mark]

Other than Mel Brooks, not a lot of Holocaust inspired yucks -- so yeah, Anne Frank is a downer though I'd never really looked at it that way.

[Mark]

To Kill A Mockingbird and A Separate Peace met me where I was at that age.

[Mark]

S- I may not have been clear. I'm a lawyer, not a teacher. I read those books in 8th grade at prep school and they remain some of my favorite.

[Sherrie]

Ah, prep school. Now that's another animal entirely. That would be the perfect place for "Catcher In the Rye."

[Eimear]

Andie Stockwell wrote: "I read it to see what all the fuss was about and I still have no idea. All I got out of it was a teenager whining about his life and college and girls and how everything sucks. I don't understand w..."

It was to show the troubles of growing up. Through the book he is running away. But from what? School, his parents, his friends? He is running away from childhood. He feels like he needs to grow up quicker as that is what he sees around him but at the ending when he sees his younger sister enjoying herself he starts to find who he is and returns home.

[Amir]

Yeah, this book just didn't work for me.
I've always heard about it but it just wasn't any good.
And the kid really annoys me (whatshisname Holden)

[Sherrie]

Oh, well. Maybe you have to be older (40's) and have lived through the 60s & 70s to get it. The 60s generation was the first generation to rebel against their parents, at least in large numbers.
Or, I don't know. I do remember hating it as a kid, even though I didn't even read it. I was supposed to, but didn't.
Blessings to all. I do hope we get to read more of Salinger's work, now that he has passed.

[Kerr]

I found it boring and the central characater holden an irritating idiot.

[[deleted user]]

I can understand all the negative reaction. I tried to re-read this book and couldn't get beyond the second page. At the time, though, most of us felt as isolated and angry as Holden did. The feeling was also portrayed well in James Dean's character in Rebel Without a Cause. For the most part, I think we're beyond that. My opinion is that current readers should try to understand where Holden is coming from and the era. But if you don't like the book, definitely do not waste time reading it.

[Sherrie]

Julia, I wanted to "like" your comment, but there is no button for that, only a button to "flag*" or "reply."
Do you know if there is a book that "Rebel Without a Cause" is based on?

[Lupita]

Andie Stockwell wrote: "I read it to see what all the fuss was about and I still have no idea. All I got out of it was a teenager whining about his life and college and girls and how everything sucks. I don't understand w..."
Beside speaking in a teenage, outsider voice, and being an expression of angst at a time when it really wasn't talked about, it also speaks of being scared to grow up, wishing for things to remain the same because change is scary. Being "the catcher in the rye" is like trying to save your childhood and innocence from being corrupted by growing up. Its like Peter pan is stuck in our world and doesn't know how to deal with the emotions and changes of growing up. That is why it is a classic. I hope that sheds light on why so many people (me included) like and/or love it.

[Umar]

The Catcher in the Rye is a polarizing book. I had to read it for English during summer school. That was about two months ago. I remember thinking that the book wasn't bad but I still found to be slightly overrated. And for some reason I eventually began to form a more positive opinion on the book. I kept thinking about Holden's journey through New York City. I loved how the book focused much more on character than plot. Holden's view of the world became something I would often think about. Two months have passed and the book has become one of my favourites.

[Monty J]

Sherrie wrote: "Do you know if there is a book that "Rebel Without a Cause" is based on?"

RWAC was an original screenplay based on LA-area news articles about juvenile delinquents. This comes from watching the documentary on the making of the film that came with my collector's DVD set.

The documentary has interviews with Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood, among others, made ten years (at least) after the film was made.

[Leann]

Matthew wrote: "It's all about his brother. Everything Holden does and all his cynicism can be related back to the death of his brother. I'm not sure if everyone got this because it took me a few times reading the..."

Yes! I had been hoping someone would get it.

[Claude]

I agree with those who "did not get" the book.

These days we would just call Holden and his family

dysfunctional. It would be easy to call him spoiled

and immature. Probably nothing wrong with him that a

hitch in the military would cure.

[esosh]

I couldn't even finish it! Thought it was just me (not being in the right mood/ mindset for the book). So I wanted to start over another time.

Now I don't feel like reading it again.

[M.L.]

I haven’t read this entire thread, and I’m not intending to sway opinion for those who don’t care for Catcher in the Rye, but I wanted to throw some support behind Matthew’s and Leann’s comments recognizing Holden’s suffering. I first read Catcher when I was 17 and remember being quite moved by it. Holden’s brazen attack on “phoniness” appealed greatly to me—and probably still does to many teens negotiating the turbulence of adolescence and young adulthood. But I’m not sure I fully understood what was driving Holden (I may have forgotten). Then I reread the book in my 40s and was surprised to realize that his disregard for and anger at much of life, his cynicism, stems from the devastating loss of his younger brother. In fact, the book when viewed through that lens takes on even more weight and helps it transcend, for me at least, the "book for teens" label. This may be irrelevant for those who find Catcher wanting, but, if you're looking for a way in, try viewing it as a book of suffering, a teenager’s attempt—messy and painful at times—to make sense of the senseless death of a beloved brother.

[Deelasha]

For me the book was ok. But the character was as everyone said whiny and self absorbed. i dont know how it got termed into classic and is considered as one best classic of all times. It is just a story about teenager who is somewhat a rebel. He has no priority i his life and loves his younger sibling a lot. There might be a few half who really loved the book. But until you have been that rebel and "i don't care" attitude person i highly doubt this should be one of the greatest classics of all time.

[Mia]

I understand it and find it very interesting with an excellent message. Read it few times through.
Love how the author shows how teenagers struggle to find themselves in this mad world.
At first he resents the whole idea of being an adult and I love how he chooses the path of not being one. The is no innocence in us adults, we must think how to survive, pay our bills, being all serious about our job. I mean lets face it, there is no fun in that.
And that's exactly what author through Holden wants to say. We need to stop our routine and just become children for a moment. And that's the book point. He became the catcher, he catches the children/teenagers that tends to fall off cliff and lose their innocence, he helps them to keep a little piece of childhood within them.

[[deleted user]]

I read it in high school. I loved it then, adore it now. It's one of the few books that I have re-purchased at bookstores abroad. I suppose it's about re-experiencing my teenage years, me walking home from school, down long roads and across rolling fields, with a weathered copy in my backpack, coming to know this character, Holden Caulfield; each of us in the midst of our own coming-of-age story . . .

[Susan]

Paul 'Pezski' wrote: "I don't think my lack of connection to the book is to do with any dislike of Holden - in fact it constantly amazes me that so many people here on GR seem to base their reviews on whether or not the..."

I completely agree about the connection between Catcher and Gatsby. My best friend and I share books constantly and tend to have the same opinions - except with these two. I love Gatsby, she hates it. I hate Catcher, she loves it. Strange that others have found this as well!

[Ceasar]

It was a good read but I didn't really think that it was deserving of all the hype. I tried reading it again years later and got something else out of it completely though. It was as if he knew he was headed nowhere and was just looking for something meaningful, even if it was just to be a sort of guardian figure for his sister. Still, I think it's been overhyped

[Rameen]

Lupita wrote: "Andie Stockwell wrote: "I read it to see what all the fuss was about and I still have no idea. All I got out of it was a teenager whining about his life and college and girls and how everything suc..."
you described it so well :)

[Monty J]

Claude wrote: "I agree with those who "did not get" the book.

These days we would just call Holden and his family
dysfunctional. It would be easy to call him spoiled
and immature. Probably nothing wrong with ..."

Does it make sense to you that Holden was so traumatized by the deaths of his brother, Allie, and his dorm-mate, James Castle, that he couldn't function? Today's diagnosis would be PTSD. Do you know anyone with that condition? If you did, you would recognize the symptoms in Holden.

Has anyone close to you died? Do you get it that people can be so torn up over the loss of a loved one that it takes them years to get over it unless they get professional help, if even then?

Does the book make sense to you knowing that JD Salinger himself spent time in a mental ward for "battle fatigue" during World War II after participating in the Normandy landing at Utah Beach, the heart of the action, where he could see hundreds of men, some of them perhaps close friends, cut to pieces by German machine guns and blown apart by mortars. He was also at the horrific Battle of Bulge and other major battles where American troops were decimated.

He was also among the first Allied soldiers to visit a concentration camp where bodies were piled up to be burned and the air stank of burning flesh and the prisoners he helped liberate were walking skeletons? "You could live a lifetime, Salinger told his daughter, "and never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose."

Does it make sense to you that someone who had experienced what Salinger had could acquire a heightened sense of compassion for his fellow man and want to protect the innocence of children? Doesn't it make sense that he could create a character like Holden to express those feelings?

(And doesn't this make the "teenaged angst" explanation of the book seem a bit superficial, even dismissive?)

Holden was almost 17 and confronting the complications of life without much input from his parents, who themselves where probably still consumed by grief over Ailee's death. Holden makes it clear on multiple occasions how alone he feels. PTSD could have made him edgy, jaded and negative.

All of life can be viewed from opposite poles of positive or negative. "Phony" is a negative label connoting judgement on the part of Holden's juvenile mind that is too inexperienced in life to have the capacity to understand why people put up a social front.

Every human being has a public persona they polish to show the world, when deep inside they are scared little children or have some other fear or hangup.

The irony is that Holden thinks he's being cool by calling out the phoniness he sees, when he's only skimmed the surface of human understanding. Until the very end of the book, when he lets down his own defenses, "practically bawling" as he sits on the bench in the rain watching Phoebe on the carousel.

"She just looks so nice," he says, "in her blue coat, going around and around."

The book is rich with deep insight into the humanity of an adolescent male striving to understand the world he is growing into while weighed down by unresolved grief over the deaths of a brother and a friend. And he is redeemed by the innocence and unconditional love of Phoebe.

This is not a book for young adults or teenagers, although it is promoted that way, wrongly, because of the age of the protagonist. The themes of compassion and mental illness and redemption are adult themes. The popular focus on teenage angst is overblown, in my humble opinion, and raises unrealistic expectations in younger readers, leaving them disappointed or confused.

[Mugdha]

Monty J wrote: "Claude wrote: "I agree with those who "did not get" the book.

These days we would just call Holden and his family
dysfunctional. It would be easy to call him spoiled
and immature. Probably nothin..."


I so agree with you Mr. Monty J. Rather you have given me an insight. Insight into myself too. If I could I would add you Review here to the Forward in the book.

[Marcela]

I think you have to look at the time period this book was written. This was a window into teenaged angst in a time of repression, new suburbs, and stepford wives. It was refreshing to so many who thought their "not so perfect" feelings were rare and only happening to them.

[George]

I knew the book was considered a classic, but I did not read it in my teens, and probably opted for something else, Steinbeck maybe, as I recall reading many of his works in high school. I read Catcher later, in the aftermath of the Lennon and Reagan shootings and the reported connections to this book.

I remember disagreeing that this was a manual for anarchy, in that although Holden was angry and at odds with everything, he was completely impotent of action and succeeded only in disassociation. If it was an assassination trigger, it was only in a CIA, programmed trigger, MKULTRA kind of way. The book made me depressed and apathetic, not storm the Bastille kind of angry.

Ironically, as a youth I WAS Holden Caulfield, suffering two tragic losses of close loved ones at an early age, difficulty in establishing close relationships, becoming disillusioned with everything and dropping out of college. I still didn't really connect to it.

I just re-read the book, having watched the documentary, "Salinger", a few nights ago.

I still didn't see the point of the book, really, unless it was to dissect a young man's descent into a nervous breakdown with a stream-of-consciousness record. We all have dirty little internal commentary to the people and events we encounter. It just wasn't that interesting, to me, to hear Holden's.

[Musa]

Andie Stockwell wrote: "I read it to see what all the fuss was about and I still have no idea. All I got out of it was a teenager whining about his life and college and girls and how everything sucks. I don't understand w..."

I felt quite the same at first. But then, as advised by the person who gifted me the book, I started reading it from a teenagers point of view. The most fascinating thing about the book is how Holden sees and understands everything... I really loved some parts of the book.

[Colin]

no!

[Malcolm]

I read it as a kid. Loathed it until the end when I decided I liked it after all, then read it again to find out why I loathed it during the first reading.

I could not relate to it fully because the protagonist was American, white, and from an era I could not relate to.

Is it not just some form of On The Road for white school kids? Is this not the reason it was banned from schools and libraries in America?

The protagonist is just a beatnick-in-waiting.

[Monty J]

Malcolm wrote: "I read it as a kid. Loathed it until the end when I decided I liked it after all, then read it again to find out why I loathed it during the first reading.

I could not relate to it fully because ..."

See if this helps: http://redroom.com/member/monty-heyin...

Or this: http://redroom.com/member/monty-heyin...

[Ian]

Has anyone here read Goethe's the Sorrows of Young Werther? I feel like fans of Catcher would also probably love that book.

[Malcolm]

Monty J wrote: "Malcolm wrote: "I read it as a kid. Loathed it until the end when I decided I liked it after all, then read it again to find out why I loathed it during the first reading.

I could not relate to i..."

Thanks. Denied access to the first link; but have access to the second.

Edit: Interesting post in the second link. I didn't have that background when I read it several decades ago. Nice perspective. However, I still feel I failed to relate to it was because it spoke primarily more to another generation (my parent's) than mine; because it was American culture; because the protagonist was white.

I've no intention of re-reading it now with the new dimensions which you've added for me.

The book will always remain kid's stuff; and with the added passage of time, dated kid's stuff.

[Malcolm]

Monty J wrote: "Malcolm wrote: "I read it as a kid. Loathed it until the end when I decided I liked it after all, then read it again to find out why I loathed it during the first reading.

I could not relate to i..."

Is it because I'm not a premium member that I am denied access to the first link?

[Monty J]

Malcolm wrote: "Is it because I'm not a premium member that I am denied access to the first link?"

My mistake. I posted the wrong link. I re-posted with the correct link. Try it now and it should work.

[Monty J]

Malcolm wrote: "...because it was American culture."

I understand. I felt something similar with Kite Runner and with Dickens' Oliver Twist, novels that lean heavily on readers' knowledge of regional landmarks and idioms.

Catcher meant so much more to me after I visited New York City and went to the museum and actually saw the bare-breasted squaw. (It is still there. It will never be changed because too many people will complain if it is touched.)

If I were to visit Afghanistan, I'm sure Kite Runner would be more meaningful. That said, I did enjoy learning some things about Afghan culture.

Salinger trapped himself by writing Catcher in first-person point of view. Fitzgerald did the same with The Great Gatsby. Perhaps character-driven novels don't travel well.

[Malcolm]

Monty J wrote: "Malcolm wrote: "...because it was American culture."

I understand. I felt something similar with Kite Runner and with Dickens' Oliver Twist, novels that lean heavily on readers' knowledge of regio..."

With the greatest respect, but I found Oliver Twist and Victorian fiction in general hard to get into as a teenager, and I revel in British culture. In those days Victorian fiction was from another century.

Catcher was published in the decade before I was born. I liked it far better than I would To Kill A Mocking Bird, for instance, which was published, I think, the year I was born. I haven't read it as I find that aspect of American culture in the 20th cent retarded by comparison to British culture.

Not wishing to be controversial in the above comment, just trying to exercise tact and restraint.

I have seen the film, which I enjoyed. But I could not read such a book - Mark Twain, included.

I have, however, read Uncle Tom's Cabin, which I enjoyed. But then that was the previous century rather than the previous decade with reference to Harper Lee.

But as a teenager I found things such as 'sidewalk', 'drugstore' or whatever such trivia term it was and other differences annoying and tiresome as I had to look them up in a dictionary - this is what I mean by American culture when discussing Catcher In The Rye.

I had similar problems with European literature. Cultural references were tiresome to look up.

[Malcolm]

Monty J wrote: "Malcolm wrote: "Is it because I'm not a premium member that I am denied access to the first link?"

My mistake. I posted the wrong link. I re-posted with the correct link. Try it now and it should ..."

Thanks for the link. I enjoyed the other of yours I read, and I look forward to reading this one. :o)

[Ellie]

The problem is that people read Catcher in the Rye as if there were a reliable narrator. Holden is an unreliable narrator. You need to understand that he is telling the story from a very specific point of view which stems from his mental illness.

[Monty J]

Ellie wrote: "The problem is... he is telling the story from a very specific point of view which stems from his mental illness. "

I agree. And I think that Salinger could have wisely spent some time up front setting up the scenario of the narrator telling it from a mental ward. But nobody's perfect and who am I to give advice to one whose book sold 70 million (and counting) copies?

[Ian]

The comparison of Salinger to Joyce is interesting. There is certainly a lot a difference though too. Salinger wrote to be accessible to the average American teenager. Joyce did not. Joyce's prose and perpetual use of allusions and word play make him amongst the most difficult to read authors of all time. In the 1800s people found Nietzsche's philosophy difficult to interpret and rather fuzzy in some areas. That guy wrote crystal clear compared to Joyce. Salinger also doesn't create words like la;skdjlaskjdas;ldkjfasldkjasl;dfasdl;fkjsdlsalsdkfsl;djkasldfjsd to describe a thunderclap like Finnegan's wake.

[Monty J]

Robert wrote: "I think the guts of the novel are encompassed in his relationship with his sister."

Bingo! She, her innocent sibling adoration and love, rescues him from the brink of making a very bad decision to run away. He is reduced to tears when he realizes how much she loves him and he her. Most people won't get that on the first, or even a second, reading.

[Gauri]

I'm a teenager and I picked up this book because of all the fuss that surrounds it. But seriously I have no idea what was going on and in no way did I feel connected to the protagonist. Holden was just one messed up kid who needed to sort out his issues. Salinger tried to write from a mentally ill teenager's POV not from a sane minded's, so why do people feel that teenagers would connect to this book. teenager's in general don't have such twisted minds. therefore, calling this book a coming of age novel is not accurate. it is more realistic and complicated that people make it seem.

[Monty J]

Gauri wrote: "why do people feel that teenagers would connect to this book. teenager's in general don't have such twisted minds. therefore, calling this book a coming of age novel is not accurate."

Exactly. Coming-of-age is only half the story. See my post above and recreated below:

"Many readers of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, have expressed frustration with the book, complaining that it has no plot or they have trouble relating to the spoiled, whiny rich kid main character, Holden Caulfield. Or the book was forced on them as an English assignment. If you are among this crowd, read on.

Does it make sense to you that Holden was so traumatized by the deaths of his brother, Allie, and his dorm-mate, James Castle, that he couldn't function? Today's diagnosis would be PTSD. Do you know anyone with that condition? If you did, you would recognize the symptoms in Holden.

Has anyone close to you died? Do you get it that people can be so torn up over the loss of a loved one that it takes them years to get over it unless they get professional help, if even then?

Does the book make sense to you knowing that JD Salinger himself spent time in a mental ward for 'battle fatigue' during World War II after participating in the Normandy landing at Utah Beach, the heart of the action, where he could see hundreds of men, some of them perhaps close friends, cut to pieces by German machine guns and blown apart by mortars. He was also at the horrific Battle of Bulge and other major battles where American troops were decimated.

He was also among the first Allied soldiers to visit a concentration camp where bodies were piled up to be burned and the air stank of burning flesh and the prisoners he helped liberate were walking skeletons? 'You could live a lifetime,' Salinger told his daughter, 'and never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose.'

Does it make sense to you that someone who had experienced what Salinger had could acquire a heightened sense of compassion for his fellow man and want to protect the innocence of children? Doesn't it make sense that he could create a character like Holden to express those feelings?

(And doesn't this make the j'teenaged angst' explanation of the book seem a bit superficial, even dismissive?)

Holden was almost 17 and confronting the complications of life without much input from his parents, who themselves where probably still consumed by grief over Allie's death. Holden makes it clear on multiple occasions how alone he feels. PTSD could have made him edgy, jaded and negative.

All of life can be viewed from opposite poles of positive or negative. "Phony" is a negative label connoting judgment on the part of Holden's juvenile mind that is too inexperienced in life to have the capacity to understand why people put up a social front.

Every human being has a public persona they polish to show the world, when deep inside they are scared little children or have some other fear or hangup.

The irony is that Holden thinks he's being cool by calling out the phoniness he sees, when he's only skimmed the surface of human understanding. Until the very end of the book, when he lets down his own defenses, "practically bawling" as he sits on the bench in the rain watching Phoebe on the carousel.

'She just looks so nice,' he says, 'in her blue coat, going around and around.'

The book is rich with deep insight into the humanity of an adolescent male striving to understand the world he is growing into while weighed down by unresolved grief over the deaths of a brother and a friend. And he is redeemed by the innocence and unconditional love of Phoebe.

After finishing the book I felt like celebrating. Holden's were happy tears because he had been pulled back from the brink of making the very bad mistake of running away by the love of his little sister who adored him. Because of her he got the mental health care he so desperately needed, in a cushy "rest home" in California, where his beloved big brother could see him every weekend.

What can be greater than discovering you are loved and not alone?

The Catcher in the Rye is not so much a book for young adults or teenagers, although it is promoted that way because of the age of the protagonist. The themes of compassion and mental illness and redemption are adult themes. The popular academic focus on teenage angst is overblown, in my humble opinion. It raises unrealistic expectations in younger readers and leaves them disappointed and confused."

[Gauri]

Monty J wrote: The Catcher in the Rye is not so much a book for young adults or teenagers, although it is promoted that way because of the age of the protagonist. The themes of compassion and mental illness and redemption are adult themes. The popular academic focus on teenage angst is overblown, in my humble opinion. It raises unrealistic expectations in younger readers and leaves them disappointed and confused."

very true.....I have been reading young-adult novels for ages now but only in recent years have I ventured into a little more mature reading. When I picked up this book I expected it to be about a regular adolescent with some teenage issue but half way through the book I did not understand why Holden was behaving the way he was and I just felt like to quit reading book. Now that I have read similar kind of books and that I understand the graveness of his situation with a little more reason, do I appreciate Salinger's writing better.

[Josh]

Holden is nothing but an older version of Caillou.

[Mark]

Yes, lots of people didn't get "Catcher In The Rye" Most share the common fact they have drool cups, but yeah, sure. It's everyone else, not you -- you're the genius.

[Jemma]

I've read the book both a a teenager and as an adult, both times I didn't like it. Don't see what all the fuss was about.

[Saandra]

M.L. wrote: "I haven’t read this entire thread, and I’m not intending to sway opinion for those who don’t care for Catcher in the Rye, but I wanted to throw some support behind Matthew’s and Leann’s comments re..."

i feel that is a sensible,rational analysis of the book.

[Monty J]

M.L. wrote: " In fact, the book when viewed through that lens takes on even more weight and helps it transcend, for me at least, the "book for teens" label. This may be irrelevant for those who find Catcher wanting, but, if you're looking for a way in, try viewing it as a book of suffering, a teenager’s attempt—messy and painful at times—to make sense of the senseless death of a beloved brother."

Well put,M.L. Thanks for posting.