RIP indeed, though I can't help but think of this passage from The Catcher in the Rye:
That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say “Holden Caulfield” on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say “Fuck you.” I'm positive, in fact.
I was (pleasantly) surprised when my 9th grade English teacher put this on book on the assignments list, since most of the other teachers at my school would have avoided it for its themes and language.
It was also amusing to see the class reaction when he tried discussing it in class.
Most people hadn't read it, and when he tried to get our reactions to some of the more taboo stuff, everyone's facial expression changed to "I've got to go read this now".
Even if the public hardly knew you, we knew you through your work, and will always remember you through the characters you shared with us. Their insight and perspective will continue to remind those lost in adolescence, the adult world, or the nostalgia of innocence that they are not alone.
Does anyone else think Catcher in the Rye was a load of rubbish? I had no sympathy whatsoever for the main character and found the book frankly boring.
Catcher in the Rye is the purest and starkest expression of someone's struggle against the environment in which he was brought up. If you didn't have such a struggle (or had it in a very different form), then you're fortunate and your life will probably be better for it, but there will be very little in Catcher for you to relate to. I'll admit that the plot of the book is rather boring, it's just a guy doing some stuff cuz he feels like it. It requires a lot of subtext for it to be meaningful or valuable, which some people lack simply due to different experiences and background. While a lot of people find it a deeply moving or inspiring book, it's definitely a YMMV sort of thing.
I first read Catcher in the Rye in high school, years after I had already gone through my own "Caulfield" period -- so I found it at the time kind of, I dunno, juvenile.
I don't know if re-reading it now would make a difference.
Honestly, it would probably seem even more juvenile. I just re-read it a few months ago, and almost came away from it wondering what I'd ever seen in such a book.
Of course, this is decades removed from my 'damn the man' phase in life, but I found it wholly unrelatable, and even annoying in large parts of it.
Did you mean that you personally didn't like it? Or that it was objectively bad or unworthy of acclaim?
Yes, there are people who think that Catcher in the Rye was "a load of rubbish", but that doesn't make it so. Having a sympathetic protagonist isn't a requirement for good art; neither is not being boring to you personally at the time you first encountered it.
It's possible that now, with greater knowledge of the sweep of literary history, that you'd recognize what's good (or even great) about it.
I'm cautiously sympathetic to you. I used to think that Joan Miró was intensely overrated, but that was before I got some more schooling in 20th century painting. Now I'm happy to see his work when I visit modern art museums.
> It's possible that now, with greater knowledge of the sweep of literary history, that you'd recognize what's good (or even great) about it.
That's an awfully subjective field. I think Neil Stephenson is 'great', but find most 'high literature' to be a waste of time. I like various forms of visual art, on the other hand.
It's sort of like an old man here in Italy once told me when I asked him how to judge if a wine was good. He looked at me as if I were a bit daft and says "well, it tastes good". Granted, he probably had refined his taste buds over the years, but the main point was to drink something you like.
When I read a book I do at least want it to be entertaining. I'm a big reader, and a fan of all sorts of novels including 'high' literature. I just found this book dull, the main character was unsympathetic, and not a lot happened. That is, though, purely my opinion of the book at the time that I read it (about 10 years ago IIRC).
There are a few books whose everlasting fame eludes me. "On the Road" and "The Great Gatsby" and "Catcher in the Rye" all provided mystifying reads...because they are supposed to be great and manifestly are not.
I mean, "as they actually evidenced themselves as I read them", rather than "by way of conventional view". Obviously I'm talking about my own opinion. I suspect a book like catcher in the rye would have a hard time getting published and selling today. Without being preceded by its acclaim, most readers would think it ho-hum.
This is true of a lot of things, though. Take Shakespeare's comedies. They aren't funny. A modern Shakespeare audience laughs at the jokes even though they already see them coming (having read the play multiple times already). This is the opposite of normal experience. I won't laugh much at a genuinely funny comedy if I've already seen it 10 times, so why would I laugh at 500-year-old puns that I've heard before...when even the best puns rarely cause laughter the first time?
I don't think that's really an apt comparison. Shakespeare's comedies haven't really aged well (it's a bit like watching comedy from the 1970s - you miss all the context). The tragedies age much better.
And concerning "getting published and selling today" - Sarah Palin gets published. That doesn't mean that what she writes is anything other than trash.
"I won't laugh much at a genuinely funny comedy if I've already seen it 10 times, so why would I laugh at 500-year-old puns that I've heard before...when even the best puns rarely cause laughter the first time?"
I've seen the film Animal House[0] about 20 times and still think it's funny. Part of the humor is the set-up and delivery. Yes, I know John Belushi is going to force potatoes out of his mouth, but when it happens it's still funny because of all the little details.
Same for A Night at the Opera. Dated in some ways, but hysterical in others. Grouch Marx is just funny, even when you know the jokes.
Now, my wife wonders how I can watch the same movie twice, since I what happens and how it ends.
My brother, though, compares this to listening to music; you know the words and how the melody goes, but you still like listening to a familiar song. Some people are that way with books and plays and movies, too.
Those books were startling when they came out, both in content and style. They were so influential they have been imitated thousands of times; their themes and styles have permeated popular culture until now they have become cliches.
It is no longer possible for a contemporary reader to experience them as the original readers did.
I agree with the premise, but would also caveat that Catcher was a much better read for me when I was about the same age as Holden was. I could identify then with his feelings, with his inability to succinctly sum up his thoughts, with his need to accentuate things that really didn't need accentuating, etc.
The style worked for me (even though I'm decidedly not from the era of its original readers) because even though the vernacular is dated, it was still relevant to the mannerisms I spoke with in my teens and (maybe) early twenties.
Reading it again now, in my thirties, it is dramatically different. Not because I've read other books that imitated the style, or because it has become cliche, but because I am very far removed, mentally, from how I was when I first read it.
They just speak to people in different ways. Personally, I got a lot out of "Catcher In The Rye" and "On The Road", but the themes of those books resonated heavily with me at the time.
I enjoyed "The Great Gatsby" as a story, but it didn't connect with me in the way it seems to connect with others. However, I suspect that read in a different moment of my life its impact could be profoundly different.
That's amusing - I didn't get "The Great Gatsby" at all, but liked "Catcher in the Rye".
I doubt I can articulate why I liked it, though - neither the plot nor the characters were about "likability", and I can't say I walked away with any profound life lessons. It was unique among books I've read in that I put it down at the end and thought "Wow, that was something... but I'm not sure what."
I read Catcher in College, and thought the main character was an obnoxious little prig.
"Ok, so the world's 'phony,' you little snot, you want a sticker for figuring that out?"
I think it's a book you have to read when you're sixteen, and you're just coming to realize that life isn't all sunshine and ice cream. Then it has a way of really speaking to the core of what you're feeling.
But if you're not in that phrase of your life, the teenage self-righteousness of it grates too much.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as "a load of rubbish" though I certainly thought it was a snooze. But I've always seemed to have a big impedance mismatch with "great literature." I think this is because I've never grokked the language of symbolism. For example (and please consider this a rhetorical question) what's the deal with the houndstooth coat? He goes on and on (and on and on) about it. What do hounds teeth have to do with anything? Why not a terrycloth robe? For that matter, what the fuck is a houndstooth coat? And why rye? Why not corn? Or wheat? Would The Shortstop in the Azaleas have conveyed the same message?
Those were the sorts of things that were foremost in my mind when I read Catcher, so clearly I missed the point, and I'm still missing it. But I do find it kind of fascinating that so many people get something out of it that completely eludes me to this day.
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
I'm sad he's gone, 9 stories upset me in ways few books ever have. At the same time, I've wanted to read those unpublished books for a while. I guess he'd be satisfied with a melancholy response.
> I'm sad he's gone, 9 stories upset me in ways few books ever have.
That's the most concise and accurate description of his writing I've seen. His works are... unsettling, and the value of reading them comes from figuring out why, which can sometimes be very difficult. I've read very few authors that can force introspection the way JD Salinger could. This is also why it's (rightly!) considered dangerous to read.
Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
I enjoyed his books greatly, not just for the story, but for the mere enjoyment of reading his prose. I enjoyed Nine Stories & Franny ans Zooey the most of all.
I've heard that he never stopped writing, and that he has quite a few works that have yet to be published. Hopefully those works will see the light of day now.
"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life." Chapter 25, pg. 198
"The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs--if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do."
Strange, I just read the first two chapters of Catcher in the Rye at the local coffee shop... It was gonna be next on my list when I finish On the Road.
Literary works are judged against the backdrop of their place and time. If a work is deemed "excellent" for its era, it remains so for all others; even if proven unworthy later, it retains its place in history as the once great literary work (the average personal library is full of has-been literature.) A work might increase in "excellence", if newer works reach back to it for influence, or if the work is deemed prophetic, predicting the norms and realities of a later era.
That story always messes with me when I read it. It is almost like it overwhelms my senses and I'm not a very big fan of catcher in the rye but Franny and Zooey was interesting.
Life, after "Catcher in the Rye": "The world is not cast in concrete. It's OK to question authority. You're not the only one."
I've been living my life like that ever since. I don't know if that was JDS's intent, but it sure was the effect.
RIP