Re: CNN Poll
Bethany M. Edstrom (Bethany.M.Edstrom@Dartmouth.EDU)
Thu, 23 Apr 1998 10:47:05 -0400 (EDT)
--- You wrote:
Yeah, but it's a high school book. F&Z is a college book.
--- end of quoted material ---
oooh--I sense a debate brewing here. I know where you're coming from, in a
sense--_Catcher_ is more likely to have a profound effect on high school
students reading it for the first time, while _F&Z_ does so for college
students. I won't argue that point. But I would never call _Catcher_ a "high
school book." Sometimes, in my more cynical moods, I think that the fact that
high schools students "identify" with Holden can only hamper their appreciation
of the book. I feel like I only learned to understand that book fully when I
became able to criticize Holden.
I think the ideal way to read _Catcher_ is to have a long-term relationship
with it: to read it and ponder it as a pre-teen, as a high school student, and
throughout adulthood. I like to think that this is the kind of relationship
Salinger had/has with his characters, and his presentation of Holden is so
complex because he was able to view him as a peer, the way he might have
thought of him when he was sixteen himself, and as a child he could counsel and
criticize from his more experienced point of view.
About the CNN poll--I'll second the comment that whoever wrote the choices
tossed _F&Z_ in as the token spiritual work, to appeal to the sensitive poet
types or whatever--to what some of us here at Dartmouth derisively call
"creative loners." I can see the poll-writer chewing on the end of his pencil
muttering, "_Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ or _Franny and Zooey_,
_Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ or _Franny and Zooey_..." and
finally deciding to flip a coin...