H. Bloom and TCITR
Diego Dell'Era (dellerad@sinectis.com.ar)
Fri, 20 Feb 1998 23:33:31 -0800
Voilą an excerpt of Harold Bloom's opinion about Catcher, taken from an
interview dealing with the Western Canon for children
(http://homearts.com/depts/relat/hbloomf1.htm)
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Bloom:
And The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger is a genuinely moving book
which holds up amazingly well. It's a miniature version of Huckleberry
Finn in a way. It's authentic, touching and very poignant of course,
because the narrator, Holden, is really on the verge of borderline
schizophrenia and yet seems at the end to have just barely gotten to the
other side of it. Of course we're talking now about a book for children
in middle to late adolescence. It would be a little disturbing I think
before then. A wonderfully valid book, aesthetically speaking. Really a
minor masterpiece.
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What do you think? Is Catcher an age-bound book?
-
diego dell'era (dellerad@sinectis.com.ar)