Subject: Re: Day old question: Why CATCHER?
From: Otto Sell (o.sell@telda.net)
Date: Wed Jan 17 2001 - 04:57:39 GMT
to Jennifer:
"amusing" is very good, most people I made read it found it boring!
Step two is to take him to the bathtub and read "Zooey" to him - he will
love to listen.
When I read it first in the early 70's I didn't get the "hype" too and I can
imagine that for nowadays kids all of this is even more difficult to
understand without the background of those terrible 50's and 60's, all that
hypocrisy after the war preparing the next.
But in his time the "Catcher" really was something new regarding what the
novel tells and how it is told, although it is really very old stuff we are
made to think about when we read any of Salinger's stuff.
The "setting" for reading Salinger, time and place, has always been very
important to me - preferably in winter (Catcher), partly in a bathtub
(Zooey), a little depressed and of course smoking (all the rest).
In September '00 I have posted this:
I'd like to bring to attention that the fourth chapter of David Lodge's *The
Art of Fiction* (1992) - "Teenage Skaz," is about *The Catcher in the Rye*,
praising it for it's style for which "Salinger, the invisible ventriloquist"
had to hide his normal "diction" to "say everything he has to say about life
and death and ultimate values within the limitations of a seventeen-year-old
New Yorker's argot (...)" (Lodge, 1992, p. 20)
I'd like to recommend this Lodge-book to all young readers of serious
literature.
Joseph Claro (J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye," New York 1984)
mentions the fact that in 1951 there was no genre like "Young Adult
Fiction," serious novels with teenage characters written for contemporary
teenagers in their language, the "Catcher" indeed was groundbreaking: "(...)
try to envision the impact this novel had on its first readers back in 1951
(...) you'll learn much about yourself as well as about Holden Caulfield
(...)" (p. 4).
J.D. Salinger indeed may be a bit outdated to catch the attention of the
generation grown up in that cold, cold globalized world we encounter today
but the things Holden and all the Glass-children are talking and thinking
about, struggling with, are eternal and have thus always been "the proper
subject of literature" (John Barth).
Otto
http://www.itap.de/homes/otto/jds/jdslinks.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: Besiada, Jennifer <Jennifer.Besiada@nextel.com>
To: <bananafish@roughdraft.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2001 7:14 PM
Subject: Day old question: Why CATCHER?
> I apologize in advance for rehashing the familiar question, "Why
CATCHER?",
> but I do so under personal circumstances. I have recently forced my new
> beau to read this gem for the first time (a sort of Dating-Jennifer
ritual),
> and he commented that although amusing to read, he did not understand its
> "hype", nor did he feel as though he could personally relate to much of
> Holden's neuroticism.
>
> I have no intention of "changing his opinions", but I am slightly
interested
> to share with him popular outside opinions to help answer his questions.
> Can anyone point me to some good literary criticism?
>
> Thanks much,
> Jennifer
>
>
>
> -
> * Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
> * UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Wed Feb 21 2001 - 09:44:22 GMT