Re: Sat AM Cartoons

Paul Kennedy (kennedyp@toronto.cbc.ca)
Mon, 08 Mar 1999 15:48:24 -0500 (EST)

>From the TRUTH that's stranger than FICTION department:

I remember quite clearly the reason that I first picked up CATCHER in the
RYE.  It was the very early 1960s (ie pre-November 22, 1963) and I was
therefore somewhere between early-eleven and late-thirteen years old....
I'd read in the paper that there was a controversy in a local high school
about the book being included in the curriculum.  Something about the
controversy sounded somehow enticing--even sexy.  I read CATCHER from
cover-to-cover in a single sitting.  It was the first book that kept me up
all night (for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with controversy or
sex....)

It was only later that I heard what one parent was reported to have said at
the high school meeting organized to push towards banning the book:  "I will
not have my daughter reading a piece of trash called CATCH HER IN THE RAW"....

Sadly, this story is NOT apocryphal.