Subject: Re: CATCHER age groups
From: Cheryl Cline (ccline@uclink4.berkeley.edu)
Date: Sun Nov 26 2000 - 17:41:54 GMT
The California public school system sicked Catcher on me in my thirteenth
year of incarceration (senior year of high school). Very fortunately it was
not accompanied by the assignment of inane projects, like the sugar cube
castle required of us so-called honor students after reading Hamlet. Well,
I had read it on my own the year before, when I was 15. Our teacher, in a
rare burst of competence, warned us not to get caught up in the language,
but to pay attention to what was going on in the book. I confess that I
succumbed to Catcher's language for the first few readings, but I eventually
did pay attention to the story itself.
So, at my school and at similar mentally impoverished institutions across
the state, it was 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds reading Catcher for the first
time. However, this is only for the "Advanced Placement" classes full of
dutiful model minorities and Caucasians. The rest of the school, which, as
I found out later, never had a counselor come to their classes to talk about
anything so remote as advanced placement tests or college prep, probably
were never exposed to the book in class.
I've never seen the book on a reading list for a single English class at
Cal, and I've met a sizable number of people who have never read any
Salinger. So my guess is that most people read it in high school and some
in college, if ever.
-Cheryl Cline
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bernd Wahlbrinck" <Bernd.Wahlbrinck@t-online.de>
To: "BANANA NEU" <bananafish@roughdraft.org>
Sent: Friday, November 24, 2000 7:06 AM
Subject: CATCHER age groups
> Will Hochman wrote:
> >In the 50s when it first came out, the book was hot among college
> >students but I think it has filtered down to students in 9th grade
> >(14-15 years old) these days...how old are your students?
>
> Well, my students are 18-19 years old.
> However, what they meant was, is it largely young people or adults
> that read Catcher?
> I have a hunch that is almost impossible to say, esp. since people
> like me read it when they were young and STILL read it..
> Bernie
> ___________________________________________________________________
> "THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D.Salinger - and related matters"
> url: http://mitglied.tripod.de/BerndWahlbrinck/index.htm
>
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