booby prize

Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Sun, 17 Oct 1999 18:22:07 +0100 

    The (London) Sunday Telegraph has been running
    a feature in which distinguished people are invited 
    to comment on what they see as the most overrated 
    book of the century.  Sir Christopher Bland chose 
    The Catcher.
 
   This is what he wrote:
    _____________________

    Holden Caulfield is 20th Century America fiction's 
    richest angry young man; educated at Pency Prep, 
    resisiting Princeton & Yale, & with enough money 
    to taxi around New York, stay in expensive hotels 
    & order exotic cocktails.  On the strength of a crap, 
    a goddam & a bastard or two, The Catcher in the Rye 
    was banned from a thousand American schools.  
    And that's about it, other than an unfuriatingly cute 
    use of language: for example, author, teacher, classmate 
    & girlfriend all get called 'old Thomas Hardy', 
    'old Spencer', 'old Stradlater', 'old Sally' - & those 
    are the ones Holden Caulfield liked.  His ignorance 
    about Burns' Coming through the Rye is corrected - 
    but too late to save us from the title or the book - 
    by his cute little sister old Phoebe.

    The Catcher in the Rye has bedazzled many literary 
    critics, such as Yale's Harold Bloom, who writes that 
    by the end of the book, 'Holden becomes a figure 
    of capable poignance & persuades us implicitly that 
    he will survive for some larger end or purpose, 
    benign & generous in a more organised version 
    of innocence.'  

    Nonsense; Holden went on Wall Street, married 
    old Sally & is now a senior partner in Goldman Sachs.
    ______________________

    Who, you ask, is Sir Christopher?  

    For the past few years he has been Chairman 
    of the BBC.  An ardent supporter of the Director 
    General, John Birt, the two of them are credited (?) 
    with having converted the organisation from 
    an old public service draught-horse into a tiger 
    of the market place.  Where drunken poets in 
    floppy bowties once held sway, accountants now 
    slink around with mobiles to their ears.  Morale 
    was never lower.

    As old Chris & old John approach their peerages, 
    we are all keeping our fingers crossed for the new guy, 
    Greg Dyke, who until a month ago sported an arty 
    beard & was once actually a producer of programmes.

    Still.  I knew you wouldn't want to miss these 
    trenchant thoughts.  I hope they don't give you 
    all a wholly insufferable sense of superiority.  
    (I'm not too hopeful.)

    Scottie B.