Re: booby prize
craig king (ck31@ukc.ac.uk)
Sun, 17 Oct 1999 19:46:49 +0100 (GMT Daylight Time)
On Sun, 17 Oct 1999 18:22:07 +0100 Scottie Bowman
<rbowman@indigo.ie> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
I can't help but think of Zooey's comments to Franny about
her descriptions of Professor Tupper on this one but I'm
not sure if I'm allowed to quote them so I won't. Something
along lines of confusing personal attacks and intellectual
objections. This is silly. Favourite author, favourite
book, forced into coy little suggestions at certain
passages.
although, scottie b., i can't remember the last
time a 'drunken poet' held sway at the bbc. more of a cane
wielding headmaster, surely?
craig