 Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book you should have read in high school
The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger I don't know about "should," but it seems like everyone but me read this book in high school. It's a bit of a stereotype that if a guy says this is his favorite book, it means he hasn't read one since then. I see the appeal to adolescents. Teenage Holden flees his boarding school before winter break, and checks into a hotel. He drinks, smokes, flirts with adult women, and doesn't have to listen to adults, for a few days anyway. He feels disconnected and misunderstood. We get occasional glimpses of trauma in Holden's life. His younger brother died. A classmate jumped out of a window to his death to escape an assault by several guys. Holden spends the night at the home of a former teacher and his wife - and wakes to find the teacher caressing his hair. It's mentioned in passing that Holden's been in this situation before. But I found Holden's narration so tedious, it was hard to care about the story. Holden gripes endlessly about how everything's "crumby" [sic] and "lousy." Holden lies to everyone around him, yet his favorite complaint is that everyone else is "phony." At one point, he takes a girlfriend to a show that he hates, and professes love to her while thinking of her with total contempt - and somehow she's "phony"? It's possible to have an unlikeable, unreliable narrator, and still have an engaging book. (Lolita springs to mind.) For me, this book wasn't it.
1 Comment
Cohenzee
1/10/2024 07:29:21 pm
I had the unfortunate distinction to have to read this for school twice: once in high school and once in college. The first, i went in excited about reading a book so many people told me they loved. Like you, I found Holden unbelievably tedious. He's so tiresome. He's the epitome of all the rich, entitled jerks you seem roaming the halls of so many snobbish Northeastern WASPy areas of America. Yes, he has a bit of a redemption when watching his sister on the carousel in Central Park, but it is too little, too late. I am not really sure how I got through it again I college, but it was somehow worse the second time. Leave a Reply. |