DS despises Catcher In The Rye. So proud of him.

[ReanimatedSGB]

I'm also rather surprised that this tedious wank is still being pushed on schoolkids as Great Literature. I hated it when I read it in my teens and am very glad to find that DS is as unimpressesd as I was - it's just one long white-boy whine, isn't it?

I don't like it either, but I'm not that surprised that your DS doesn't like it if you don't - his tastes will, at least in part, have been shaped by yours.

I couldn't even pick it up to read it again now - I read it in my 20s and thought it was boring then, couldn't see what all the fuss was about, and I haven't the time to waste on re-reading it when there are so many better books to read out there.

I love it. I kept my copy and I don't hold onto books other than those I consider as pure class writing

If you want a well written book about ridiculous angst Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh is a fabulous book.

I probably read it far too late in life to appreciate it (late 30’s/early 40’s) as part of a ‘100 books you must read’ type thing. Really didn’t enjoy reading it and felt annoyed by the main character rather than connected to him.

Also read The Great Gatsby around the same time which whilst I wouldn’t say I loved, I could at least find some interesting qualities in.

I was doing some de-cluttering today and found a copy of this. I put it aside, on an "I really must get around to reading this at long last" pile. I'm inspired to start it now!

I don't know that I'd dismiss any 15 yo who'd lost their beloved younger brother to leukaemia just 2 years before and was pretty much having a breakdown as a white boy whiner. I read it as about grief - in an age and culture where you were expected to be tough and keep going, not show emotion. And in that regard the adult world was phoney and deeply confusing. I read it as a teenager a long time ago and it moved me deeply. But I had a difficult upbringing where adults were also not rational and I guess I identified in that regard. I can see how teenagers who have closer, more rational relationships with their parents and adults may not get it. But this is anything but a superficial book.

It's no longer a GCSE set text, as we are only allowed to set British literature.

Tbf, I think the "white boy whine" reviewers are making a fair, if somewhat reductive, point. We are beginning to recognise now that for far too long the literary canon has been heavily populated by white male writers, to the detriment of female and black/brown writers contemporary of their time. It's something publishing houses like Persephone are trying to tackle by re-printing the forgotten work she of minority and female writers.

I did this as part of my MA and the class was deeply divided on this book.
Why it's great? At a time when the US was all about conformity and for the greater good etc, it shows how an individual does (or doesn't)cope with his own personal problems. It shows the adult world as being utterly untrustworthy and preying on the vulnerable, with one person trying to combat that.
It also plays with the idea of narrative - he's a deeply unreliable narrator and a lot of the events are questionable.

BUT - yes - he does sound like a whiny wealthy white boy. He has so much privilege that it's hard to see past that to see him as the vulnerable child that he is. If the same story were told by a child from a poor family would we like it more? Or is part of the point that even with all that wealth he is still just as vulnerable as any other child with these terrible adults all around him? He's a mixed up mess of vulnerable child and cynic, with all the adults around him failing him in some way.

The bit that sticks that me is the night that his brother dies. He spends the whole night in the garage then smashes all the windows. Of course, doing that was an arsehole thing to do, but where were the adults in his life? His parents could afford multiple staff, so why didn't anyone notice he was missing? He's left alone right when he needs someone, so he acts as an idiot.

I haven't read it, so can't say, but going on what people are saying here about it, I just wanted to add the the fact that female and brown or black authors have been sidelined and ignored due to structural sexism and racism is not a good reason to belittle the grief of a young white boy over his brother's death

re-balancing the canon shouldn't mean we now despise and belittle white stories and white authors, it should mean we address racism and sexism, particularly in the school curriculum (while of course also recognising how racism and sexism shape our very culture and therefore also our literature)

I read it as a teenager and thought it was profound Don’t think I could bear to read it again.

There’s altogether too much self-indulgent, narrow-minded, navel-gazing but adequately/well written fiction, addressing the same routine aspects of the human condition, from white men and women of certain social strata. They’re not bad as such, just mediocre or unexceptional and fundamentally uninteresting. They fall into the pantheon of “greats” because of the hype around them, largely created by people who come from the same social strata. There are so many more interesting and novel and creative and increasingly relevant (to the white western world, that is, they’ve always been relevant to their natural audiences) writers coming to the fore. This is only news to people from, you guessed it, those same social strata.

🤷‍♀️ Bit of a non-point really that some mum in the UK is smug about her kid finding Catcher in the Rye poor. Plenty of people cottoned onto this many, many years ago.

I loved it when I read aged 11 and continued to love it (reread it many times until I was in my late 20s). I read all his other novels and loved them too.

I like what you have said about it, KickAssAngel. That was what I got from it.

I read it as a teenager shortly after it was published. It was, literally, original. Ground-breaking. People had never read anything quite like it before. Since then, perhaps the genre has been overworked.

I don't know how I'd feel about it now, but Salinger's short stories - For Esme with Love and Squalor - certainly stand the test of time.

Why do people use the word 'despise' instead of 'detest'? 'Despise' used only to be used towards people, not objects. It means look down on with disgust which sounds wrong to me when they're talking about broccoli, or a book.

I attempted to read it for the first time as a teenager. I gave up a few pages in, I couldn’t stand his whining and moaning. I didn’t get far enough into it to properly understand Holden’s history/about his brother’s death and all that.

OP how is your ds' opinion of a book superior different to other people's opinions of books; what's so special?

I wouldn't be "proud" unless my child could adequately describe what it was they disliked about the book.

There were PLENTY of people in my high school English classes who prided themselves on hating Shakespeare without attempting to understand a word of it.

I loved it when I was a teenager and I love it now.
It might not be for you, fair enough, but with great literature, and it is great, I think you should at least try to appreciate its greatness.
It is the perfect representation of teenage angst and self indulgence. Maybe it's not catcher in the rye you hated, but Holden Caulfied?

I read it a few years ago...cannot remember a thing apart from the main character was a detestable public school boy type.
Toxic masculinity i seem to recall. ( vaguely.)

I'm appalled at people objecting to the words "white-boy whine" on the grounds that "black-boy whine" would be unacceptable. Have they no idea why there is a difference? Because, say, for example, had he been black in that time and place he would have had something pretty serious to whine about?

I loathed this novel until I had to teach it. Then I saw its virtues as a work of art. HC is at turns dreadful, pitiful, funny and awkward.

it's just one long white-boy whine, isn't it. Not at all, and leave off the white trashing, why don't you?

There are some texts celebrating other races or questioning racusm now in schools. To kill a mocking bird for one.
Of mice and Men questions issues around disability and when i taught English the poetry anthology waa full of multicultural poems...great stuff.
Even classics like Jayne Eyre explore race as Bertha or madwoman is from the Caribean.
At the same time why should we exclude the experiences of the white and priveledged?
Both Daisy and Tom Buchanon in the Great Gastby are white and terribly priveledged but so unhappy and messed up. We are supposed to question the American dream in these texts...so question white, middle class wealth.

Also we are invited to question and criticise the American dream.

Sorry for typos.

I think the author has been incredibly succesful in making us dislike the protagonist. I think that was his intention.

It is utter pretentious shite - cant believe people still read it.

Anniegetyourgun

I'm happy for people to use "white boy whine" and "white male tears" as it is a fair indicator of the type of bigot that that person is.