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?

the ‘white boy whine’ attitude directly contributes to the depression and unhappiness of a lot of teen and young people. I work as a counsellor for people aged under 24. I’d say a good 60-70% of the troubled youth I work with (regardless of gender or ethnicity)have their mental burden increased by feelings of guilt that as a relatively healthy person living in the first world with an education, enough food and a roof over their heads they somehow have no ‘right’ to be unhappy.

FWIW I read Catcher in the Rye at about 16 and also thought it was whiny hype. He had more money than I could ever dream of - what was his problem? Reading it in my fifties my heart breaks for the desperate, unloved, unlovable teen.

I’m waiting for Woko Haram to rip into Jane Austen’s literary works, deriding them as “white woman tears” or “middle class obsession over the patriarchal institution of marriage”

It’s honestly an insult to Austen that you would even think of comparing her subversive, perceptive, intelligent, funny and illuminating novels to something as self-indulgent and badly written as The Catcher in the Rye.

I did enjoy your ‘woko haram’ pun though.

YABU and some of your comments OP are pretty disgusting.
Maybe you think it makes you sound enlightened or “woke”
Just stop and get over yourself

I think it's like a lot of seminal work, everything after it is derivative so when you read them, the ideas have already diluted- it's of its time and the knowledge of it is what's important rather than whether you like it or not.

Doesn’t your son have any actual skills or positive traits that you can be proud of? Kindness, intelligence, good at football, etc? It seems weird that you’re proud of him for holding a certain opinion about a book. What a bizarre and snobby thing to be proud of. Obviously he doesn’t have anything else that you can take real pride in.

I don't think OP said it was a set text( it never has been in all my years of teaching at GCSE! )I presume she means it is on a reading list. I still put it on reading lists because it is more worthy than the bilge/ too easy stuff they do read. However, I too disliked it when I read it (many many moons ago) and thought Holden was just whiny. I know he is meant to be. Also disliked Gatsby. They are both (deliberately) vacuous and it isn't my bag.
Out of interest OP, because I am after some new books for my DS (soon to be 15), what books has he liked?

Obviously he doesn’t have anything else that you can take real pride in.

What a needlessly bitchy and obviously stupid comment. You must know that expressing pride in one aspect of a person doesn’t mean you don’t believe them to have any other positive qualities, which means you only made this comment for the specific purpose of being cruel. Why?

In what possible sense can you claim that white men are ‘not allowed’ to make art?

Hyperbole.

I'm not particularly articulate, and not at all academic, so I'll struggle to put into words what I feel about this.White men are 'legitimate targets', and their crime is that art-forms they developed have become popular. Nobody forces the general public to buy certain books or go to certain films, and they fail if they don't strike a chord with whoever makes up the bulk of a particular population.

Blues of the forties, fifties and sixties is my favourite music. Is that 'black-boy whine'?

Every single person in the world lives within their own heads. Some have the urge to express themselves in art, and they usually work within an art-form that's familiar to them. It might be easy for geniuses, but for most other artists it's a slog - which is why not many artists are successful. Oh, I can't even...

Anyway, I'm sick of the word white becoming an insult. Why do people decide they'll make others feel guilty and apologetic for their accident of birth?

There's an interesting piece about 'The Catcher in the Rye' - its strengths and its limitations - here.

I think it's worth noting that Salinger's background is part-Catholic and part-Jewish and Holden's background is similar. So despite Holden's wealthy background, he doesn't really belong in WASP culture - and this maybe one of the reasons he questions everything.

newliteraryhistory.com/catcherintherye.html

I absolutely hate it and hated it at gcses. Holden Caulfield is an absolute dick and even when you are also a teenager hes still a dick.
I dont identify as 'ignorant' thanks.
I love literature. Not that dire piece of trash though....
I'd also be happy if my son came home from school asking wtf that excuse for a book was playing at.

their crime is that art-forms they developed have become popular

They didn’t develop these art forms - they just got the recognition for them.

The first ever novel was written by a Japanese woman. The first ever science fiction novel was written by Mary Shelley. Rock and roll and jazz were created by black people. White men get most of the credit in these fields but they didn’t invent them, and their voices should be prioritised to the exclusion of everyone else.

Nobody is disputing that white men have created great works of art or that they will continue to do so. But it is a very valid point that they get a disproportionate level of recognition and praise, and that this is to the exclusion of other voices which are equally valid.

I reread it recently with DD and really disliked it on second reading. I found it quite tedious for such a short novel. Not sure it has really stood the test of time or maybe you just need to be an angst-ridden teen to 'enjoy' it?

I think the point is that we all are entitled to a viewpoint - authors understand that when they publish a work. Catcher was not for me, but I understand some others love it. I cant get to grips with Gabriel Garcia Marquez either but it doesn't make me a bad person! (My first degree was in literature - I had to read a lot of shite!) I love Shakespeare , others don't. Each to their own!

You do realise that Catcher in the Rye is pretty much the first novel written from the POV of a teenager suffering from depression don't you? a child who has been abandoned by his own parents and is so crushingly lonely that he pays money to people to spend time with him?

Exactly. It's an incredibly sad book. Holden's brother has died, and he's been shunted off to boarding school. He's desperately lonely. He misses his sister. The whole point of the book is that it's bravado - he's the classic unreliable narrator. He pretends that he's this amazingly cool person who hates "phoneys" but he's just very sad and alone - and still a child. In the final page of the novel, he's in a mental institution. I first read it when I was a teenager and I've read it a few times since. It becomes more heartbreaking with each reading.

I loved it. It’s something you need to read as a teen though. Realising that Caulfied was going through some sort of mental breakdown in spite of his wealth and privilege was a game changer.

Why do people decide they'll make others feel guilty and apologetic for their accident of birth?

Also absolutely hilarious that you think this is something which affects white men more than women and people of colour.

Juells, I might suggest maybe reading "Why I'm No Longer Walking to White People About Race" to see a response to your concerns re: white males. The author has some great points about the importance of positive discrimination which might be interesting to you. And it's a great read!

I think it's important, also, to note that the art-forms were not necessarily developed solely by white men, it's just that they're the ones whose examples we have always favoured (which is a problem). And in the cases where they were the only ones developing those art-forms, there's usually a very negative reason as to why that is.

I read it first at school as a 13 year old and I really disliked HC’s attitude to girls/sex.

But you're not supposed to like it. That's the point a whole load of posters are missing. You're not supposed to think that this is an admirable person - you're supposed to realise that this is someone who's confused, lonely and frightened who's putting on a huge front.

Yabu. I don't think it's pretentious at all. Yes hes an annoying teen going off the edge but because his brother died is hardly a whine. Plus take it in context to the time it was written too. Teens like books about other teens. I much prefered reading that at school to Pride and Prejudice etc. As for white boy whine.....I think you've went off on an unnecessary tangent there.

Only British lit for GCSE (or whatever the exams are called now)? What's going on? Who Brexited the exams? That's shocking.

If your son is white, I feel very sorry for him. I guess he has maybe grown up thinking his feelings and opinions have no importance solely because of his skin color

I think that’s missing the OPs point. I can’t bear the male American canon - white men boring on about their masturbation / affairs / fantasies and being lauded as the pinnacle of literature. CITR isn’t quite that but has hints of it with the self involvement. Yes Salinger is depicting a teenager and teenagers are supposed to be like that. But it does set my teeth on edge so I totally get what the OP is saying about that style of literature which does get way too much air time compared to the equivalent books by women.

I actually read it so many decades ago that I can’t remember it all that well but I do know I was somewhat underwhelmed / bored.

Weird responses you’ve had on this thread OP. Whatever you think about CITR it’s pleasing when children are able to review something honestly that they are supposed to like. Critical thinking - sounds good to me.

It’s honestly an insult to Austen that you would even think of comparing her subversive, perceptive, intelligent, funny and illuminating novels to something as self-indulgent and badly written as The Catcher in the Rye

The point is that a work of literature has a certain cultural context, and to reduce it to “white male tears” is literally losing the plot.

You could likely criticise any work of literature written by and for a mainly white audience in the same way.

Gove did it long. Purely out of his own personal prejudice against Of Mice and Men.

I think the problem is that phrases like 'absolute dick' and 'tedious wank' are personal opinions, but they're not literary criticism.

So, I'd be more inclined to respect the opinion of somebody who knew about the American novel of the 1950s, or Salinger's literary heroes. I'd be equally happy to read somebody who compared the reception of the book to a novel about a young woman's coming of age. There's an interesting contrast that could be made with 'The Bell Jar'.

Or maybe with James Baldwin's 'Go Tell It on The Mountain' - which I haven't read, but is now on the reading list.

I think the more you read - and the more widely you read - the more interesting all books (even the more flawed ones) become.

hackmum - yes, of course, but a 13 year old girl will feel victimised by that. You really cannot expect her to empathise with a boy in that situation - that would be grossly sexist.