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?

Also, he was touted at school as a character we could identify with because that's how teenagers feel. It was assumed we'd all be so relieved that there was a mouthpiece for our inarticulate hatred of everyone and everything that wasn't us. I felt so talked and written down to. And being made to read this turgid crap instead of writing that I found genuinely insightful into human nature. Like Shakespeare or Austen or Eliot.

The only reason it's such a bit deal is because Salinger never wrote again and refused interviews. It created this mystique that CinR is more than it actually is.

I think he published a few books after Catcher. But I do get the point that he created a mystique by being generally reclusive.

I didn't much like Catcher either. I loved everything else I read: For Esme with Love and Squalor, Raise High the Roof Beams Carpenter, Seymour: an Introduction and Franny and Zooey. I found Catcher the least relate-able, if you'll excuse the expression.

Is this maybe a bit like artists who break the mould and then decades later people can't always see what's so great about it? I'm thinking of maybe Mondrian or Jackson Pollock, where people struggle to see what's so original or great about them. I'm slightly out of my comfort zone here as I don't know much about art, a bit but it's not one of my strong areas.

OK, DS wouldn't use the phrase 'white boy whine' and I didn't say it to DS - just agreed with him that the book is whiny and boring.
However, I stand by 'white boy whine' as a good term for a particular type of overrated book - the sort that is Great Literature about the Human Condition when produced by, well, a whining white man but just genre fiction or popular fiction or somehow less 'important' if the author is female or BAME.

However, I stand by 'white boy whine' as a good term for a particular type of overrated book - the sort that is Great Literature about the Human Condition when produced by, well, a whining white man but just genre fiction or popular fiction or somehow less 'important' if the author is female or BAME.

People are going to shriek ‘reverse racism’ at you but I absolutely couldn’t agree more with this assessment.

I always find it odd that people site disliking the main character as a reason to dislike a book. It was never a favourite of mine as I couldn't get to grips with the pace but I liked having such an antagonistic narrative, even if it was just something a bit different.

the book was not written with adolescents in mind, it's adult fiction.

I agrée, and while it might be extremely relevant for adults to think about why Holden Caulfield was so unlikeable and so unhappy, in order that they might engineer the upbringing of their own children differently, I rest my case that teenage girls should not be burdened with understanding and tolerating male upper class bad behaviour.

I challenge an English teacher to critique this and any other US 20th century novel without using the term 'american dream'

A lot of people would say Homer wrote the first novel. And if not, Petronius certainly got in there about 1000 years before Japan as well.

There are lots of great women writers of English literature in the early days of novels. Class was the real divider.

I agree with the comment upthread that this seemed like a kind of 'no platforming'.

If

a) Holden Caulfield was portrayed as a conventionally heroic figure - who shagged and exploited lots of vulnerable girls who the reader was invited to despise- before some kind of happy feelgood ending in which all his dreams came true

and

b)The Catcher had status as a set text in which the examiners demanded the the novel should be seen as a model of how young teenagers should behave in the here and now, then the book's critics would have a point.

In reality young men in the UK are much more likely to be negatively influenced by porn and the way in which young women are disparaged in song lyrics, than by a book that was written in America in the 1950s.

Coming on to say what a few have pointed out upthread. You aren't supposed to like him. He wasn't meant to be an anti hero. He was just meant to depict a very certain time in life for a boy of his family. It's done very well, which is why it's good AND why it's hard to just "enjoy".

I don't see my dislike of the book as call for it to be no-platformed, or banned from schools or anything (It's not a set text as such; DS school has Big Read sessions where they all read the same book, and this was the most recent choice). But it did strike me as an odd choice.

It’s a pretty reasonable choice. What would you suggest instead?

The tone of some posts on this thread reminds me of a colleague who argued that I should not choose Lord of the Flies as a GCSE text because we were an all-girls school and there were no feminine characters in the book. Come to think of it, all the characters were also white and, except Piggy, upper middle-class.

I still think that such considerations are a ridiculous way of judging the literary merit of a novel and that I'd have been disadvantaging my pupils if I'd followed her advice.

There will probably now be a flood of posts saying how much the poster hated LoF.

As it happens, I think LOTF would have been a better choice. It's a much more interesting book and better written.

Thymeout, what did your colleague suggest instead?

I hated Lord of the Flies a lot more than I disliked Catcher in the Rye.

I didn’t like it either - I thought it was rather pretentious. I hated Kes too. I’m trying to remember what else we studied

Walkabout
Hinson’s choice
Shakespeare and Burns (various)
Death of a salesman
Grapes of wrath
Ted Hughes poems

Ummmmmmm I forget the rest

I didn’t like Kes either.

Gosh, there were far too many books about boys.

I loved 1984, Animal Farm and Brave New World.

Oh yes Orwell how could I forget and lord of the flies.? I enjoyed those.

LotF - posh white boys turn feral

To Kill a Mockingbird was OK, obviously, and Of Mice and Men, tho' Curly's (?) wife was hardly a role model. TKaM is great, and ticks the multi-cultural box but it's v densely written and a big ask for lower groups. Thank god for the film. I even managed it with the least able group. They were surprisingly perceptive. It was like having a class full of Mayellas. It's only just now that it's occurred to me that it was written by a woman. Is it really relevant? Would it have been different if Scout had been a girl?

I alternated TKaM and LotF, because I like a change. Of Mice and Men isn't to my personal taste. The least good of Steinbeck's books, imo.
But others chose it, because it's short and relatively accessible - league tables and all that. By the time I retired, everyone seemed to be reading it and nothing else. One of the reasons, I suppose, why Gove brought in the English native authors only rule.

I only taught CitR once, in a posh Indie girls' school, mid-60s. Not an exam text. They were enthusiastic but there were parental complaints about the language. 'Crap', 'shit'. As I said, way back, it was revolutionary at the time.

Sorry for the digression. I do know what you mean about your son. I have a teenage grandson and it's great when we agree about a book. Don't think he'd like CitR. He prefers books with a bigger hinterland.

Scout is a girl?

I hate it too, I don't like him at all.

Piggy - yes. Oops. I meant to say 'boy' of course.

Re my grandson and hinterlands - he's reading 1984 at the moment. Really enjoyed LotF. He doesn't much enjoy delving into emotions. More interested in ideas.

When originally published Catcher in the Rye was different from other contemporary books being read by teenagers. For many it provided validation of their own feelings and reactions. Another book widely read at the time was Bonjour Tristesse. By the 1980s students were engrossed by Adrian Mole, later along came Harry Potter.
I enjoyed Salinger's short stories and have clearer memories of those books than of Catcher in the Rye. A few years later Ronald Dahl's black humour impressed with Kiss Kiss, interesting that the writer of such dark stories then became such a favourite for his books for young children!

I like all Salinger's books but Catcher in The Rye has always been my favourite. I first read it when I was 12, and have read it dozens of times in the 10 years since then. I adore Holden (never found him remotely annoying)
Franny Glass has always irritated me however.