Catcher in the Rye - it's all bollocks?

[MrsWembley]

Just a quick one, as have to go wash and dress DD, but they've been talking about this on the Today programme like it's the second coming and I'm getting a bit agitated. Am I really the only one who died of boredom whilst reading this book? The only thing I got out of it was a deep desire to slap both the protagonist and the author.

You are not alone. I reread it recently and still thought it was bollocks.

I agree, it is some of the worst up-its-own-arseness that I have ever read!

I was quite underwhelmed by it too.

I read somewhere that introverts are made quite uncomfortable by this style of writing where you're forced inside someone's head rather than observing their actions as a bystander. Vernon God Little was another book in the same style that I disliked immensely.

I never liked it, but my (grown-up) DD1 who is quite booky says I've missed a treat. Maybe I should give it another go, a lot of books I hated when I was very young have opened up like magic worlds now I'm old - that doesn't mean I'm going to go and try Silas Marner again

Teenage angst writ large...I loved it as a miserable 15 year old, would find it unreadable now.

Loved VGL however, at least that was funny.

Sorry, YABveryU
It is a work of genius. I loved every word and (dare I say it?), it changed the course of my life (what subject I studied at uni, for ex).

But I have a theory that people love it most when they read it as an impressionable teenager (I was 13). I think if you come to it as an adult, you might well be a bit .

But that does not change how amazing it is. I had Jerome on my list of baby boy names after JD (I have two girls).

yanbu I read it at the age of 19 and I still thought it was a load of rubbish

I'm with Scrodingers on this one.

It's one of the books that affected me most as a teenager.

I first read it at 15 and still have the battered dog-eared copy I nicked forgot to give back to my school library .

I still read it probably once a year and love it each time.

YANBU

After being told it would change my life by every 16yo boy I knew, I read it. Hated it. Holden Caulfield a whiny prat with a pretentious name.

Quite liked Franny and Zooey and 9 Stories though.

YANBU - I am with you OP, I read it last year and hated it.

You absolutely have to read it as a teenager. Teenagers are often eminently slappable and up their own arses. But they don't think so.

FWIW, 'De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period' in 'For Esme with Love and SQualor' is one ofthe funniest things I've ever read.

Another one who loved loved loved it. Yes, it's teenage angst, but it is perfectly rendered.

Thoroughly tedious imo.

Whoever decided it should be a "classic" & why couldn´t someone have been brave enough to say "actually, it´s not that good"

YABU.

I loved it as a teenager, and am planning a re-read with a big glass of red tonight. How old were you when you first read it? I think how you react to it is all about when you read it - any later than 15 and I think you've missed the boat.

And I think it is in quite poor taste to start a thread like this the day after the man died. That might just be me though.

I don't remember it - read it yonks ago and never since.

DH thinks it is a pile of shit and always tsks when people are going on and on and on and on and on about it on the tv

The timing of this thread might be unfortunate, but it doesn´t make the book any better.

I'm in the love it camp. Read it when I was about fifteen and about every year for the next five.

You've probably missed the resonance if you're not a awkward teen!

I agree with timelordvictorious. He was a fantastic writer and it's a sad loss.

YANBU - I read it as an angsty teenager and was really disappointed. I have often wondered what I was missing. It's nice to see I'm not the only one!

Although I spent my teenagehood reading Virginia Andrews, Sweet Valley High and Jackie Collins!!

I think if you read it as a teenager, it can really hit a chord and stay with you forever.

But if you read it for the first time as someone a little more "grown-up", then you don't get it at all.

I fall into the latter camp, my DH into the former.

YANBU

Had to read it at school as a teenager. Thought it was shite. Though I hated DH Lawrence more (though brilliant teacher so understood the crit side of it, just loathed reading his stuff). And I actually liked the majority of stuff on the reading list. Even The Wasteland! [Dons anorak and scurries for cover]

ooops didn't realise he was dead!

Still a pile of shite, and I read it at 14!

Oh dear. I hated it as a teenager, then reread it in my late twenties and loved it. I don't know what that says about me.

Yes, the author has just died - hence the banging on about it on Radio 4! Surely the way the man lived is evidence that he wouldn't have minded if someone had come out and said, 'actually I don't think it was that good'!

So glad people (though not everyone ) agree with me. It's all a bit emperor's new clothes as far as I can tell.

Oh, and yes, I did come to it as a 36 yr old PGCE student, but when I was a teenager I was reading Jane Austin, Ursula Le Guin, Stephen Donaldson - quite a variety and quite a lot of angst, I'm sure you'll agree. Not being an angsty teen had nothing to do with it.

Though not liking Jacqueline Wilson has...

oh dear.....have never read this,but have just bought it. its sat there looking at me ....