JD Salinger Guest Post

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

JD Salinger Guest Post

Check out Richard Bowes' thoughts on Catcher in the Rye, and why no book can survive assigned reading.

Though it wasn't my favorite school assigned reads (The Great Gatsby and Cry the Beloved Country are tied for that spot), I definitely enjoyed Catcher. In what I thought a strange turn of events, however, when I was teaching, most of my students didn't identify with Holden and his drinking and swearing rebellion. They found him whiny and unlikable.

8 comments:

Kay said...: When "Catcher in the Rye" was assigned reading, I remember having great fun quoting from the book. All the things I wasn't supposed to be saying as a "nice young lady".

But then, I gave up on being a "nice young lady" very early.; February 2, 2010 at 5:11 PM
TirzahLaughs said...: Well, he is whiny. Holden is all the things he hates. His problems are rather mild in the modern day. How can a drinking, swearing, and lying kid who is depressed compete with a mute, bulemic, depressed vampire with magical abilities?; February 2, 2010 at 11:24 PM
Sarah said...: Ooh, will I be shunned if I admit that I haven't read "Catcher in the Rye" and that I disliked "The Great Gatsby" the first time I read it?
I'm shunned, aren't I? *sigh*
I really like TGG now, and I'm planning to read "Catcher in the Rye."; February 3, 2010 at 12:09 AM
suzie townsend said...: I'd never shun you Sarah. When you have *free* time (I know it's a rarity, but still...) read TGG just to read it and marvel as the way he puts words and sentences together. It's beautiful. But the beauty of it is hard to get during a first read, especially if you're reading it for school.; February 3, 2010 at 12:28 AM
Suzette Saxton said...: They found Holden whiny? Wow. How interesting! I loved that book in HS. Perhaps I, too, was all the things Holden hated. I'll have to read TGG again. I didn't appreciate it at all.

Thanks for the link! Heading there next.; February 3, 2010 at 9:12 AM
inkwench said...: His post is an interesting take. When I was in HS (in the 90s), I was the only kid in my class who didn't "relate" to Holden. I'm one of those people who found him whiny and annoying.

As for The Great Gatsby, sadly, my English teacher ruined that book for me. *ducks* I've tried reading it since, and it's not bad, but I can't switch off my memory of her discussing it. :-(; February 3, 2010 at 9:59 AM
Sarah said...: Okay, I'll definitely reread it! We watched the movie in class too...have you seen it?; February 3, 2010 at 1:59 PM
Suzette Saxton said...: Ha ha, just read this line in Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why:

"Holden. What a horrible first date that depressed loner would make."; February 4, 2010 at 10:55 AM

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Five Random Things About Suzie

1. I drink so much orange soda, it's probably running through my veins. I've been known to go through a twelve pack of diet sunkist in a day.

2. I'm legitimately nocturnal (or a vampire). I will be so exhausted at two pm that I'm falling asleep standing up - it has happened before, at Six Flags no less - but as soon as the sun goes down I'm wide awake.

3. I have a gorgeous unused $6000 Reem Acra wedding dress hanging in my closet, and it showed up on my doorstep the same day my (now ex) fiance broke up with me. And thank God for that. I wouldn't have wanted to waste that dress on him.

4. Social anxiety plagues me daily. I write a script and practice in front of the mirror when I have to make a phone call, but most people who interact with me have no idea how nervous I am (or perhaps they lie) because I've worked so hard to try to overcome it.

5. I'm actually worried that I will never love my children (when I do have them in the far off future) as much as I love my dogs. I just like animals better than people - they're sweet and innocent and soft and furry - is that so wrong?

quotes

金不一定閃
流浪者不都迷路

"I dreamed you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane
I think I made you up inside my head
I fancied you'd return the way you said
But I grow old and I forget your name
I think I made you up inside my head" ~Silvia Plath, Mad Girl's Love Song

"Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." ~ Robert Frost

"Love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds." ~ William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 116"

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning-...So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY

"For deadly secrets strike when understood
and lucky stars all exit on the run:
never try to knock on rotten wood,
never try to know more than you should." ~ Sylvia Plath, "Admonitions"

"The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become." ~ Milan Kundera, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

William Wilberforce: "No one of our age has ever taken power."
William Pitt Jr: "Which is why we're too young to realize certain things are impossible. Which is why we will do them anyway."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." ~ Mark Twain

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." ~ Mark Twain

“You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace.” ~ Charles Dickens, A MUTUAL FRIEND

"I think the idea of life after death is a bad idea. It distracts you from appreciating the uniqueness of the here and now, the moment you are living." ~ Joseph Campbell

"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear...Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end." ~ Alan Paton, CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY

"To laugh often and much.. to endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better... To know even one life has breathed easier because you lived, This is to have succeeded." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover or friend, I have changed in their eyes...[Some see it as] a mission, as if ...they can pull me back from the wreckage of that day. Of course, their best efforts are largely useless. No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved." ~ Alice Sebold, LUCKY

"Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared." ~Tupac, The Rose That Grew From Concrete

Confessions

Tuesday, February 2, 2010