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3.58 AVERAGE
3.58 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i can see why a lot of people dont like it. i really do. holden is annoying. but hes a bratty teenager... thats kind of the point.
i think you need to have some compassion for teenage you in order to read this book. when i was a teenager, i thought that i was the only one disillusioned and upset with the world. i wasnt.
he is contradictory. he is human, and is overall a decent person. yes, he punches his roommate, solicits a prostitute, drinks, smokes... but compared to some of the other behavior outlined in this book, he is the least offending person imo. he even seems to struggle with his contradictions, declaring himself a pacifist after fighting his roommate.
i also see some of my adult self in holden. he reads as someone who is neurodivergent or struggling with cptsd. which, honestly is the real point. jd salinger wrote drafts of this while he was fighting in ww2. this is somehow a novel about a soldier struggling with ptsd, formerly known as shell shock, put into the form of a bildungsroman. in the 1950s, there was virtually no public awareness about this. if i could ask jd salinger any question, i would ask why a teenaged protagonist?
i think you need to have some compassion for teenage you in order to read this book. when i was a teenager, i thought that i was the only one disillusioned and upset with the world. i wasnt.
he is contradictory. he is human, and is overall a decent person. yes, he punches his roommate, solicits a prostitute, drinks, smokes... but compared to some of the other behavior outlined in this book, he is the least offending person imo. he even seems to struggle with his contradictions, declaring himself a pacifist after fighting his roommate.
i also see some of my adult self in holden. he reads as someone who is neurodivergent or struggling with cptsd. which, honestly is the real point. jd salinger wrote drafts of this while he was fighting in ww2. this is somehow a novel about a soldier struggling with ptsd, formerly known as shell shock, put into the form of a bildungsroman. in the 1950s, there was virtually no public awareness about this. if i could ask jd salinger any question, i would ask why a teenaged protagonist?
Content Warnings
Moderate: Bullying, Death
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i like to say that this is a favorite of mine, unfortunately
Holden Caulfield is a frustrating little piece of shit, but I read this (and...reread it several times over) when I, too, was a frustrating little piece of shit--certainly not quite in the same way as him, but it still meant something to me in some way, for some reason. i also just love the prose; it has a rhythm to it. yes, that rhythm's grating, but that's what makes it so raw.
prob should give it a reread soon to see if my opinion's changed, though, it's been awhile
Holden Caulfield is a frustrating little piece of shit, but I read this (and...reread it several times over) when I, too, was a frustrating little piece of shit--certainly not quite in the same way as him, but it still meant something to me in some way, for some reason. i also just love the prose; it has a rhythm to it. yes, that rhythm's grating, but that's what makes it so raw.
prob should give it a reread soon to see if my opinion's changed, though, it's been awhile
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book killed me. It really did.
chapters 25 & 26 made me cry at 14. chapters 25 & 26 made me cry at 21. i goddamn love this goddamn book. i goddamn love holden and i goddamn love phoebe and i goddamn will probably read this every year of my goddamn life.
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It's difficult to articulate what makes this a great book, which of course is exactly what makes a book great. I've read this a few times before, and I still don't think I'm fully ready to perceive it. It's the kind of book that unfolds in layers, and you have to understand one layer before you can even recognize that another one is there to begin trying to understand. Yes, this is a book about teenage angst. Yes, it's about an unlikeable character you're challenged to sympathize with. Yes, it's about the trauma of loss. And so the layers go, and keep going. The last time I read this book, I had it tagged as "made me cry" because, like many others, I was intensely moved by the title passage (on page 173 in my edition). It's without a doubt the crux of the book, but it's impossible to fully absorb without reading the entire book, and it's a keyhole through which many different interpretations of the book can be seen.
The last time I read it, I cried because it reminded me of someone close to me, who's always struggled to "make it" in the real world, the adult world, but has the biggest heart you can imagine. And I thought that maybe that's all this person really wanted to be, deep down, a catcher in the rye. A helper, a guardian, who watched everybody else go through life, succeeding in their own baffling, mysterious way, seeking an alien kind of happiness through alien means, and just observing, standing at the edge and catching people, lest their haphazard comings and goings bring them too close to the precipice they couldn't see.
This time when I read it, intentionally expecting and suppressing the intense dislike and disapproval I knew I'd have for Holden, I walked away with a different interpretation. That the trauma of the loss of his little brother so permeated and stunted his life that he could never move beyond that moment. That all he could imagine himself ever doing was reliving a moment in which he could have prevented such loss, that maybe he could wrap his arms around the whole world and prevent anybody else from experiencing that same loss.
I'm sure the next time I read it, I'll explore a new layer, and walk away with a new interpretation. Maybe one day I'll be the parent of an angsty teenager, instead of the angsty teenager I once was when I first read this book. My, what a different reading experience it'll be then!
That's what makes a great book great. Not necessarily "strong story" or "strong plot" or "strong characters", but a labyrinth of stories all encoded into the same shared set of words, to be read differently by different people all at different stages in life.
The last time I read it, I cried because it reminded me of someone close to me, who's always struggled to "make it" in the real world, the adult world, but has the biggest heart you can imagine. And I thought that maybe that's all this person really wanted to be, deep down, a catcher in the rye. A helper, a guardian, who watched everybody else go through life, succeeding in their own baffling, mysterious way, seeking an alien kind of happiness through alien means, and just observing, standing at the edge and catching people, lest their haphazard comings and goings bring them too close to the precipice they couldn't see.
This time when I read it, intentionally expecting and suppressing the intense dislike and disapproval I knew I'd have for Holden, I walked away with a different interpretation. That the trauma of the loss of his little brother so permeated and stunted his life that he could never move beyond that moment. That all he could imagine himself ever doing was reliving a moment in which he could have prevented such loss, that maybe he could wrap his arms around the whole world and prevent anybody else from experiencing that same loss.
I'm sure the next time I read it, I'll explore a new layer, and walk away with a new interpretation. Maybe one day I'll be the parent of an angsty teenager, instead of the angsty teenager I once was when I first read this book. My, what a different reading experience it'll be then!
That's what makes a great book great. Not necessarily "strong story" or "strong plot" or "strong characters", but a labyrinth of stories all encoded into the same shared set of words, to be read differently by different people all at different stages in life.
funny
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes