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A review by jthern
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3.0
I find this one hard to rate. I'll give it 3 stars.
I didn't like reading it so I want to give it 1 star. On the other hand, I think it's really well written and want to give it 4 stars. The problem is that I think the author did a fantastic job of creating a main character that I really didn't want to read about.
Holden is a hypocritical phony. He thinks that by recognizing that everyone else is a phony, he's justified in being a phony, but never actually realizing that he is a phony.
Yet, as we currently live in the age of "millennials", there's something about Holden that needs to be recognized and understood, because in 1945, J. D. Salinger created a stereotypical "millennial" - a bright young adult, ready to take on the world, but having no inspiration to actually apply actual effort to do so.
Great quote by one of Holden's teachers: "This fall you're riding for - it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man taking isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or another in their lives, we're looking for something their own environment couldn't supply then with. Or get thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started."
The same teacher later attributes a quote to William Stekel, a psychoanalyst: "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
So I plodded through the whole book, hating the main character, but at least I felt rewarded with this life lesson from one of his teachers. Was the advice heeded by Holden? I found myself mildly disappointed to find no clear answer, for Holden recognizes that he has no idea what he will feel like doing at the start of his next school year. But that too likely indicates that he still finds himself desperately lacking a purpose that he so clearly wants.
Go ahead and yell "Digression!"... 3 stars
I didn't like reading it so I want to give it 1 star. On the other hand, I think it's really well written and want to give it 4 stars. The problem is that I think the author did a fantastic job of creating a main character that I really didn't want to read about.
Holden is a hypocritical phony. He thinks that by recognizing that everyone else is a phony, he's justified in being a phony, but never actually realizing that he is a phony.
Yet, as we currently live in the age of "millennials", there's something about Holden that needs to be recognized and understood, because in 1945, J. D. Salinger created a stereotypical "millennial" - a bright young adult, ready to take on the world, but having no inspiration to actually apply actual effort to do so.
Great quote by one of Holden's teachers: "This fall you're riding for - it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man taking isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or another in their lives, we're looking for something their own environment couldn't supply then with. Or get thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started."
The same teacher later attributes a quote to William Stekel, a psychoanalyst: "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
So I plodded through the whole book, hating the main character, but at least I felt rewarded with this life lesson from one of his teachers. Was the advice heeded by Holden? I found myself mildly disappointed to find no clear answer, for Holden recognizes that he has no idea what he will feel like doing at the start of his next school year. But that too likely indicates that he still finds himself desperately lacking a purpose that he so clearly wants.
Go ahead and yell "Digression!"... 3 stars