History Headscratchers / TheCatcherInTheRye

*** Holden's multiple choices of AlternateCharacterInterpretation are a big reason the book is such a case of YourMileageMayVary, and why so many high school students hate it. I completely loathed it in senior English because I couldn't get past what I saw as Holden just being a [[EmoTeen whiny little bitch]] that I wanted to slap upside the head. It wasn't until I re-read it as an adult that I could appreciate the other aspects of the story, even if I ''still'' wanted to smack Holden senseless. By the time I hit adolescence, disaffected teenage characters were so much the norm that I had a hard time sympathizing with him, because I'd already read so many stories about troubled teenagers. For me it was definitely a case of SeinfeldIsUnfunny, and Holden's pseudo-intellectualism started to really grate after the first chapter.

** They say it because YourMileageMayVary. Most people agree that the nine {{Character Alignment}}s exist, f'ex, but not everybody agrees on who falls into which alignment because they (the classifiers, not the classified) have differing criteria for "good", "chaotic", "neutral" and etc. It doesn't help that Holden (like a real person) falls into differing alignments at different times, as he is willing to break ''or'' follow rules, be a jerk ''or'' a nice guy, according to the situation he is in at the time. In the end, it stops depending on who Holden is and starts being about who the ''observer'' is. Do they fixate on nice people or mean people? Because Holden is both.

* Am I the only one who really hated this book and considered it the worst thing I've ever read? I really couldn't understand what Salinger was trying to get at. Holden honestly just seems like an annoying, cocky and boring character who doesn't really do much throught the novel. This is probably me missing the whole point of the book, but the whole thing seemed pointless to me.
** Same here. I honestly couldn't see the point of the thing. I can respect it for being groundbreaking ''at the time,'' but not now.
** Thirded, although I admit I read it in slightly undesirable circumstances. It's supposed to be this book that identifies to everybody because of a believable teenager, but I read it when I was like ten, and I didn't identify with anything in it...so it just seemed stupid to me. Nothing really seemed to happen. The beginning was kind of interesting but it got worse from there. Holden was grating for his constant talk (at least in my opinion) of "phonies" for which he seemed to be a good example of, making him a hypocrite, and just wasn't a very likable person. Maybe I should try it again; it's been over a decade and I might get something new out of it, but really I'm not motivated to bother trying. I honestly doubt my opinion will change much in a second read-through, if at all.
** No, OP, you ARE missing the point. You're SUPPOSED to hate Holden and find him irritating, hypocritical, and an overall JerkAss/maybe a JerkWithAHeartOfGold. The book was intended to be a look at the hypocrisy of society, with Holden as an example rather than an observer. J.D. Salinger just isn't a preacher, which is obvious in his other works.
** I appreciate the jerkass thing, but I didn't even dislike the book because of that. I found him quite a kind/honest person. Maybe I just didn't understand it correctly, but I couldn't really see any clear plot, or take anything away from it. Somebody asked me what the book was about and I replied 'I'm not entirely sure. He doesn't like fake people, I know that bit'. I'm positive that I'm missing something here, but I really don't know what.
*** The lack of the plot is what bothered me. I hated Holden's personality but I get what Salinger was going for and I can accept it was a very groundbreaking and controversial book when it was written. However the entire thing just has him go around New York, call people phonies, and try to get in touch with people to try and alleviate his boredom. He doesn't really have any specific direction or goal in mind though, so the entire thing just comes off as boring and nothing but him doing a bunch of random things.
** I also couldn't stand reading it, the main things I look for in stories is a good plot, followed by good characters, so a book with no plot to speak of, but rather being character driven, and said main character being a whiny, annoying, over-reacting, idiot that has no idea idea what he's doing but acts like he's the only person in the world that knows anything about anything? Pass.

* Why does everyone say that Holden is a jerk and that he's "manipulative"? Sure, he uses bad words and lies about his age so that he can get drunk, but he seems like a pretty nice guy beyond that. He always has something sympathetic to say even if he doesn't initially like a person, and to me he's more of a CloudCooCooLander (thinking about random things, in his own little world, the "where do the ducks go in the winter when they can't use the pond" thing) than any of that. I heard about the book and expected him to be like Malcolm (a sociopath almost) from Malcolm in the Middle, but he seems to just be a disoriented guy who doesn't know what he's talking about and always wavers between oppinions. Holden really does.

* Why does everyone say that Holden is a jerk and that he's "manipulative"?
** Sure, he uses bad words and lies about his age so that he can get drunk, but he seems like a pretty nice guy beyond that. He always has something sympathetic to say even if he doesn't initially like a person, and to me he's more of a CloudCooCooLander (thinking about random things, in his own little world, the "where do the ducks go in the winter when they can't use the pond" thing) than any of that. I heard about the book and expected him to be like Malcolm (a sociopath almost) from Malcolm in the Middle, but he seems to just be a disoriented guy who doesn't know what he's talking about and always wavers between oppinions. Holden really does.

*** The lack of the plot is what bothered me. I hated Holden's personality but I get what Salinger was going for and I can accept it was a very groundbreaking and controversial book when it was written. However the entire thing just has him go around New York, call people phonies, and try to get in touch with people to try and alleviate his boredom. He doesn't really have any specific direction or goal in mind though, so the entire thing just comes off as boring and nothing but him doing a bunch of random things.

** I appreciate the jerkass thing, but I didn't even dislike the book because of that. I found him quite a kind/honest person. Maybe I just didn't understand it correctly, but I couldn't really see any clear plot, or take anything away from it. Somebody asked me what the book was about and I replied 'I'm not entirely sure. He doesn't like fake people, I know that bit'. I'm positive that I'm missing something here, but I really don't know what.

** No, OP, you ARE missing the point. You're SUPPOSED to hate Holden and find him irritating, hypocritical, and an overall JerkAss/maybe a JerkWithAHeartOfGold. The book was intended to be a look at the hypocrisy of society, with Holden as an example rather than an observer. J.D. Salinger just isn't a preacher, which is obvious in his other works.

** Thirded, although I admit I read it in slightly undesirable circumstances. It's supposed to be this book that identifies to everybody because of a believable teenager, but I read it when I was like ten, and I didn't identify with anything in it...so it just seemed stupid to me. Nothing really seemed to happen. The beginning was kind of interesting but it got worse from there. Holden was grating for his constant talk (at least in my opinion) of "phonies" for which he seemed to be a good example of, making him a hypocrite, and just wasn't a very likable person. Maybe I should try it again; it's been over a decade and I might get something new out of it, but really I'm not motivated to bother trying. I honestly doubt my opinion will change much in a second read-through, if at all.

** Same here. I honestly couldn't see the point of the thing. I can respect it for being groundbreaking ''at the time,'' but not now.

* Am I the only one who really hated this book and considered it the worst thing I've ever read? I really couldn't understand what Salinger was trying to get at. Holden honestly just seems like an annoying, cocky and boring character who doesn't really do much throught the novel. This is probably me missing the whole point of the book, but the whole thing seemed pointless to me.

* "Crummy" looks wrong when it's spelled "crumby". The word doesn't come from "crumb".

** You're right. Holden ''is'' just a teenager going through what all teenagers go through, and that's why the book has such universal appeal.

* It's "crummy", not "crumby". The word doesn't come from "crumb".

* "Crummy" looks weird when it's spelled "crumby".

* Is it just me, or does the book have a HeteronormativeCrusader tone to it? For example, the world of "perverts" seems to be pretty much anyone having any kind of fetishes whatsoever-it's symbolized by the couple splashing water on each other in a sexual way, and a man in woman's clothing. And Holden, of course, feels that this is wrong.

** It's his response to holden asking about it that makes it seem off. His phrasing has a somewhat creepy vibe going.

** I'm not so sure. Maybe it was different back then but I can't see any adult male thinking that it's a good idea to stroke a boy's hair while he sleeps. In our society, it's not very normal. IIRC, wasn't he also alluding to other things before that incident?

* I admit this might be [[LostInTranslation because I read a translated edition]], but how did Colden mishear "Coming Thru The Rye" to have that "Catcher In The Rye" delusion? Or, more specifically(if possible), what exactly could he [[{{Mondegreen}} think the lyrics said]]?

** It's symbolic of his views of the world. He remembers it in a way that matches his desire to "save" children from the corruption of the world. The real way, which he doesn't remember, is about meeting and interacting with people (which he has difficulty doing)

** I'm gonna take my time here... I think most of the value of this book is in how Salinger writes his narrator so well it actually comes across as a believable teenager. Myself, I thought I'd have loved the book if I was five years younger(namely, near the narrator's age), but now I see Holden is, indeed, a teenager with his inflated ego and the illusion that he knows much more than he actually does about the world and other people. So, it is groundbreaking because it did give us a narrator that sounded as believable as one could be, and of course by now this concept was repeated and perfected, so it doesn't seem as groundbreaking and intriguing as it was at the time. Also, I think most of the fame of "edgy and dark" the book has is from the chapters near the start(Holden's first night in NY) and the deliberate(and subversive, in the good sense) of the work "FUCK", that rendered it as "edgy" without even using it in a context that would regard it as so. So... it is an awesome book, it has its value, but in the end you're right: it is a book about a teenager going through stuff as a teenager does.

** Or maybe it ''did'' happen about 20 times, only they were all equally inoffensive. Holden is the kind of person to overreact, after all.

** No, you have it exactly right. In addition, because Holden is afraid/distrustful of intimacy, when he says "this kind of stuff has happened to me about 20 times since I was a kid" he isn't to be taken seriously either.

** No, you have it exactly right. In addition, because Holden is afraid/distrustful of intimacy, when he says "this kind of stuff has happened to me about 20 times since I was a kid" he isn't to be taken seriously either.

* A lot of people I've encountered seem to think that Mr. Antolini really is a CovertPervert and that Holden was right to interpret his petting his head while he slept as a sexual act, or at least that it's supposed to be ambiguous. It seemed obvious to me when I read it that Holden had gotten it wrong -- it's a perfect illustration of how he tends to think the worst of adults and is so sure that he's the only one feeling the way he does, etc., that he doesn't recognize that Mr. Antolini is a guy who not only sympathizes with his crisis, but understands it, has probably been through something similar, and got past it and grew up and is petting the sleeping Holden out of a poor-kid-I-wish-there-was-something-I-could-do-besides-let-him-sleep-on-my-couch-and-try-to-talk-to-him-about-learning-and-the-nature-of-heroism feeling. And Holden is so far from knowing a PsychologistTeacher[=/=]BigBrotherMentor figure when he sees one that he mistakes him for a sexual predator. Am I too assured about this? Did I miss something?

** My guess is that it was the first to actually write about it that well.