I think what is great about that book is that it made me empathize with Holden - a person I would find absolutely unbearable in real life. Yes, he's screwed up, that's the point. Many of us went through similar things as teenagers. If Holden had met me when I was 16, he would have hated me, too.
1000% agree. I always thought Holden Caulfield was one of the worst protagonists in American literature. So bad that I've been asking myself ever since, "what am I missing about this guy?"
CITR is a 'coming of age' novel and we have to understand Holden as liminally balanced between the rigid orthodoxies of childhood and the multi-polar, confusing and dangerous world of adults. As I've aged, particularly as I've raised and taught children, I've developed more sympathy for Holden. People are fake but it's not merely a choice, it's a demand placed upon us via a world that expands beyond our ability to map it. It's a coping mechanism, a defense strategy and a limit upon our empathy and understanding. Sometimes, you just gotta shake a crummy guy's hand and smile like a hyena.
It's been many years since I've read (and re-read) that book. Maybe it's time for a third read--through the eyes of a professorial older man. I suppose it's fairly quick...that said, I'm not so sure it maps very well onto a world with the Internet and social media in it; a world more fake and pretentious than anything Holden could have dreamed of.
I had basically the same reaction when I first read CITR, but there was a strange phenomenon where the character lingered with me long after. I think you're being a little too dismissive (as was I), directionally like calling Hamlet "simply a confused teenager" because he demands authenticity from the royals around him and mourns his father too long as his first close experience of loss (until, of course, he remembers Yorick).
The way you've described the character, I would be very surprised to hear him say, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." And yet he does. Worth thinking about.
Also, could you expand on 2)? I don't know what you meant by his personality traits don't "google" - did you mean that Holden exhibits a very odd collection of the 5-traits?
Mr. Caplan -- You make many good points. Still: I really did enjoy reading this novel when I was a teenager. I thought it was GREAT. I still do.
One point against it: If you read other stories by Sallinger then you realize he wrote with a lot of the same style and ideas in all of them. So his famous novel is somewhat less impressive and novel when viewed alongside them.
As Holden describes it, the "phony" conduct of Headmaster Haas that irked him could more aptly be called snobbish. Semantic precision was not Holden's strong suit.
Fiction usually has better, more satisfying stories than nonfiction because the author is not constrained by reality. Additionally, being able to set up the circumstances in fiction allows idea to be demonstrated without complicating factors, like a controlled experiment.
It's pretty much impossible to write a character-centered story that focuses on internal drama as nonfiction. Even if your characters were real people, what they were thinking at the time is pure speculation.
I think what is great about that book is that it made me empathize with Holden - a person I would find absolutely unbearable in real life. Yes, he's screwed up, that's the point. Many of us went through similar things as teenagers. If Holden had met me when I was 16, he would have hated me, too.
1000% agree. I always thought Holden Caulfield was one of the worst protagonists in American literature. So bad that I've been asking myself ever since, "what am I missing about this guy?"
CITR is a 'coming of age' novel and we have to understand Holden as liminally balanced between the rigid orthodoxies of childhood and the multi-polar, confusing and dangerous world of adults. As I've aged, particularly as I've raised and taught children, I've developed more sympathy for Holden. People are fake but it's not merely a choice, it's a demand placed upon us via a world that expands beyond our ability to map it. It's a coping mechanism, a defense strategy and a limit upon our empathy and understanding. Sometimes, you just gotta shake a crummy guy's hand and smile like a hyena.
It's been many years since I've read (and re-read) that book. Maybe it's time for a third read--through the eyes of a professorial older man. I suppose it's fairly quick...that said, I'm not so sure it maps very well onto a world with the Internet and social media in it; a world more fake and pretentious than anything Holden could have dreamed of.
I had basically the same reaction when I first read CITR, but there was a strange phenomenon where the character lingered with me long after. I think you're being a little too dismissive (as was I), directionally like calling Hamlet "simply a confused teenager" because he demands authenticity from the royals around him and mourns his father too long as his first close experience of loss (until, of course, he remembers Yorick).
The way you've described the character, I would be very surprised to hear him say, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." And yet he does. Worth thinking about.
Also, could you expand on 2)? I don't know what you meant by his personality traits don't "google" - did you mean that Holden exhibits a very odd collection of the 5-traits?
Mr. Caplan -- You make many good points. Still: I really did enjoy reading this novel when I was a teenager. I thought it was GREAT. I still do.
One point against it: If you read other stories by Sallinger then you realize he wrote with a lot of the same style and ideas in all of them. So his famous novel is somewhat less impressive and novel when viewed alongside them.
As Holden describes it, the "phony" conduct of Headmaster Haas that irked him could more aptly be called snobbish. Semantic precision was not Holden's strong suit.
Have TIME to read FICTION? When? How? There's SO MUCH BETTER non-fiction!
Fiction usually has better, more satisfying stories than nonfiction because the author is not constrained by reality. Additionally, being able to set up the circumstances in fiction allows idea to be demonstrated without complicating factors, like a controlled experiment.
It's pretty much impossible to write a character-centered story that focuses on internal drama as nonfiction. Even if your characters were real people, what they were thinking at the time is pure speculation.