/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12046781]

Holden was right. Everything is phony.

[Anonymous No.12046832]

>>12046781
real gangsta ass niggas arent phony
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL9ihXiFAko

[Anonymous No.12046836]

The book really isn't very great. Holden is a fairly banal, dull character with not enough personality to make the story work. Like most coming of age bullshit, it fails to commit to the real problem: This is an adult writing about teenage issues which the teenager very obviously will overcome with a bit of maturation. Thus the drama barely has any stakes. It's like making a story about a person with the flu and pretending they're going to die and then go "Haha! They're just going to get over it! Isn't that a relief?"

If you wanna give me teenage angst, give me some fucking Lily Chou-Chou shit.

[Anonymous No.12046837]

>>12046781
I'm not a pony.

[Anonymous No.12046841]

>>12046781
4/10 bait

[Anonymous No.12046921]

>>12046841

Such a goddam phony thing to say

[Anonymous No.12048171]

>>12046836
goddamn anon

he gets the adolescent thought process so right. why does that not impress you even a little?

[Anonymous No.12048185]

>>12046836
I WANNA BE

[Anonymous No.12048210]

>>12046836
>Holden is a fairly banal

If you're not trolling I'm afraid you understood nothing of the novel.

Protip: where's his brother?

[Anonymous No.12048213]

>>12048210
In incel jail.

[Anonymous No.12048217]

Haven't read CITR since high school 6 years ago, but just finished pic related

I went to Columbia, but I'm still somewhat foreign to high society/super educated new england culture. I could definitely relate to the pretentiousness and status-obsession people had. I vividly remember my freshman year people just had to carry around Cat's Cradle or Nietzsche or whatever because everyone wanted to impress everyone. Later on desu I definitely had great relationships with students and professors built on genuine interest in the books we studied. You just had to seek it out a little.

Inevitably when you go to a school with prestige, you get caught up in it, and you find yourself wearied of reading for status and wishing you could read out of pure interest and pleasure, wondering if you really get any pleasure at all out of it, and it's a burden to overcome.

[Anonymous No.12048245]

>>12046836
No, most of these issues won’t be “overcome”. They’ll be buried and ignored out of the necessities of growing up. If he’s lucky, he’ll never remember that he had that problem as he goes on engaging in “phony” interaction with other spiritually defeated adults. For the gifted few, the ability to maintain some genuineness—in spite of the demands of social mores—remains, and they go on to live life with much of the appreciation and spontaneity that they had as children. For the rest—NPC-style life with pangs of regret and tenderness, occasionally shared with callously unsympathetic others at their own peril.

I hate how much abuse Holden gets from people who dislike his character. It’s not easy growing up and developing layers to protect your ego from the harshness of adulthood for anyone. Especially when you’re a late bloomer—everybody else seems to foolishly rush into the process headstrong while you’re left wondering what happened to all of your once playful and inquisitive friends.

[Anonymous No.12048266]

>>12046781
He's right, everyone eventually does buy into some sort of bullshit as they age. I think he saw phoniness as he called it, as a sign of corruption in the world, when I see it as the inevitable response of any individual who finds it difficult to express themselves fully and authentically in the world. Hiding your vulnerability makes you a phony.

[Anonymous No.12048279]

>>12048266
Well put, anon. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

[Anonymous No.12049268]

>>12046837
You are a phony, just look at you.

[Anonymous No.12049737]

Literally just finished writing an 8 page analysis of this book for Uni last week.

Phoniness is saving face, or less reduced, the act of being inauthentic to conform to social situations/society, a more generalised variation of philosophical bad faith. He doesn't care for school because the system is inherently phony which forces the teachers to act as such.
He acts in this way because any time someone lacking this phoniness enters his life, they cause great harm to him, through death (Allie), through adopting a phoniness through maturity (Sally, Jane), or other ways. Because of this phoniness through maturity, he desires only to be a catcher in the rye, preventing kids from metaphorically falling off a cliff.
The hat symbolises his desire to become like his siblings: like Allie for Holden is unable to progress past his death [insert symbolism of ducks and frozen lagoon in south central park], and like Phoebe for she is a child and still unaffected by society enough to have resort to phoniness. He wishes to become like his older brother, D.B., for he is doing truly what he wishes by writing, but disparages him for selling his works to Hollywood and making it big.
Excluding parts about existentialism, piety, other traumas reinforcing his belief in phoniness being evil, and other accounts that would spoil the book for those wishing to re/read it because it's not topical to the thread

[Anonymous No.12049746]

>>12049737
Oops, forgot the hat also symbolises his nonconformity and a means to obscure himself from reality.

[Anonymous No.12049804]

>>12048171
It was nice to read, but not anything that'll stay in my mind much.
>>12048210
He's banal because he's very much a relatable character in a bad spot. There's nothing alien or engaging. It's just the same teen troubles most have been through though slightly heightened. Sure he has it tougher than Western teens, but he's still much too likeable and understandable. His shortcomings are obvious and redeemable, no one learns anything by reading about him.
>>12048245
This is a false assumption, both on my part and Holdens character. The awful monologue by the pedo teacher about

> Straighten yourself out, my man. Also hello audience I'm definitely not a mouthpiece right now.

Shows pretty clearly what a happy life is, the goal are too clear, it's achievable, and Holden is after all "a good kid", as if that's really important. He can be a goddamn bastard, it's his pain that's actually engaging.

Salinger puts too many safety harnesses in the way for a mature person to actually dislike Holden, which leads to me disliking him for his banality.

Again, if you wanna give me teen angst, give me some actual catastrophic existential ones without a clear reason or answer, because that's how angsty teens actually look at the world, books like Catcher in the Rye (which is still probably the best out of its type) doesn't really delve into that because in the mind of adults this is something you simply get over, for a teenager this type of stuff is apocalyptic.

[Anonymous No.12049897]

>>12049804
Were we reading the same book? I would argue that Holden is falling through the cracks of middle class life—about as catastrophic as you can get short of a plague killing your entire family.

Holden literally suffers from a mental breakdown in the book and has his entire teenage life fall apart, without much hope of moving forward. He gets kicked out of school for the umpteenth time, wanders the streets of New York because he fears the reaction of his parents, finds himself constantly at the verge of succumbing to exposure, gets cucked by a Chad who fucks his once-innocent crush, can’t summon the courage to fuck a prostitute, gets robbed of nearly all of his cash, gets the shit kicked out of him like three times, embarrasses himself by being vulnerable in front of several acquaintances who refuse to return the favor, becomes haunted by the memory of his beloved (and much more talented) younger brother whom he misses dearly, accidentally destroys an expensive and precious gift that he saved for Phoebe, and finds himself not knowing how to process the fact that his worldview his collapsing and the rest of the world is leaving him behind.

All of that shit happened in the course of a week. Tell me that wouldn’t leave the 17 year old you reeling. We’re not even left with the assurance that Holden will make it out in one whole piece.

[Anonymous No.12050282]

>>12049804
I don’t understand how you can simultaneously say a character is relatable, likeable, understandable, etc. but not engaging. If he were the opposite of those qualities, then he’d be even less engaging. And who are you to say that nobody learns anything by reading him? I don’t know what point you are trying prove outside of some sort of disappointment that Salinger didn’t write the book with a flavor that you’d prefer.

[Anonymous No.12050364]

>>12049737
>he desires only to be a catcher in the rye

COME THE FUCK ON, ANON

[Anonymous No.12051038]

>>12048245
This, Catcher in the Rye relates the good old boy's experience with coming back from a war to being shellshocked by society.
Salinger's life explicitly lays this out. In a way, Holden is a soldier on the warfront of modern living.

[Anonymous No.12051073]

>>12048245
>I hate how much abuse Holden gets from people who dislike his character. It’s not easy growing up and developing layers to protect your ego from the harshness of adulthood for anyone. Especially when you’re a late bloomer—everybody else seems to foolishly rush into the process headstrong while you’re left wondering what happened to all of your once playful and inquisitive friends.
A...anyone know how to do this?
t. 20 year old holden-esque loser

[Anonymous No.12051092]

Holden Caulfield has become the whipping boy for that tiresome section of the population who think it's very important to denounce and distance themselves from anything "angsty" and "cringey" and "self-absorbed", because they are very arch and sophisticated and have never had feelings that in hindsight they would consider naive.

[Anonymous No.12051110]

Maybe I'm just a special kind of failure but this book still moves me like no other. People hate Holden for being a naive and childish jerk but I'm no different, I'm just a lonely, sensitive child who lost everything that once made me feel like I belonged in the world. Just a sad, lost boy with no where to go. Fuck.

>>12049897 Says it well