[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 709 KB, 837x1373, Catcher-in-the-rye-red-cover.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16347524 No.16347524 [Reply] [Original]

As a teenager, did this book make you feel like somebody finally understood you?

>> No.16347530

no thats gay

>> No.16347531

I’m in my early 20s and I felt like Holden was literally me lol

>> No.16347540

>>16347531
pathetic

>> No.16347551

>>16347524
I kind of sympathized with him but I was also the sort of teenager he would have called a phony.

>> No.16347572

>>16347551
Yeah I just kind of felt sorry for him

>> No.16347590

Why does this book aggravate women so much?

>> No.16347595
File: 59 KB, 330x550, floflo.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16347595

Plutôt celui-ci.

>> No.16347596

>>16347590
why would women like a book about a whining cringelord

>> No.16347630

Less just that somebody understood me (although he was very relatable), but just that the experience of him was something that gave validation to my own in some way. What I read of the book gave me a feeling of meaning in the way the story plays out, it's an austere plain story of a scrappy and introspective misfit kid traversing around the city in the cold, for just myself there's something that feel's universally beautiful about this.

>> No.16347677

We had to read it in HS (Scotland here) - we thought it was gay american shit. Only the people in class who would later come out as trannies in their mid twenties built a personality around it.

>> No.16347681

>>16347524
I read it when I was 14 and couldn't stop laughing through the first 70 or so pages,
but then I stopped laughing

>> No.16347683

I never liked kids like Holden. They wanted so bad to be a part of the school, but they were complete annoying dickheads. I simply loathed most people and never bothered to care too much about missing out. I'm pretty sure I was a nerd nobody and Holden would probably call me a phoney. Complete opposite, but I know what it was like to feel outside of everything.

>> No.16347707

>Haha yeah, I was such a dumb faggot when I was a kid, Holden was literally me
As someone who wasn't a dumb faggot as a kid, I never empathized with him, and never liked the way Salinger tried to force Holden as a reader self-insert. It always felt preachy and disingenuous to me.

>> No.16347732

>>16347524
No. It made me feel sad and kind of unclean for some reason. Never picked it up again.

>> No.16347800
File: 38 KB, 462x693, 71O02lvGHWL._SLDPMOBCAROUSELAUTOCROP288221_MCnd_AC_SR462,693_.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16347800

As a teenager, this was the first book that understood me

>> No.16347841

>>16347707
Self insert writing works a bit better if it's with a kid character and if the book is aimed towards a universal reading base, and if you're able to work this style into reaching broad enough places then this can be genuinely good. This still stands if the kid is an imperfect dumb faggot self-justifying type

>> No.16347854

Didn't read it as a teenager but I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless at 30. It's a pretty compelling and incisive read.

>> No.16347866

>>16347841
This
What makes Catcher In The Rye so divisive is that it’s about a whiny faggot that the author uses to occasionally drop some profound observations about the world. People who have no time for what Salinger is trying to say about things like innocence and purity just disregard it and focus on Holden being a pussy.

>> No.16347882

>>16347524
This is a terrible book. Everyone's all "You needed to read it as a teenager!"

Well, guess it isn't a good book if it needs to be read at a particular age, is it? I read this when i was 30 and Holden is a spoiled fucking child. I wanted to throat punch him for most of the book. I had a friend who carried a copy of this in his back pocket for like, a year. I don't get it. Even when I was a teenager, I wouldn't have enjoyed this book. Like, how is this considered such a classic?

>> No.16347892

>>16347524
I read it in 5th grade after I saw that Jared Leto John Lennon movie with my dad. I really enjoyed it then. I don't know if I felt understood, but at the age I was, walking around the city free with the cool winter vibes was very appealing. I liked the adventure of it.

I read it again in high school and didn't feel the same. I focused more on Holden himself rather than the plot and decided that I didn't really like him very much.

>> No.16348115
File: 128 KB, 1422x800, Taxi-Driver.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16348115

>>16347524
Nah but I did sympathize with Holden.
It wasn't until years later after I'd hit rock bottom that I could feel myself gravitating towards truly understanding him.
Then I got medicated and now I LARP as him.

>> No.16348127

>>16347524
Useless bullshit book from highschool

>> No.16348178

A lot of people can’t separate the character from the book it seems

>> No.16348180

>>16347524
ITT mad phonies

>> No.16348181

Literally just "We live in a society" in book form.

Holden pissed me off as a teen and still does today. Set goals. Work towards achieving them.

Don't be a whiny piece of shit with no future.

>> No.16348253

>>16347524
He annoyed me as a teenager, probably because I didn't want to admit I was a lot like Holden. I found the book a lot easier to appreciate when I read it again in my 20s.

>> No.16348841

>>16347540
kek

>> No.16348985

>>16348115
Travis Bickel is not Holden fucking Caulfield he’s like a proto-incel, and like in the retarded radicalized way not in the normal Holden Caulfield way

>> No.16348992

>>16348985
its just an image, retard

>> No.16349188

>>16347524

Read in my late twenties for the first time, wish I had read it earlier. I think I would have related or got more out of it.

>> No.16350108

No, the only thing I learned is how much I despised him for being an absolutely whiny cunt.

>> No.16350112

>>16347590
because he rapes his sister, phoebe

>> No.16350180

>>16347524
No book actually captured my teen years. Joker captured me as an adult pretty well though.

>> No.16350214

>>16347524
No, but I looked up to Holden, I thought he was a role model.

>> No.16350217

>>16350180
Speaking of which, what are some good books that are like Joker?

>> No.16350228

I read the book as a teenager, but I don't remember much. I certainly didn't connect to it in some profound way. I read it again later as an adult (late 20s) and related to it very strongly. I don't think the book is actually about the adolescent mindset at all, and that this idea that it is relatable to teenagers is incorrect. Or perhaps they do relate to it, but do so for the wrong reasons. I don't think many of them have this sort of traumatic resistance to change, aging, and the loss of innocence that the book is actually about.