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/lit/ - Literature

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[ERROR] No.2076502 [Reply] [Original]

I couldn't finish this book, I kept raging at the main character. All he ever does is complaining and calling people phonies. Did J.D. Salinger troll me from beyond the grave, or is this book really as shitty as it seems?

>> No.2076506

OP here, I meant "All he ever does is complain and call other people phonies." Forgive this swefag.

>> No.2076504

you just don't get it, man.

He's the teenager all men wish they would have been.

IDENTIFY AND PROJECT.

>> No.2076509

>>2076502
It only connects if you're in a certain period of your life.Otherwise if you've passed that point it just sort of comes out as annoying drivel. I'm an adult now i don't have to enjoy this shit.

>> No.2076512

I think at the time this sort of MC was really original. I raged too. I think the author was making quite an important point, how easy it is to pass the blame of your life onto others and just pretend you give a shit when in reality you're just worthless garbage.

>> No.2076517

is this some lame attempt at meta-humor or are you really this dense?

>> No.2076522

Did you at least find some parts to be funny, OP?

>> No.2076586

Holden is right. The people he has to deal with are a bunch of phonies. Except maybe for the people he accuses of being phonies just because they want ID before selling him booze.

>> No.2076592

How can you not like Catcher? It's like what would happen if Ferris Bueller's day off were forced to take place in the setting of Mad Men. Well, you'd also need for the principal to try to molest him, but it still works.

>> No.2076598

I always thought it was interesting that a Jewish author managed to define for 3 generations what being a young WASP was all about.

Imagine if the protagonist of "Portnoy's Complaint" was named "Whitney Cadwalader IV". But somehow this never gets mentioned in discussions of "Catcher in the Rye", probably because Salinger vanished into Zen Buddhism or whatever.

>> No.2076607

The other thing worth mentioning about JD Salinger is this....

Can you imagine what would happen if your high school girlfriend left you to marry Jack Nicholson or Clint Eastwood?

Well, Salinger's high school girlfriend left him to marry Charlie Chaplin.

>> No.2076608

>>2076598
The problem though is that the stratification of American society at the time of this text (the book was published in 1951, but parts of it were published in magazines as early as 1946) makes it so that subsequent readers are already alienated from it on a certain level. Salinger, like his protagonist, was a student of such educational institutions as Pencey prep (Valley Forge Military Academy, IIRC). The three generations you mentions were greatly effected by the rise of the post-war middle class. Salinger lived a life much more similar to Caulfield than most of the readers of following generations did. You might be WASP as hell, but who the fuck sends their kids to boarding school anymore?

>> No.2076609
File: 267 KB, 450x709, librarian.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
[ERROR]

>is this book really as shitty as it seems?

It actually is, yes.

There are two reactions to Catcher in the Rye, in my experience. The first is

>OMFGWTFBBQ THIS IS TEH MOAST AMAZING BOOK I EVER READ IN MY LIEF IT SPEAKS TO ME LIKE IT WAS WRITTEN FOR ME AND ONLY ME

(this reaction is usually exhibited by those under 20)

the second reaction is

>meh.

or

>what a pile of self-indulgent shit, man up you spoilt middle-class whiner. Yay! He just got beat up by a pimp. Give the little cunt a dig for me, Leroy.

This reaction usually means the reader is over 20.

Basically Catcher in the Rye is an oldfag gearcheck - when you stop liking it, you're officially getting old.

>> No.2076614

>>2076607

She fucked Orson Welles as well. Starfuckers gonna starfuck.

Anyway, now he's dead, all Salinger's dirty washing will get washed out in public soon enough, and we can see the actual shit he's been trying to write all this time.

>> No.2076619

>>2076614
Yeah but getting to date her after Orson Welles had dated her would feel a lot different. Especially because Wells was in his "Unbelievable Genius" phase. It's like winning the girl against the superstar then getting dumped by her for some oldtimer.

>> No.2076622

>"Kill the phonies!" said Hodor.

>> No.2076626

>>2076608

So are you saying that readers are alienated because Holden is rich/privileged?

>> No.2076628

Modern youth are unable to deal with Catcher in the Rye because they're a bunch of sociopaths who view the protagonist's musings as pointless when he could be engaging in a school-shooting massacre.

>> No.2076630

>>2076628

So are you saying that readers are alienated because they don't give a fuck what happens to the ducks in Central Park in wintertime?

>> No.2076632

>>2076619
>>2076619

>some oldtimer.

Yeah, but he had a title, so Lady Chaplin she became.

Also, I imagine Orson had a massive schlong, and Salinger's little dick was flopping around like the conductor's wand in the Albert Hall.

>> No.2076637

>Also, I imagine Orson had a massive schlong

Rita Hayworth claimed in her memoirs that Welles named his penis "Xanadu".

>> No.2076639

>>2076502
So meta it hurts.

>> No.2076642

>>2076626
Well, I wouldn't really presume to speak for all the readers. It might be that some modern readers think of him as rich and spoiled (fair enough) but do not understand that what they consider normal (suburbia) didn't exist yet. But really my comment was more more as a response to your mentioning Salinger's Jewish heritage, Salinger knew the Caulfields of this world way better than you or I probably would.

>> No.2076644

>>2076630
Beavis and Butthead blew up the ducks with M-80s long ago.

>> No.2076649
File: 290 KB, 403x361, hurrdressing.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
[ERROR]

>>2076630
>Implying he's actually asking about the ducks.

>> No.2076653
File: 55 KB, 310x432, orson.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
[ERROR]

>>2076637

>named his penis "Xanadu"

No fucking wai. Well, I suppose it was his pleasuredome, ho ho ho.

Anyway, did slaggy old Rita say if it was big? I bet it was fucking massive. I bet he ruined bitches for normal men.

>> No.2076657

>>2076642

Honestly I was only bringing up Salinger's Jewishness because it seems to have been something of an issue for him. I would compare it to Christopher Hitchens' Jewishness.

From the standpoint of halakhic Judaism, Hitchens actually is Jewish and Salinger actually wasn't. But in both cases, there is the sense that somehow Jewishness is a problem, socially: Hitchens' mother hid the fact that she was Jewish and never told her son. Salinger's mother hid the fact that she WASN'T Jewish and Salinger only found out as a teenager. For that reason, what interests me most is the progression from the Caulfields to the Glass family. There's nothing Jewish in "Catcher", to my recollection, and no Jewish characters. Whereas the Glass family are half-Irish half-Jewish, closer to what Salinger actually was, but only learned about after thinking for his whole childhood that his parents were both Jewish.

It's not even about Jewishness, really. I'm just interested in parents who tell those kinds of lies to their children.

I know this kid who was in high school when his parents divorced, at which point they admitted to him that his "dad" wasn't related to him at all. The dude met and married this kid's mother when she'd just had a baby from a random one-night stand.

So not only did his parents divorce in a really ugly way when he was in high school, all of a sudden the "dad" he'd known from childhood vanished completely from his life, and his insane mother suggested that he get in touch with the random one-night-stand whom he'd never even heard of before in his life.

>> No.2076658

Orson made good champagne commercials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5LkDNu8bVU

>> No.2076661

>>2076653

Sorry, I was trolling.

What is not a troll is that "rosebud" was the nickname that William Randolph Hearst gave to Marion Davies' clitoris. Which is why Hearst went SO apeshit trying to suppress "Citizen Kane".

So it was a troll with a little bit of truth in it somewhere. Vaguely.

>> No.2076671

>>2076657
There isn't Jewishness, but the issue comes up obliquely with Catholicism in the book. What's funny is that Holden talks about his Catholic classmates and differentiates himself from them, but then he talks about how he can sympathize with them. Finally he reveals that his family is Irish (which is pretty much synonymous with Catholic especially back then unless one specified Scots Irish which were the Protestant Irish descendents of Scottish settlers from the 17th century) and then he goes on to talk about how the family converted a few generations ago (as in recently, not back in the 17th century). This means that he actually is regular Irish and not Scots Irish, and that the Caulfield family is actually not that far distanced from Catholicism.

>> No.2076677

>>2076661

>What is not a troll is that "rosebud" was the nickname that William Randolph Hearst gave to Marion Davies' clitoris.

See, I want to believe this as well, but you've lost all credibility, frankly. Also, you've got 666 in your post - I think we can safely assume that you're not trustworthy.

>> No.2076681

>>2076671

Really? It's been a while since I re-read the book. I remember Holden's complaint that Catholics are always surreptitiously trying to figure out if you're Catholic.

But I don't remember in the least Holden saying his family was Irish, let alone Irish Catholic that converted. "Caulfield" doesn't sound particularly Irish, but then again it's mostly chosen as an allusion to David Copperfield, so I just always thought it was supposed to be standard WASP.

Then again, the last time I re-read Madame Bovary, I discovered that I had completely forgotten that part after Leon leaves but before she gives in to Rodolphe where she meets Kugelmass.

>> No.2076684

>>2076677

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=rosebud+hearst+clitoris

Don't believe me. Believe Gore Vidal.

>> No.2076688

>>2076684

>Believe Gore Vidal.

Not in this incarnation. He lies for lulz.

>> No.2076690

>>2076681
I looked it up. It wasn't a recent ancestor, it was his dad "Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic. It happens to me a lot, I know, partly because my last name is Irish, and most people of Irish descent are Catholics. As a matter of fact, my father was a Catholic once. He quit, though, when he married my mother. But Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic even if they don't know your last name."

He's sensitive to the question because the question points to a weakness in his pedigree. I'd certainly say that Salinger's experience with being a Jewish guy at prep school is helping to shape this passage.

>> No.2076695

>>2076681
"It happens to me a lot, I know, partly because my last name is Irish, and most people of Irish descent are Catholics. As a matter of fact, my father was* a Catholic once. He quit, though, when he married my mother."

End of chapter 15.

* in italics.

>> No.2076704

>>2076695
>>2076690

Well, smack my ass and call me Susan. Thank you, anons. This is why I came to /lit/ in the first place. I didn't even remember that.

In the social context of the time, that implies that Holden's dad married up, doesn't it?

But it also does seem to be a way of talking about Salinger's own autobiography (parents in a mixed marriage) in a kind of disguised way. Which is weird to me because honestly it's only since Salinger died that I've been able to think about his work as being autobiographical in the least. I assumed if he was so reclusive that his work had nothing autobiographical about it----kinda like Pynchon. (At least I *hope* there's nothing autobiographical about Pynchon's work, although "Crying of Lot 49" has often seemed to me about the kind of paranoia that you can get from taking certain drugs which I strongly suspect Pynchon took.)

>> No.2076719

>>2076704
You'd probably want to become a recluse too if people kept trying to figure out what parts of your personal experience went into the creation of Holden Caulfield. Talk about an embarrassing alter ego.

>> No.2076728

>>2076704
Pynchon has admitted to heavy drug use, especially around the writing of "Gravity's Rainbow."

I remember reading somewhere that Pynchon adamantly believed that a writer's life had nothing at all to do with his work, but has since recounted that belief as being false.

It's easy to see how "V.," his first novel, can't be too stemmed in autobiography, but a novel like "Vineland" could only come from a personal place.

Tommy's matured into something quite remarkable.

>> No.2076735

>>2076728
In the documentary made about Pynchon ("Thomas Pynchon - A Journey Into the Mind of [p]" by Fosco Dubini (2008)) there is speculation (the whole documentary is speculation, due to Pynchon's zealous need for privacy) that Pynchon was one of the men the CIA tested in Project MKULTRA--the LSD experimentations.

Just an interesting thing I thought I'd add.

>> No.2076739

>>2076735

I wasn't even aware of that documentary. Thanks again, anon.

>> No.2076740

>>2076739
It's an interesting thing. There is even footage of Pynchon, and they interview an old girlfriend of his.

Amazon has the date wrong, though. It's 2002, not 2008. I should have caught that, because I saw it around 2005.

>> No.2076811

>>2076740
From the clips on youtube the documentary seems a little stupid.

What footage do they have of Pynchon? Is it the CNN footage?

>> No.2077398

>>2076811
>the documentary seems a little stupid.

Well, and so it is. But, isn't that befitting for a documentary about a man like Pynchon? "Against the Day" had a description (written by the author) that ran:

"Meanwhile, Thomas Pynchon is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange and weird sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. Maybe it's not the world, but with a minor adjustment or two it's what the world might be."

There are many comments posted on-line about how the documentary is a hodgepodge of stock footage and contains few facts--but one should realise that this is in keeping with the "spirit" of Pynchon's work.

It's not a total waste of viewer time, is all I'm saying.

As for the CNN footage: I just saw it, and the documentary's footage is the same time and place, but follows him for a bit longer--I'd say about 5-10 seconds longer.