/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4528424]

/lit/, what is it about the Catcher in the Rye that makes it different from other YA fiction? Its usually treated in a different way than other YA fiction, mainly that its tolerated at all.

Also, im not asking for justifications for past and present acclaim for Catcher compared to other YA, such as "It was the first of its kind" and "People get to it before other YA works". Im asking for your own personal reasons.

[Anonymous No.4528426]

>>4528424
But it legitimately is because it was the first of its kind. It invented the YA genre. There is not a YA book out there that isn't inspired by it, whether intentionally or not.

[Anonymous No.4528433]

Because it wasn't written for young adults. In order to really appreciate The Catcher in the Rye you have to be more mature than Holden Caulfield.

[Anonymous No.4528435]

>>4528424
Its probably when he rapes his sister.

[Anonymous No.4528437]

>>4528435
use spoiler tags when you're revealing the most important part of a book. probably ruined it for op now

[Anonymous No.4528441]

>>4528437
>use spoiler tags when you're revealing the most important part of a book.

If you think that's the most important part of the book, then you have reading comprehension difficulties.

>probably ruined it for op now
Given that OP has contextualised this as YA, OP probably lacks sufficient reading equipment to realise that Holden repeatedly rapes his sister.

[Anonymous No.4528442]

Because it's freaking sweet.

[Anonymous No.4528443]

>>4528426
Right, im asking if there are any reasons besides that, that make it good, or different.

Like
>>4528433
Points out, this might be a difference besides the fact that its the first of its kind.

You could be right though, maybe that is the only reason. nah

[Anonymous No.4528444]

It's because it doesn't display the overall shittiness that's typical of other YA. It's written well and deals with mature topics and the plot isn't cliche or silly or anything like that.

[Anonymous No.4528445]

Gee, you're right Catcher In The Rye is pretty lame,in fact I've always preferred Sweet Valley High myself

[Anonymous No.4528454]

>>4528441

Wait what I'm the one that lacks sufficient reading equipment to realise that Holden repeatedly rapes his sister
I thought that it was a fake spoiler and I was jokingly making it seem real.

I've never heard that he rapes his sister. When I read it, I thought he had a slightly creepy but probably non-sexual relationship with his sister. Are you sure about this, any supporting evidence?

[Anonymous No.4528468]

>>4528454
Read the Freudian slips. They're pretty blatant if you aggressively read Holden as an unreliable narrator.

Is Holden in a TB ward? Bullshit, he's in a fucking mental asylum. Also he's probably finger fucking her when he invades his parents house at night when they're out at the party: its obvious because he tries to ring up an "easy" girl to give the time to before he gives the time to Phoebe.

Probably feels guilty he wouldn't let his brother rape her.

Also if you read Holden's age, he started when Phoebe was around 6.

[Anonymous No.4528475]

A lot of YA fiction now is cynically cheeky, for lack of a better phrase, falls on the opposite side of the spectrum with overly sensitive, doughy-eyed wallflower protagonists, or packaged with a genre gimmick, and a lot of it boils down to loss leads to growth and/or you're a unique snowflake and can fight the system.

Catcher in the Rye defies a lot of that-whatever superficial loss Holden undergoes is self-inflicted and part of a process that has happened before without growth. He really doesn't lose what's important to him, his sister, realizes that he might just fuck up again next year regardless what he's been through instead of maturing like other YA protagonists, and has pretty obvious fantasies about fighting the system while missing players in it. I also think the tone is far less pleased in its cynical voice-Holden's bitter because he thinks he understands what's what, but he's not happy about his half-assed adolescent revelations and really doesn't know how to handle the truly cynical found in the pimp and prostitute, and while he's grateful he's still with his sister, he obviously regrets some of his experiences.

[Anonymous No.4528480]

>>4528444
Maybe im not too familiar with YA, but wouldnt Holden's story be very typical?

A young kid is in school, has problems, then goes wandering around somewhere.

>>4528445
Well what makes Catcher so much better?

[Anonymous No.4528486]

>>4528475
Cynically cheeky? What do you mean by that? Anything you can point too specifically?

[Anonymous No.4528498]

>>4528480
Catcher is just so edgy and depressing that's why I prefer the lighter YA stuff

[Anonymous No.4528512]

>>4528468
Ok I believe he's mental but is there anyone but yourself that believes he rapes his sister?

[Anonymous No.4528515]

>>4528512

He's just fucking with you, nobody believes he raped his sister.

[Anonymous No.4528517]

>>4528512
I read the book a couple months ago and just flipped shit when I saw what those anons said about rape

[Anonymous No.4528519]

>>4528512
>>4528515
Wow. They really raise naïve readers. I bet you think Humbert loved Lolita. Or that Lolita wasn't being regularly fucked before and after Humbert.

[Anonymous No.4528522]

>>4528512
it's the whole "the blue curtains signify his loneliness, it couldn't just be that the color of the curtains was random"

[Anonymous No.4528527]

>>4528522
You got a bare pass in first year litcrit didn't you?

[Anonymous No.4528529]

>>4528486
I mean when a work seems to embrace the attitude that the adolescent narrator/protagonist is better than either authority figures or peers because of their "unique" and "fresh perspective." Salinger never once seems to think Holden is better than any one else in Catcher.

[Anonymous No.4528530]

>>4528527
There is a difference between valid analysis and deduction that has no supporting information within the literature.

[Anonymous No.4528537]

>>4528529

I thought one of the main points of Catcher was that Holden is actually just some lovably annoying shithead lost in the world, expressed simply by narrating his three days of bullshit.

[Anonymous No.4528538]

>>4528527
god. what a CUNT

[Anonymous No.4528539]

>>4528530
I've given you the evidence:
* Repeated freudian slips
* A sexualised date with his sister that includes severe lacunae
* Flashbacks combined with elisions on sexual themes, that match his past interactions with Phoebe
* Continuous latent pedophile threats projected from Holden
* Catch her body in the rye
* The guilt from the brother being related to not letting the brother participate in an activity
* And most obviously, supporting the above, the unreliable narrator set in an asylum and Holden repeatedly providing psychological clues in his unreliable narration

>>4528538
Maybe you ought to do civil engineering

[Anonymous No.4528546]

>>4528539

>catch her body in the rye

[Anonymous No.4528547]

Oh, many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie god knows where,
And carried half-way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.

[Anonymous No.4528550]

>>4528537
Everybody's a lovably annoying shithead, though, from his sister wanting to go with him to the kids in the museum to the people Holden misses at the end, Ackley kid and the pimp, Holden just has the perspective. And Holden never resolves anything or fixes anything. He'd want to be a catcher in the rye, but he fails the fuck out of it and is probably going to fuck up again next school year.

Or I could just be reading more into the book trying to continue to like it as much as i did when i first read it.

[Anonymous No.4528555]

>>4528550
>reading more into the book

see>>4528539

[Anonymous No.4528559]

There are a few things I can think of. First of all, author intent - like someone pointed out earlier it only really works if you're more mature than Caulfield because Salinger modeled the character after a young version of himself that he had come to dislike.

Secondly, for all his apparently single-minded edginess there is a little more to psychoanalyze than with most YA fiction. This is only amplified by what I said before.

Thirdly fame, stuff like the murders.

[Anonymous No.4528562]

>>4528539
examples of freudian slips pls

[Anonymous No.4528568]

>>4528562
The fucking Title of the Novel, which he gets wrong from the folk song but protests he's saying correctly; for the most obvious fucking example.

There are about two a chapter. They stand out as stark one line sentences without prevarication amidst all the phoney damns.

[Anonymous No.4528586]

The Catcher in the Rye isn't YA lit.

It doesn't follow the conventions of YA lit. There's no black and white morals. There's no sentimentalism. Friendship doesn't triumph over evil. There's no escapism or wish fulfillment. There's no happy ending.

It literally has nothing in common with Twilight or Harry Potter or The Hunger Games or The Babysitter's Club or Goosebumps.

[Anonymous No.4528588]

>>4528568
point taken
lacunae on the date?

[Anonymous No.4528595]

>>4528588
Reread when Holden goes over to Phoebe's place, drunk. Holden first calls up other easy girls for sex, fails, wants to call up Phoebe at exactly the same moment in his evening he got a hooker the night before, goes over, and there are gaps in the conversation where other things should have taken place. The conversation is halting, as if Holden has deleted portions of what happened from the dialogue and narrative.

Holden has censored that incident, and you can tell, from the gaps in the record.

Does nobody teach aggressive or even hostile reading as an approach to unreliable narration? Shit, Salinger is repeatedly prompting you to aggressively read Holden by having Holden repeatedly indicate that he is unreliable.

[Anonymous No.4528599]

>>4528586
The Catcher in the Rye also wasn't tailored specifically for the consumer market by pandering to demographics. It was a story first, a product second; not the other way around.

[Anonymous No.4528610]

>>4528595

I think you might be reading too aggresively there. Even as an unreliable narrator, Holden deserves the benefit of doubt. His going to visit his sister doesn't really come from his desire for sex, rather he's calling those girls because he's lonely. His sister is his last resort of human contact, and it's a sign he's coming close to breaking down. I really don't think Salinger intended for it to be interpreted taht way.

[Anonymous No.4528613]

>>4528586
Hunger Games doesn't fit most of those either

[Anonymous No.4528622]

>>4528613
>There's no black and white morals
the good people and the bad people are literally sectioned off from each other
>There's no sentimentalism.
"PA, MA, RUE, BOO HOO"
>Friendship doesn't triumph over evil.
did you stop reading after the first book
>There's no escapism or wish fulfillment.
literally every page has one of those very obviously inserted
>There's no happy ending.
THE ENDING IS THE ONLY ENDING THAT COULD BE HAPPY

[Anonymous No.4528624]

>>4528610
I don't know if you're ignorant about mid twentieth century US slang, but in the novel Holden already indicates that "giving a girl the time" is to fuck them, and Holden rings up girls late at night to give them the time.

There's also the 20 disturbing sexual incidents Holden discusses.

[Anonymous No.4528642]

>>4528622
Different anon here but
>did you stop reading after the first book
There wasn't even really a single actual friendship in the entire series. The only specifically identified 'friend' I recall is Gale, who quickly turned into a love interest and ended up becoming completely estranged from Katniss.

>THE ENDING IS THE ONLY ENDING THAT COULD BE HAPPY
I don't know what this means, but the ending was downer as fuck (but not in a way that works in the book's favour, the third book was a melodramatic piece of shit in it's entirety).

[Anonymous No.4528682]

>>4528624
So the only reason Holden ever calls ANYBODY up on the phone is to fuck them? Seems like pretty bullshit reasoning to me.

But let's suppose for a second that Holden really does rape his sister. Why is it in there? What does it add to anything? It really does not strike me as meaningful in any way.

[Anonymous No.4528691]

>>4528682
Please deny the meaning of giving a girl time, while simultaneously accusing me of a tendentious and hostile reading.

Holden raping his sister explains his self-loathing, it explains the double meaning of catcher in the rye, it explains his guilt over his brother's death, it explains his inability to complete sex with women his own age, it explains his fear of older male sexual interest, it also explains why a bourgeois family that could have sent him to military college chose instead to psychiatrically hospitalise him.

It explains why Holden wants to know off adult males where the ducks go in winter.

It has powerful explanatory meaning. It also acts as a deep irony given the number of sentimental adolescent bourgeois and professional-managerial class who empathise with Holden as if they were in his position, rather than understanding him and reviling him: that such adolescents are unwilling to engage in a deep reading of a complex text because at the heart of their nice suburban Lawyer Lifestyle like Holden's own, are socially unacceptable actions: thus "phonies."

[Anonymous No.4528736]

>Please deny the meaning of giving a girl time, while simultaneously accusing me of a tendentious and hostile reading
Please act defensive at the slightest sign of criticism. My point was simply that just because he calls certain girls to "give them the time" doesn't mean the act of calling someone itself indicates his desire to give them the time. Unless it actually says somewhere "I decided to give my sister the time, so I called her" or something (which I realize would defeat the whole point of it being subtext).

But as to the rest of it, I can see where you're coming from and grant that it can be read that way. I guess I just don't get any pleasure or insight from such an interpretation personally and don't see how it relates to other themes in the book. Or maybe I just find Holden too sympathetic and am just a phony too. So be it I suppose.

[Anonymous No.4528746]

>>4528736
>Unless it actually says somewhere "I decided to give my sister the time, so I called her" or something (which I realize would defeat the whole point of it being subtext).

>[If the text was straightforward that would defeat the narrator being deceptive]

I agree with you: your premise was faulty.

They've done reader reception studies. Sympathy for Holden is clearly classed. I guess we can tell your class background.

[Anonymous No.4528758]

>>4528746
Yeah, I don't even know what point I was trying to make now. And what class background is that?

[Anonymous No.4528761]

>>4528758
Professional-managerial class, like Holden. The reason why I know you're not true bourgeois is probabilistic: also, the only true bourgeois I've seen on 4chan tend to be wastrels rather than network flâneur.

Also your sense of self-doubt…pretty obvious you're PMC.

[Anonymous No.4528789]

if holden rapes his sister why do they get along so well and why does his sister make an effort to avoid letting their parents find out?

but it did make me feel weird things when he pinched her butt

[Anonymous No.4528794]

>>4528424

YA fiction is solely used by literary agents to sell a new category. It was never "YA" back in 1951 and it still isn't today. There's a difference between having children or teens in your novels and writing FOR them.

Same thing with Ender's Game, it was never targeted at kids and teens (you don't win Hugo and Nebula awards for children's literature).

[Anonymous No.4528796]

>>4528789
Because she likes her brother and looks up to the male attention. Shit, why can most incest pedos get away with it?

[Anonymous No.4528802]

>>4528746
Any links to those studies? They sound interesting. I went to a lower-middle class school with mostly minorities and most of us liked Holden, myself included. I wonder at which class does the sympathy begin to split, and where it breaks off entirely.

[Anonymous No.4528801]

>>4528758
Please don't take what this guy is saying seriously.

[Anonymous No.4528819]

>>4528761
Haha, are you the left-communist guy?

[Anonymous No.4528821]

>>4528819
He is posting in another thread. _Lucaks_!

I think he's also the uptight dude who hates when people read history books.

[Anonymous No.4528822]

>>4528435
is this a broadly accepted interpretation or is this just a /lit/ thing?

[Anonymous No.4528828]

>>4528691
Him saying "giving a girl the time over" doesnt mean he wants to rape Phoebe.

He is a lonely young boy, who is trying to figure out the line between innocence and sexuality, which means he calls girls because hes lonely, but then he also wants to have sex with them. He tries calling a lot of people, including a girl who he likes, innocently, and then when he starts to feel lust for her, he decides not to call her. In the same way, he visits Phoebe because he has an innocent relationship with her.

>Holden raping his sister explains his self-loathing,
So does his brother dying. So does his idealism and his own hypocrisy. So does being 16.
>it explains the double meaning of catcher in the rye,
So does the irony of him trying to find innocence in things that arent innocent
>it explains his guilt over his brother's death,
The fuck you talking bout?
>it explains his inability to complete sex with women his own age,
So does the above
>it explains his fear of older male sexual interest,
So does the above

Etc, etc, etc.

Look, if we all hear a box fall in the closet, and we look inside and a cat runs out, we can believe that the cat knocked over the box

OR, an invisible monster came over and raped your invisible little sister you didnt know about, then left and knocked over a box because hes clumsy like that.

[Anonymous No.4528834]

>>4528828
You're deaf to the text and trying to impose a reading that denies Holden's psychiatric incarceration and his elision and avoidance on topics where he's guilty.

[Anonymous No.4528836]

>>4528828
>>4528834
which to believe
im not smart enough to decide on my own

[Anonymous No.4528841]

>>4528836
With that level of expressive capacity we're right to suspect your interpretive capacity.

[Anonymous No.4528843]

>>4528834
No im not.

I gave you a number of reasons for why Holden is fucked up. I showed you how these reasons can easily replace your interpretation.

Your interpretation of the text is exotic simply to be exotic. There is no reason to believe this for another. In the same light, let me do you one over. Instead of him raping Phoebe, he raped his little sister, AND his little brother! Thats ACTUALLY why he feels all these feels!

[Anonymous No.4528847]

>>4528841
i don't know what you're saying

[Anonymous No.4528851]

>>4528843
>>4528843
don't forget his gay blood threesome involving necrophilia with the body of the guy that jumped out of the window and the teacher that picked it up

[Anonymous No.4528854]

>>4528821
He doesn't seem like an uptight dude to me, he just thinks people shouldn't read shitty unhelpful books. I disagree vigorously with him that EP Thompson made even a dent in Althusser but he's already a pretty cool guy for being aware of the debate at all. People new to /lit/ tend to take a free-floating, undisciplined approach to learning that's probably detrimental or at least an instance of misapplied effort and wasted time, who cares if someone's being a little gruff in trying to correct such a faulty approach.

[Anonymous No.4528860]

>>4528843
Unlikely. When Holden took Phoebe off alone his brother was jealous for being left out. Nice try but both your interpretations deny features in the text.

[Anonymous No.4528865]

Occam's razor seems like an alien concept to litcrit.

[Anonymous No.4528879]

>>4528865
Bothering to read the text rather than their own fantasies seems to be an alien concept to th American reader.

[Anonymous No.4528884]

>>4528879
Implying I'm American.

[Anonymous No.4528897]

>>4528884
You have no excuse then.

[Anonymous No.4528910]

>>4528860
Youre retarded arent you.

[Anonymous No.4528916]

>>4528910
Resorting to personal abuse because you can't defend your reading of the text. I'll accept your concession.

[Anonymous No.4528933]

>>4528834

"The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" says you're full of shit.

[Anonymous No.4528936]

>>4528933
Referring to an external context means that you're interpreting ""Catcher in the Rye" and "Oceans full of bowling balls"" and not actually interpreting "Catcher in the Rye."

Weak, mate, really weak.

[Anonymous No.4528953]

>>4528916
Ok, just checking.

[Anonymous No.4528968]

>>4528936

Huh? So what, the Glass family stories and the character of Seymour have to be evaluated separately the entire time? Fuck off.

[Anonymous No.4528976]

>>4528968
If you want to produce new hypertexts and submit them for analysis, feel free, but they're not _Catcher in the Rye_, they're some meta-text you've personally created.

There's a reason why this minor US writer avoided distributing his juvenilia.

[Anonymous No.4528987]

It isn't YA fiction, it's a story made for adults but Holden is such a well written character that teenagers naturally empathised with him.

[Anonymous No.4528998]

>>4528976
And what reason is that?

[Anonymous No.4529002]

It's po-mo YA, and doesn't involve a quirky relationship

[Anonymous No.4529006]

Does Holden's paedophilia analagous to Seymour's in A Perfect Day for Bananafish

[Anonymous No.4529016]

>>4529006
Seymour isn't a pedophile.

[Anonymous No.4529027]

Alright everyone shut up and I'll settle this once and for all.

THE GREAT GATSBY REFERENCE
"I was crazy about The Great Gatsby. Old Gatsby. Old sport. That killed me."

Who else does Holden call in this manner? Old Phoebe. Any of you guys remember that scene where Nick and Gatsby both wake up in their underwear?

FREUDIAN SLIPS

"I couldn't wait to get to the park to see if old Phoebe was around so that I could give it to her."

In the middle of a scene otherwise completely unrelated to Phoebe "I started thinking how old Phoebe would feel if I got pneumonia and died. It was a childish way to think, but I couldn't stop myself. She'd feel pretty bad if something like that happened. SHE LIKES ME A LOT. I MEAN SHE'S QUITE FOND OF ME. SHE REALLY IS Anyway, I couldn't get that off my mind, so finally what I figured I'd do, I figured I'd better sneak home and see her, in case I died and all." By this time, Holden asserts he isn't even drunk or tired before, but this is some frighteningly drunken/tired logic he's displaying, unless, of course, he had other reasons for going to see Phoebe. (emphasis mine)

"...I figured that if I didn't bump smack into my parents and all I'd be able to SAY HELLO TO OLD PHOEBE AND THEN BEAT IT and nobody'd even know I'd been around."

"She says she likes to spread out. That kills me. What'd old Phoebe got to spread out? Nothing." You should all know, being literate, that "nothing" is Shakespearean slang for vagina. This would be a stretch unless there was a previous Shakespeare reference in the book... remember the nuns? Even if you don't want to accept that, these sentences still have some blatantly suggestive overtones.

"I mean Phoebe always has some dress on that can kill you."

"She's very affectionate. I mean she's quite affectionate, for a child. Sometimes she's even -too- affectionate."

"I noticed she had this big hunk of adhesive tape on her elbow. The reason I noticed it, her pajamas didn't have any sleeves." Seems like some unnecessary detail.

"Then, just for the hell of it, I gave her a pinch on the behind. It was sticking way out in the breeze, the way she was laying on her side. She has hardly any behind. I didn't do it hard, but she tried to hit my hand anyway. She missed. Then all of a sudden, she said, 'Oh, why did you -do- it?' She meant why did I get the ax again. It made me sort of sad, the way she said it."

There's more, of course, but this seems enough.

FREUDIAN SLIPS THAT SHOW EVIDENCE OF HOLDEN PREVIOUSLY BEING MOLESTED

"...my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're -nice- and all -- I'm not saying that -- but they're also touchy as hell."

"Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute."

"When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. That kind of stuff's happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I can't stand it."

[Anonymous No.4529034]

>>4529027
>SHE LIKES ME A LOT. I MEAN SHE'S QUITE FOND OF ME. SHE REALLY IS

Disturbingly Phoebe is into the abuse. At least in Holden's mind.

>"She says she likes to spread out. That kills me. What'd old Phoebe got to spread out? Nothing." You should all know, being literate, that "nothing" is Shakespearean slang for vagina. This would be a stretch unless there was a previous Shakespeare reference in the book... remember the nuns? Even if you don't want to accept that, these sentences still have some blatantly suggestive overtones.
Also her cunt's hairless

Thanks for citing the text for me. You should really screen cap this.

[Anonymous No.4529097]

Was the teacher really a pedo or was Holden just being paranoid ?

[Anonymous No.4529120]

>>4529027
> "I couldn't wait to get to the park to see if old Phoebe was around so that I could give it to her."
This is totally out of context...
"The first record store I went into had a copy of "Little Shirley Beans." They charged me five bucks for it, because it was so hard to get, but I didn't care. Boy, it made me so happy all of a
sudden. I could hardly wait to get to the park to see if old Phoebe was around so that I
could give it to her."
This is the full part, the "it" is the record, it's hardly a slip. Also...
"I'd take the note up to her school
and get somebody in the principal's office to give it to her."
"She took the note off
me and called some other lady, from the next office, and the other lady went to give it to
Phoebe."
He uses the "give it to her" on these other sentences too, both related to the record.

> SAY HELLO TO OLD PHOEBE AND THEN BEAT IT
Beat it is a slang to "leave", where's the slip?

> "She says she likes to spread out. That kills me. What'd old Phoebe got to spread out? Nothing." You should all know, being literate, that "nothing" is Shakespearean slang for vagina.
This is a stretch, eveen with the nuns.

> "I mean Phoebe always has some dress on that can kill you."
He always uses "kill" in this sense to express something funny. It's not like he's saying she's gorgeous with the dress or anything.

> Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute.
He's just saying his a sellout, no slip in here too.

> When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. That kind of stuff's happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I can't stand it
Now this, given the context and everything, really makes sense. I gotta give you that.

> SHE LIKES ME A LOT. I MEAN SHE'S QUITE FOND OF ME. SHE REALLY IS
> She's very affectionate. I mean she's quite affectionate, for a child. Sometimes she's even -too- affectionate
I think this indicates that he is uncomfortable with the way she acts towards him, probably because with his sexual problems and whatnot.

That something may have happened to Holden when he was younger, kinda makes sense.
I think that you are just trolling on the Phoebe thing though.

[Anonymous No.4529135]

>>4529120
well, as for all those other instances of "giving it to her", i just think they're more freudian slips, i guess i can't convince you if you don't agree on that.

"beat it" is also slang for jack off, or "it" could be referring to Phoebe (beat Phoebe)

disregard the shakespearean slang and it's still pretty suggestive

Holden pays an inordinate amount of attention to how Phoebe dresses and how cute she looks and everything, I would've put examples of that but the post would've been too long

prostitution also refers to sex

[Anonymous No.4529148]

>>4529120
>Freudian slips occur out of context.

JESUS FUCK WOULD YOU LOOK AT THE BIG BRAINS ON BRAD

[Anonymous No.4529157]

>>4529135
>>4529027
does he ever use language like this when talking about things that aren't pheobe or his parents?

if not then im pretty much sold

[Anonymous No.4529163]

>>4529157
No. He never notices nudity in other people. There are no stark disjoints regarding his parents excepting around their suspected molestation of him. He has a couple of slips about homosexual desire _but he realises these and covers them up_. He very deliberately does not realise what he's saying when he talks in his "story" that he's told over and over to everyone about abusing Phoebe.

[Anonymous No.4529187]

>>4529157
He uses some variant of "giving it to her" exactly two other times besides when he's talking about Phoebe. Both are in this quote:

"All he did was keep talking in this very monotonous voice about some babe he was supposed to have had sexual intercourse with the summer before. He'd already told me about it about a hundred times. Every time he told it, it was different. One minute he'd be giving it to her in his cousin's Buick, the next minute he'd be giving it to her under some boardwalk."

The other instances with Phoebe:

"I could hardly wait to get to the park to see if old Phoebe was around so that I could give it to her."

"Then I took my hunting hat out of my coat pocket and gave it to her. She likes those kind of crazy hats. She didn't want to take it, but I made her. I'll bet she slept with it on."

"Then I gave it to her. She was standing right next to me."

[Anonymous No.4529194]

>>4529187
Do you have a concordance or are you seriously loose text searching to prove wrong some arsehole who can't even read for sexual subtext?

[Anonymous No.4529214]

I thought the way Holden talked about and to Phoebe was a bit odd, especially when he pinched her butt. Not sure he raped her though, for some reason people really like to imply incestual feelings in media, I see it in most shows and movies.

[Anonymous No.4529216]

>>4529194
http://thegreatestnovels.com/etext/catcher-in-the-rye.htm

and ctrl + f

[Anonymous No.4529246]

>>4529148
what I meant is that the phrase on its original context doesn't look like a freudian slip, lol

[Anonymous No.4529441]

>>4528433

This.
And also, it's the best, truest, most natural portrayal of adolescence in literature —swollen ego, insecurity, remnants of childishness—, and it does so without glamourizing or dramatizing it.

[Anonymous No.4530845]

>>4529441
Is there anything that comes close

[Anonymous No.4530886]

>>4528841
You're such a pompous fucking asshole. Get off of your high horse and realize that your opinion is worth just as much as others'.

[Anonymous No.4531518]

>>4530886
>all opinions are equal
Said the failing undergraduate.

[Anonymous No.4531585]

>>4529187
Well fuck, I need to stick around here more and read into shit more because I completely missed this somehow, and it explains a fucking LOT.

The book was already brilliant to me in a sort of meta way, reading it and sympathizing in youth and then reading it again almost as a comedy later on and realizing how much a shit he (Ergo, I) was. But this makes absolute sense. Viewing it as Freudian slips, as almost a key set to figure it out it all comes together, ESPECIALLY with the random, stark reference to "sexual intercourse" when he dances around it and about everything else the entire fucking novel. That always did bother me...

Well, shit.

[Anonymous No.4531602]

>>4531585
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we employ research academics to conduct literary criticism. To tell young readers that the book they liked was full of children raping children.

[Anonymous No.4531810]

Shit I need to get better reading comprehension. I didn't even realise he was writing from a t.b. ward, let alone a mental hospital that he was in because he's a sick fuck that has probably been molested and molested his sister.

I gotta say the molestation thing really explains the way he reacts to the old teacher, which left a bad taste in my mouth when I read it.

[Anonymous No.4531835]

>>4531810

But he is writing from a TB ward, not a mental hospital, right?

[Anonymous No.4531855]

>>4529027
>say my sister likes me a lot
>must mean I rape her
Jesus Christ, I hope people are trolling who are taking this shit seriously.

[Anonymous No.4531877]

he didn't molest his fucking sister, jesus christ.

[John Lydon lol !xPOSER9PtU No.4531886]

>>4529120
>"She took the note off
>me and called some other lady, from the next office, and the other lady went to give it to
>Phoebe."
Holy fuck he made some office lady rape his sister.

[John Lydon lol !xPOSER9PtU No.4531890]

>>4529027
>"...I figured that if I didn't bump smack into my parents and all I'd be able to SAY HELLO TO OLD PHOEBE AND THEN BEAT IT and nobody'd even know I'd been around."
You've been talking about the 20's. I can't say I remember when TCITR takes place, but "beat" meaning masturbate isn't recorded until the 60's.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=beat

[Anonymous No.4531946]

>>4531890
Which is strange because the "beats" were active in the 1950s at the latest, and the mid 1940s at the earliest in New York (cf: Burroughs), and "Beat" "Jazz" "Rock" etc. are all monosyllabic expressions of american fucking before white populism watered down the funk. OOPS I BEAT FUNK IN YOUR ROCKING JAZZ.

[John Lydon lol !xPOSER9PtU No.4532105]

>>4531946
Is "beating it" as in masturbating related to the group of people at all? I didn't think it was.

[Anonymous No.4532193]

>>4528834
For the first five or six of this guy's posts I was sure he was trolling about the "sister-rape" and so on. But he is so insistent that I suppose he must seriously believe what he says.
It's quite interesting to see how someone who obviously has a fairly good mind has foundered completely, and become a buffoon, on the (after all relatively small) reef of an inability to resist the appeal of modish ideas of intellectual sophistication.
The whole "unreliable narrator" thing is, I can understand, a much much more appealing approach to reading a literary text than is the boring old idea that such texts generally consist in authors' attempting to get their ideas and meanings across to readers in as clear, direct and unequivocal a way as possible. The "aggressive reading" that assumes conscious or unconscious misdirection on the part of an author is highly advantageous to several sections of the "culture industry". It tends to create many more jobs for would-be academic teachers and researchers because, on the "aggressive reading" approach, any and every text is a potential source of an almost infinite amount of secondary discourse. You can "aggressively read" almost anything into anything, and then someone else can come along and read something entirely different into it. Every text becomes the Tardis: a receptacle of almost infinite capacity, no matter how modest in dimensions its outward surface appears. "Aggressive reading" also caters to the ever-increasing narcissism and inculcated megalomania of each new generation of students. The 18-year-old upstart who "aggressively reads" Salinger has every right to feel himself the equal or even the superior of Salinger, since he leaves Salinger's work, at the end of this process, in a shape that Salinger would hardly want to claim as his own. The "aggressive reader" has become a brilliantly talented author in the blink of an eye - and that without any need for even a modicum of actual creative talent.
But that human faculty so despised by the super-sophisticated - common sense - tells us that this "aggressive reading" just doesnt work on 90% of the texts that it is applied to. To apply it generally to all the major works of literary modernism - let alone to pre-modern works - is just a palpable and elementary historical error. "Unreliable narration", the cunning use of lacunae etc. was a technique that was first enthusiastically developed by a certain avant-garde that was establishing itself between 1940 and 1950 (Borges, Nabokov etc). Salinger, admittedly, was more or less contemporary with these writers but his contemporaneousness with them means about as much as G K Chesterton's contemporaneousness with Eliot and Pound. His literary ideals, points of reference, and intentions were utterly different. The deadly earnest way in which he draws Buddhist ideas of enlightenment and salvation into the plots of his later stories is indication enough that Salinger was what the pomo crowd call

[Anonymous No.4532205]

>>4532193
(contemptuously) an "essentialist", NOT a Nabokovian juggler with endlessly protean signs and symbols.
I do admit, though, that I have been struck by certain passages in "Catcher" which make it very hard to resist the idea that Salinger was prompting the reader to draw some "Freudian" conclusions about slips of the tongue, double meanings etc. I don't think that the "secrets" hidden in the text include anything so awful (or so fashionable) as incestuous child-rape. But there is, for example, a passage where Holden's use of the slang phrase "that killed me" (to mean "that really made me laugh") could possibly be interpreted as allowing him to express, "on the level of the signifier", a repressed feeling that the Caulfield family had somehow been collectively responsible for his younger brother Allie's death - something that he could never have articulated consciously. At one point, Holden is telling his audience about how Phoebe "kills" him with her precociousness and her childish originality of mind. Then he adds the odd phrase: "She killed Allie too". On the surface, this means simply that "Allie also thought she was hilarious." On the "unconscious" level, it does very arguably mean that she - even the pure and innocent Phoebe - had conspired in Allie's murder.

[Anonymous No.4532276]

Shit, who to believe...

[John Lydon lol !xPOSER9PtU No.4532286]

>>4532276
Not Mr. Confirmation Bias, that's for sure. All the zeroes in the world don't add up to a one, and all the in-context euphemisms you call Freudian slips don't add up to incest.

[Anonymous No.4532317]

>>4528586
>There's no black and white morals.

That's not always a good thing. I don't like books that have no moral sense at all. CitR isn't one of them however.

The main point is that CitR manages to be a book of respectable morality but is never sentimental.

[Anonymous No.4532326]

i like it because holden isn't perfect. i swear in every YA novel the protagonist is perfect, even their "flaws" are respectable, understandable and part of their perfect personlity. maybe i just can't relate but i got tired of reading books about characters who get straight As, and other characters always want their attention yet they feel lonely anyway.

[Anonymous No.4532330]

>>4532317
There is a moral sense in Catcher, its just not a "black and white one". For example, the hero of the story is a little shit who apparently rapes his younger siblings (he even killed one), no one ever finds out, and his subconscious just cant help herself to leave little clues here and there about the deed.

Dem ducks man. Dem ducks.

[Anonymous No.4532331]

but where do the ducks go?

[Anonymous No.4532339]

>>4532330
>>4532331
Duck-Mind

[Anonymous No.4532342]

>>4532331
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82tMDn9U-Y0

[Anonymous No.4532352]

>>4532330

Yeah but I think that's what makes the book moral, because Holden is never made into too sympathetic character. The sense of black and white comes from the fact that abusing his siblings is wrong.

Just because the protagonist is a shit head doesn't mean the author isn't criticizing his actions.

[Anonymous No.4532366]

>>4532331

The ducks are a metaphor for giving the time. When he's asking talking about them with the taxi driver, it means he's actually raping the dead mans corpse.

[Anonymous No.4532370]

>>4532330
OK, you're getting a bit boring now.
Dadaist japery has its place, I suppose - particularly on 4Chan.
But you've established well enough that you are a pomo Nietzschian misreader who finds it to be just "sooooooo 1959" to think that works of literature can sustain and guide people through the trials of life.
But maybe all this blather about "Otherness" that you've surely also gobbled up so avidly from your trendy Cultural Studies prof will have endowed you with at least the capacity to conceive of the possibility that, for other people, "Catcher In the Rye" may have been a beacon in the darkness and a thing of courage and beauty - not just a blank surface for you to scribble and scrawl your vain infantile desecrations on.

[John Lydon lol !xPOSER9PtU No.4532400]

If Holden raped his sister then why didn't Mark David Chapman rape John Lennon?

Checkmate rapetheists.

[Anonymous No.4532423]

No one wants to talk about the Gatsby reference? You know who else he calls "old"? Sexy Stradlater.

No one wants to talk about him pinching Phoebe?

No one wants to talk about him saying he goes to visit Phoebe because he's afraid he'll die? and asserting he's not drunk or tired anymore, which is in stark contrast to this logic?

No one wants to talk about the amount of attention he pays to Phoebe's clothes and body and how she looks?

No one?

[John Lydon lol !xPOSER9PtU No.4532431]

>>4532423
Nah. Pretty much all points and counterpoints have been covered.

[Anonymous No.4532435]

>>4532431
Those haven't.

[Anonymous No.4532447]

>>4532423
No, because to talk about that would not be to talk about "Catcher in the Rye" but rather to talk about how breathtakingly ingenious and impressive the deliberately perverse "close reading" and "aggressive reading" techniques of certain post-structuralist stars of contemporary Academe may or may not be.

Since you mention "Gatsby" the kind of jiggery-pokery that certain people are trying to pull with "Catcher" in this thread - and not even trolling thereby, it seems, but sadly in all seriousness - reminds me very strongly of the obvious self-interested nonsense that some professor of "Black Studies" tried to pull with Fitzgerald's great novel a few years back: Gatsby is once described as "looking a bit pale" and it is mentioned that the grounds of his house measure "fifty acres", ergo...."Gatsby" is a novel about a pale-skined negro "passing" for white.
As one serious Fitzgerald scholar remarked in the course of the brief debate about this piece of obvious nonsense: "Academia is a tough profession these days, and if this poor untalented guy can get himself tenure by floating a piece of arbitrary and risible invention like this on the current surface of wild post-Foucauldean hermeneutic improvisation, then good luck to him. But his 'theory' about "Gatsby" is crap. I know it and even he knows it."

[Anonymous No.4532458]

>>4532447
Lol m8. Funny how I have textual evidence and all you have is a criticism of academia.

[John Lydon lol !xPOSER9PtU No.4532475]

>>4532458
Counterexamples aren't required to rebut.

[Anonymous No.4532478]

>>4532458
You seem to be failing to grasp the fact that the very existence of your "evidence" depends on our putting our faith in the validity of certain "aggressive reading" techniques currently fashionable in Academia.
The "Gatsby" guy also claimed to have ample textual "evidence" for the laughable thesis that Gatsby was a pale-skinned negro. And he also had a fairly large group of supporters, collaborators, aiders and abetters drawn from the "Black Studies", "Queer Studies", "Gender Studies" and other academic communities - where this patently ridiculous post-Derridean flim-flam is everyone's bread and butter - who were only too willing to swallow what he came out with.
Doesn't change the fact that it was utter nonsense and was recognized as such immediately by anyone who had any serious knowledge of or interest in Fitzgerald and his work.

[Anonymous No.4532503]

>>4532475
>>4532478
>no fun!!!
Welcome to literature. Interpretations vary and not everyone has the same ones.

What's funny is first, I'm not the guy who was talking about "aggressive reading", I came in later, and second, I was trying to get people to see something interesting about The Catcher in the Rye they might not have noticed; you guys are just wankers who hate all interpretations that seem too interesting or different from your own.

[John Lydon lol !xPOSER9PtU No.4532517]

>>4532503
Except I haven't rejected the rape theory at all, I just haven't seen sufficient evidence. I was just pointing out a fact about competent discussion that you'd missed.

[Anonymous No.4532921]

>>4532193
>modish
This isn't 1964.

You are not riding a scooter.

You are not going to shit beat some rockers.

>authors

Oh well that explains why you're a cretinous fuck. You do realise that New Criticism, the height of American pragmatic formalism rejected the author, well before post-modernists did.

>You can "aggressively read" almost anything into anything
>bad hermeneutics
EISEGESIS

EISEGESIS EVERYWHERE

You haven't actually touched a course of higher literary or biblical criticism have you?

>Argument from the author's internal state
Show it in the text under criticism or fuck off back to lalaland.

[Anonymous No.4532925]

>>4532400
Chapman was a bad reader, like our "moddish" author-intent friend above.

[Anonymous No.4532929]

>>4532475
>In order to uphold the author I deny the text
>In order to refute your claims I uphold myself

>>>/x/

[Anonymous No.4532932]

>>4532478
These aggressive reading techniques are New Criticism friend. Absolutely no reader response has occurred in this thread, and the text is being held up as the formal source of truth.

Enjoy: you know nothing about literary criticism except something you read on the back of a cereal box about how Pomos denied authors

[Anonymous No.4533250]

>>4532932

I wish cereal boxes actually had literary criticism textbooks printed on them.

[Anonymous No.4534058]

>>4528433
Just like Sabato's Tunnel, huh.

[Anonymous No.4535682]

>people saying his brother was murdered and he fucked his sister

Holy shit this like a whole 'nother level of edge. Is this how grad students in liberal arts actually think?

Pro-tip: Jerk off when you start thinking about rape and murder...this is what I do and it clears all that bullshit out of my mind.

The book is about a young guy dealing with his little brother's untimely death, and worrying about his sister because of this, and trying to find his place in the world (searching for identity) while also trying to get some pussy. That is all. If you want proof, lurk /r9k/ for a week or two. Not everything is sinister and edgy as fuck.

Also, true story:

>go to shitty non-flagship state-school
>two whores walking in front of me
>talking about how shitty catcher in the rye is

[rages internally]

[Occult Fascist No.4535693]

>>4535682
>Pro-tip: Jerk off when you start thinking about rape and murder...

Uh

[Anonymous No.4535739]

>>4535693

Nothing clears the mind like a good jerk off session.

I know I start thinking really dark thoughts if I haven't jerked it in a while.

Start thinking about fucking fat chicks, raping bitches, fucking girls in relationships, etc...

Jizz and then I become a good person again.

I can't be the only one.

[Anonymous No.4535763]

>>4532921
I thought I was the only one who had read modish like that

[Anonymous No.4535836]

>>4535739
Holy shit this happens to me too.
I thought I was weird.

I just become... different. I am more prone to saying stuff without thinking, getting angry etc.

Once I jerk off...
Pow. Peace of mind all day.

[Anonymous No.4535868]

>>4535682
>go to a shitty non-flashship state-school
And you wonder why you only have basic reading skills.

[Anonymous No.4535902]

AUTHORIAL INTENT WARNING (PLEASE DISREGARD).

I wrote a novel (unpublished). The main character reads "The Catcher in the Rye" and thinks Holden kills his sister at the end. It's one of many "clues" that I worked into the text to try to get readers to suspect that the main character is secretly a serial killer. He isn't a psychopath at all, though, and by the end the reader should feel like shit for suspecting him, if they picked up on the clues in the first place. I guess it's a commentary on why you shouldn't judge people for shallow reasons, or something. Still, if I ever get this thing published I know I'm going to get letters asking if the protag is a serial killer and it's going to piss me off.

[Anonymous No.4535931]

>>4535902
Oh gee, maybe if a text contains a plurality of interpretable meanings, maybe, just maybe, if you were the one with your name on the cover there are meanings that you wrote that escaped your conscious decision making, and the language that you used was so overloaded with meaning that meanings escaped your choice of language.

Holy fuck if you don't like it put a fucking pseudonym on it and return letters without fucking opening them.

When a text hits a reader, the only "intention" left is the plurality of meanings that can be legitimately interpreted without breaking the text's skein of language referentiality.

p.s.: your subtext won't be, you're not that good a writer. You've just completed 100,000 words of your 1,000,000 word juvenilia. Remember to burn them all.

[Anonymous No.4536002]

>>4535931
I wrote a text designed to make people like you feel like idiots. Bitter much?

[Anonymous No.4536008]

>>4536002
>Designed
Yes and this is why authorial intent is a fallacy. To spell it out to you: your design of necessity failed.

[Anonymous No.4536014]

>>4536008
You're mad dumb.

[Anonymous No.4536037]

>>4536014
Show me your commercial publisher ISBN if you're out of producing juvenilia. Oh wait, you're going to refer me to a forum where you serially published aren't you? Is your avatar cute? I bet it is from your favourite anime.

[John Lydon lol !xPOSER9PtU No.4536050]

>>4535931
Since you reject author intent, am I allowed to interpret your posts any way I want? Am I allowed to say that you're suffering from an idealization of authors you can only hope to be and that this manifests in a fierce rejection that they hold any power over their words? Any power over you?

What if I can support it with examples from the text?

>p.s.: your subtext won't be, you're not that good a writer. You've just completed 100,000 words of your 1,000,000 word juvenilia. Remember to burn them all.
Look, you're obviously projecting your own shortcomings on others.

>who were only too willing to swallow what he came out with.
Look! A Freudian slip!

[Anonymous No.4536056]

>>4528424
Catcher in the Rye is just a really well executed coming of age story, focused enough on character growth to be considered literature.

[Anonymous No.4536251]

>freudian slips

SURE SMELLS LIKE FIRST YEAR PSYCHOLOGY IN HERE

http://m.psychologytoday.com/articles/201203/slips-the-tongue

>freudian slips

SURE SMELLS LIKE FIRST YEAR PSYCHOLOGY IN HERE

http://m.psychologytoday.com/articles/201203/slips-the-tongue

Also doesn't Holden say he's a virgin, i know he's an unreliable narrator but isn't that the reason he gets the hooker? And if he can rape his sister how come he cant sleep with a hooker.

Everything thats been cited can legitimately be justified through slang

[Anonymous No.4536420]

>>4536050
You've missed the obvious reference in a million words of shit.
>>who were only too willing to swallow what he came out with.

Not found in cited text.

Your reading has failed as it is both shallow and fabulist.

[Anonymous No.4536426]

>>4536251
>And if he can rape his sister how come he cant sleep with a hooker.
Because he's not mature enough for sex with a grown woman. There's a big difference between raping a child and having sex with an experienced woman.

[John Lydon lol !xPOSER9PtU No.4536451]

>>4536420
It's in >>4532478

No idea if it's the same Anon. Don't really care, the point stands either way.

[Anonymous No.4536506]

>>4536451
So you've artificially produced a hypertext without making an appropriate context based argument for making your contextual reading: bad hermeneutics, your reading failed.

[John Lydon lol !xPOSER9PtU No.4536527]

>>4536506
You are seriously retarded. I don't even know how to talk to you.

[Anonymous No.4536624]

>>4536426
The hookers his goddamn age are you fucking kidding. You clearly havent read it.

[Anonymous No.4536646]

>>4536426
He's not intimidated by her at all he thinks having sex would ruin their time together, Holden did not have sex with phoebe or anyone he's a virgin

[Anonymous No.4536654]

Read it in 10th grade when I was in that kind of juvenile/dramatic/depression mood and it had just the right tone that matched what I felt at the time, more than any other book I read. I tried reading it again last year and couldn't get into it. I still appreciate it though since I loved it so much as a young teen.

[Anonymous No.4536664]

>>4528424
>write a kids book and talk to kids as adults
>include the feels all over the place and the alien experience to kids of being outside a schedule, unable to go home, seeing roomates and a sibling and estranged friends
>surprised as tidal waves of adults identify with and enjoy the literature

also, Seymour. also, Seymour. also,
John Keats
John Keats
John Keats
John
Please motherfucker put your goddamned scarf on

[Anonymous No.4536899]

>>4535739
>>4535836
It's like you guys have never heard of testosterone.

[Anonymous No.4537659]

>>4536527
You obvious know sweet fuck all about humanities methodology and reading. I'm surprised you can understand any language.

[Anonymous No.4537899]

>, mainly that its tolerated at all.

You've been hanging around elitists too long op.