Paperback, 214 pages
English language
Published June 6, 1984 by Bantam Books (Mm).
Story of Holden Caufield with his idiosyncrasies, penetrating insight, confusion, sensitivity and negativism. Holden, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what he did and suffered there.
Superou todas as minhas expectativas. Nunca tinha lido nada assim, foi incrível perceber as subtilezas de cada ação e os pensamentos de alguém que considerei muito interessante. Sehr gut.
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
The Catcher in the Rye van J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) greep me vanaf de eerste pagina vanwege de enigmatische sfeer en de sympathie die de schrijver wekt voor zijn hoofdpersoon Holden Caulfield. Hoewel de Amerikaanse filmcultuur eerder schatplichtig is aan Salinger en niet andersom, deed het boek me denken aan de film Permanent vacation uit 1980, waarin de hoofdpersoon ook een loner is die door de straten van New York zwerft. Holden is echter meer dan een cynische, verwende deugniet: zijn stream of thoughts verraadt ook een …
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
The Catcher in the Rye van J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) greep me vanaf de eerste pagina vanwege de enigmatische sfeer en de sympathie die de schrijver wekt voor zijn hoofdpersoon Holden Caulfield. Hoewel de Amerikaanse filmcultuur eerder schatplichtig is aan Salinger en niet andersom, deed het boek me denken aan de film Permanent vacation uit 1980, waarin de hoofdpersoon ook een loner is die door de straten van New York zwerft. Holden is echter meer dan een cynische, verwende deugniet: zijn stream of thoughts verraadt ook een zeker verlangen naar geborgenheid.Salinger wisselt geweld moeiteloos af met kinderlijke fantasieën. Heel consequent is zijn hoofdpersoon niet, afgezien van frequent vloeken en schelden: vooral sonuvabitch en phoney zijn favoriet. Soms ergert Holden zich aan de hypocrisie om hem heen, zonder ooit echt kritisch te worden: zijn gedrag lijkt eerder het gevolg te zijn van nijd of verveling.
I was crazy about The Great Gatsby. Old Gatsby. Old sport. That killed me. Anyway, I’m sort of glad they’ve got the atomic bomb invented. If there’s ever another war, I’m going to sit right the hell on top of it. I’ll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.
Dat Salinger in het midden laat wat Holden precies beweegt, is wat mij betreft de kracht van The Catcher in the Rye. In plaats daarvan krijgt de lezer een blik in het hoofd van een jongere in de jaren dat de nozems (greasers) in opkomst waren. Ik las het met veel plezier.
‘Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.’
Published in 1951, J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye focuses on the teenage angst of Holden Caulfield, a depressed seventeen year old undergoing treatment in a nondescript mental institution. Caulfield narrates his expulsion from an elite private school, Pencey Preparatory Academy and what happens to him after he runs away from the school a few days prior to Christmas Break to sojourn alone through the red light districts of Manhattan. His odyssey carries him through various experiences that begin to clarify his outlook on life and his opinions about the world.
Salinger wrote Caulfield’s coming-of-age story in the years immediately following the Second World War, initially as a serialized set of short stories before its eventual publication in a novel format. One of the most salient themes in this book is the tension between individualism and conformity in postwar American society. Salinger prefigures many issues later articulated by the …
Published in 1951, J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye focuses on the teenage angst of Holden Caulfield, a depressed seventeen year old undergoing treatment in a nondescript mental institution. Caulfield narrates his expulsion from an elite private school, Pencey Preparatory Academy and what happens to him after he runs away from the school a few days prior to Christmas Break to sojourn alone through the red light districts of Manhattan. His odyssey carries him through various experiences that begin to clarify his outlook on life and his opinions about the world.
Salinger wrote Caulfield’s coming-of-age story in the years immediately following the Second World War, initially as a serialized set of short stories before its eventual publication in a novel format. One of the most salient themes in this book is the tension between individualism and conformity in postwar American society. Salinger prefigures many issues later articulated by the beatniks and the counterculture during the late-1950s and 1960s—primarily that American culture and its attendant social relations during postwar years became one of routine, crass materialism, solidified gender and socioeconomic roles, and the leveling of individual self-expression. Or, as Holden Caulfield would say, Americans had become “phony.”
Holden is an extremely precocious high school student. He suffers from depression, but more specifically something akin to cyclothymic disorder: a milder form of bipolar disorder in which individuals suffer from extremely short-lived oscillations between depression and mania. There are moments when Holden feels he could conquer the world, such as when he invites Sally Hayes to run away with him to Connecticut where he would seek employment and support them in a hardscrabble existence suffused with authentic feeling. At other times, something as simple as conversing with nuns in a diner can spiral Holden into “sadness,” as he contemplates various pitiful visions of their lives. There are also some inflections of Henry David Thoreau’s transcendental writings in Holden’s worldview and there is not-so-subtle nods toward Walden in some of the narrator’s musings.
By-and-large, Holden’s inability to “fit” into society hails from his obsession about authenticity. He seeks authentic experiences and authentic people, and finds that most of the world and its inhabitants operate like automatons by saying and doing things not from a wellspring of true sentiments but from the sustainment of pretense and artifice to get what they want (sex, money, power, reputation). There are many examples of how Holden shies away from inauthentic experiences in the book. The most poignant, perhaps, is when Holden hastily decides to pay for a prostitute after an elevator attendant in his seedy hotel offers Holden “five dollars for a throw” if he needs company. When the prostitute enters Holden’s hotel room his teenage curiosity about sex and the desire to feel physical intimacy becomes subverted by the sudden realization that the entire transaction was based on something other than pure feeling. Holden admits to an acquaintance later that he would need to “like a girl” before he could consider having sex with her. Salinger deftly handles sexuality in this book in ways that belies the belief that America during the 1950s was extremely conservative about sex. There’s definitely a nod toward the existence of the Kinsey Reports inherent in Salinger’s approach to sexuality here.
There’s a lot of appeal to this book even today. For all the emphasis placed on individual expression in 2022, there remains a strong undercurrent of conformism in our culture wherein even those hoping to proclaim their individuality have unwittingly fallen into the trap of becoming part of the crowd. Many will find Holden Caulfield’s cynicism familiar as our level of distrust in institutions is far stronger now than when Salinger composed this novel.
To be frank, I would have liked to give this 2.5 instead of a solid 3. I believe my disappointment is a product of two things:
Firstly, I am "late" to reading this and I simply am not the intended audience. The catcher in the rye most likely would have intrigued me a few years ago but it falls flat for the current me. It is incredibly hard to connect with Holden Caulfield, to note: this book is a narrative of sorts—a lack of relatability with the main character somewhat renders the rest of the book jading—regardless, I understand the appeal of this book to other readers who may find fragments of themselves in the main character's attitude to life.
Secondly: I Really Dislike Holden Caulfield.
I don't think it needs much elaboration as to me, he is the definition of insufferable... A good portion of this book is about …
To be frank, I would have liked to give this 2.5 instead of a solid 3. I believe my disappointment is a product of two things:
Firstly, I am "late" to reading this and I simply am not the intended audience. The catcher in the rye most likely would have intrigued me a few years ago but it falls flat for the current me. It is incredibly hard to connect with Holden Caulfield, to note: this book is a narrative of sorts—a lack of relatability with the main character somewhat renders the rest of the book jading—regardless, I understand the appeal of this book to other readers who may find fragments of themselves in the main character's attitude to life.
Secondly: I Really Dislike Holden Caulfield.
I don't think it needs much elaboration as to me, he is the definition of insufferable... A good portion of this book is about all the things Caulfield dislikes—practically everything in existence. I must add that the repetitive nature of Salinger's writing only added on to the tediousness of this read.
2.5/5
Not my cup of tea for certain.
This book resonated much too well with me.
i will not justify my actions
IM a scholar.
I enjoyed the writing style of this book and found it mildly humourous and relatable. I fully annotated the copy I was reading and overall I have the most tags for funny, relatable, and quote. I would recommend everyone read it once but it is not on my favorite list.
Read for school, around 1979 or 1980. Did not like at all -- felt vulgar and depressing. Would probably experience it differently today but have no desire to reread. Let those who love it enjoy it, but if you didn't like it don't feel guilty.
Read for school, around 1979 or 1980. Did not like at all -- felt vulgar and depressing. Would probably experience it differently today but have no desire to reread. Let those who love it enjoy it, but if you didn't like it don't feel guilty.
Although the book is a bit of a drag today, if read in the context of when it was released it's easy to understand why this is such an influential book
Although the book is a bit of a drag today, if read in the context of when it was released it's easy to understand why this is such an influential book
I never read this book as an adolescent/teen, so maybe it would have made a greater impact on me if I had. As an adult, it is hard for me to see why this is such an influential book. Salinger's very conversational writing style lends itself to developing the character of Holden Caulfield, but it is also distracting and sometimes hard to follow. I wish Holden were a more sympathetic character, and I wish that he had found peace (or even just a date with Jane) before the end of the book so I would have a reason to cheer for him, but instead I found it difficult to care very much about his fate.
I never read this book as an adolescent/teen, so maybe it would have made a greater impact on me if I had. As an adult, it is hard for me to see why this is such an influential book. Salinger's very conversational writing style lends itself to developing the character of Holden Caulfield, but it is also distracting and sometimes hard to follow. I wish Holden were a more sympathetic character, and I wish that he had found peace (or even just a date with Jane) before the end of the book so I would have a reason to cheer for him, but instead I found it difficult to care very much about his fate.
I see what the hype is about.
Solid three-point-fiver, but I’m feeling generous. Holden Caulfield’s tempestuous and spiteful character is a façade to hide his insecurities and anger at the world at large behind. “Why the f is the world the way it is?! It doesn’t make sense.” It’s a - to me, at least - somewhat familiar feeling, and his search for answers, for some “goddam” meaning is a blast to read.
I read this book when I was 17 and hated it so much that I am unlikely to ever re-read it with a more "literary" eye. I don't know why people like this book, and maybe if I didn't hate it so much the first time I would know why.
I read this book when I was 17 and hated it so much that I am unlikely to ever re-read it with a more "literary" eye. I don't know why people like this book, and maybe if I didn't hate it so much the first time I would know why.
Bez znajomości kontekstu książka jest dużo słabsza.
Jeśli czujesz, że bohater jest bardzo irytujący, a jesteś dopiero w pierwszych szkolnych rozdziałach, śmiało przewiń do momentu, w którym bohater szkołę opuszcza.
Wtedy robi się troszkę ciekawiej.
Bohatera można nawet polubić. Przynajmniej mam takie wrażenie.
Długo zachowuje się on jak dzieciak, co sam zresztą przyznaje. Dlatego też myślę, że gdybym przeczytał tę książkę mając mniej niż 18 lat, zrobiłaby na mnie większe wrażenie.
