Book: The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Source: Library
Description:
Anyone who has read J. D. Salinger's New Yorker stories -- particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme -- With Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is full of children.
The hero-narrator of The Cather in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days.
The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest things we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it.
There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices -- but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.
Rating: 1 star (Did Not Finish)
Review:
I am so glad I am no longer in high school because if I was required to read this I would be so unbelievably disappointed. This book sucked. There was no plot what so ever in this book and the writing was so repetitive. I read up to page 75 before I decided not to read any further. I couldn't connect with this book or the characters.
I seriously can not believe how awful this was. The story follows 16 years old Holden Caulfield as he deals with the fact that he's been kicked out of boarding school due to not applying himself as the principal said. But he wasn't a complete mess, he did really well in his English class.
For some reason I couldn't understand why Holden was so cynical and angry and almost every sentence had multiple curse words (the only thing I can figure was it was used to try to shock the reader back then because it really didn't serve any purpose to the story). I have no problem with profanity in books but this just felt like over kill. There was nothing likeable about Holden, he complains about everything and everyone. Everyone is pretty much a fake or phony to him. He's just a spoiled little rich kid who feels like whining about the world and how unjust it is for him.
I wonder if the author had in mind that Holden had some kind of attention problem because he couldn't quite seem to focus and he was a bit all over the place. It also makes me wonder if he has any developmental issues because he was very erratic.
This was one boring and absolutely annoying book. This is another book I can be thankful I checked out from the library. The Catcher in the Rye was a total waste of time.
There is one thing this book has achieved for me, it's one of the first classic books I did not finish reading.
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