I read Catcher in the Rye in 10th grade, and remember hating Caulfield and hating the book in its entirety like PF and snapper. Like PF says, I might see HC as an antihero or as a sympathetic figure if I were to reread the book as an adult, but as a fellow adolescent I just wanted Caulfield to shut up and disappear.

Ebert is usually a good reviewer, but sometimes he misses the point completely. Redford's stomach isn't bleeding because he got shot there once. It's bleeding because as a young man he abandoned his ideals. The possibility that he might abandon his ideals again has literally reopened an old wound.

That's why the pivotal moment is Glen Close, the woman in white, standing up. The woman who shot Redford was dressed all in black. Bump's wife was, too, and the last thing Redford says to her is that he's met her before. He chooses the woman in white, and he redeems his old sin by hitting the home run into the lights.

Focusing on the physical consequences of the wound is painfully literal and ignores the Arthurian elements of the story (the team, after all, is named the New York Knights). The Arthurian legends are full of sins that are never forgiven and wound that never heal.

The Arthurian symbolism is almost pedantic in the book, which makes the interesting (and to my eye, weaker) choice of having Roy Hobbs choose to throw the game. That fits the Arthurian theme of having poor choices poison someone's life, but makes the ending dangerously close to a shaggy dog tale. (It ends with a tear-stricken young boy demanding "Say it ain't so, Roy! Say it ain't so!")

Worst. Thread. Ever.

Also, I'd rag on those who let their hate for Holden ruin their appreciation for the writing, but I feel that way about nearly every F. Scott Fitzgerald character, so there's that.

only Jerry Lewis and his lawyers

and Harry Shearer, for some reason.

Lots of people hate Holden/Catcher - I am not one of them (though I prefer Nine Stories).

Greenback - is your stance 'eh, it's a sports movie, what did you expect?' If so, you nailed why I mostly avoid them. (As opposed to, genre films have certain demands.)

Well, that lots of people hate Holden/Catcher isn't really the point. Lots of people detest lots of things as an unthinking reaction that says more about them than the literary work. Indeed, that they do react as they do, without wanting to examine why they do, may be telling.

Or, rather, that's not where it should end. The point is why do they hate it, and does that hate reflect on artistic creation. People seem content with venting--cryptic venting, and that isn't literary criticism. They've blurted out a visceral reaction, formed in most instances years ago, and they think that's all there is to it. It may be where therapy begins, but it's not where critical appraisal ends. It's telling that no one wants to go into why they react as they do--or recall reacting as they do. It's telling that they won't or can't consider the book as a literary creation separate and divorced from their personal psychology.

And Nine Stories is a great short story collection. It's the Highway 61 Revisited of short story collection. Each story/track is excellent, but each is excellent in a different way. As are, for that matter, all of Salinger's subsequent works that have thus far been published.

I read Catcher in the Rye when I was 21. I thought it was fine.

Shame this is behind a pay wall.

The Washington Post had a long obit this morning that can be accessed directly without any registration or paywall, complete with a picture of Steinhagen playing first base while in prison. I submitted it just a minute ago before seeing this thread.

This quote alone makes the article worth reading:

“Here’s a 19-year-old girl, living by herself in a tiny apartment on Lincoln Avenue, in 1949,” Theodore said via e-mail. “She builds an Eddie Waitkus shrine in her apartment: photos, newspaper clippings, 50 ticket stubs, scorecards. She knows he’s from Boston so she develops a craving for baked beans. .?.?. He’s Lithuanian, so she teaches herself the language and listens to Lithuanian radio programs.”

Such dedication should not go unrequited. That shrine should be in the Hall of Fame.

That wasn't just a flesh wound Eddie Waitkus suffered. He deserves recognition for simply being able to come back after something like that. I've never read the biography written of him. Has anyone here?

As for the crazy ####, did she later read The Catcher in the Rye and say to herself, oh, yeah, that speaks to me?

But, all that still doesn't answer the question. Why do you hate it and what does that have to do with literary achievement?

It spawned Bret Easton Ellis.

Nuff said.

Isn't an extreme reaction from the audience generally considered the goal of most art with the greatest and most interesting works usually having a good mix of both love and hate thrown its way?

But, all that still doesn't answer the question. Why do you hate it and what does that have to do with literary achievement?

It spawned Bret Easton Ellis.

And Sylvia Plath and Hunter Thompson and Jay McInerney and Dave Eggers. Like baseball seasons, people remember most fondly the books about unhappy young people they read when they are eleven.

Really though, I read CITR as a sophomore in high school and I had no idea how self-consciously neurotic I was supposed to be until I read that piece of ####.

And it had #### in it that I hated. It portrayed nuns as saintly, ephemeral creatures rather than the neurotic celibates they really were (that I knew from experience even at the age of 15). It talked about the Lunts (who the were the Lunts? Even my parents only had a passing familiarity with the ####### Lunts). Holden the protagonist was a spoiled future frat boy (I remember asking myself is "What teenager has enough money to check into a NY hotel by himself or rent a whore? He comes off like a Duke basketball fan.). Salinger made fun of a kid with acne. Great fun in that. Holden resenting his roommate getting a piece of ass. JD comes off as a frigid prude there.

Thanks, JD. Thanks for helping to ruin my adolescence.

Uh, Morty, are you sure that you are just trying to foster a conversation? Seems more like you are gleefully lobbing accusations of vanity and philistinism at people that don't like a book that you like. Or, actually, at people that didn't like that book when they were adolescents. It's hilarious to contrast your "give Holden a break, he's 16!" post with the idea that merely registering my 14-year old self's dislike of the book is some sort of tremendous intellectual failing. You're right, I haven't offered any "literary criticism" here. I never intended to, I'm not able to, I read the book when I was ####### 14. Battering me for that fact seems like an odd way of trying to further the conversation.

That wasn't just a flesh wound Eddie Waitkus suffered. He deserves recognition for simply being able to come back after something like that. I've never read the biography written of him. Has anyone here?

Yes, Baseball's Natural by John Theodore, a very interesting biography. Among other things, Waitkus had seen some grisly combat in WW2, and was afflicted with PTSD that Steinhagen compounded. He was an alcoholic, and compensated during his playing days by taking all kinds of stimulants: an object lesson in the abuse of greenies. He had to have been a pretty good ballplayer before all his troubles started, to be as good as he was in the event.

Caulfield seemed to me to be the same kind of insubstantial insincere "phony" (ironically the character's own favorite putdown) that he spends the entire book railing against. I remember him as an uninsightful insincere hypocrite who is the unreliable narrator

This about sums it up for me.


Jay Gatsby (everybody in the Great Gatsby?)


Read this around the same age (maybe a year or two later) and I didn't hate Gatsby at all.

Yeah, he's a sleazy phony, but he doesn't have any pretensions of holding the moral high ground like Caufield.

And it had #### in it that I hated. It portrayed nuns as saintly, ephemeral creatures rather than the neurotic celibates they really were (that I knew from experience even at the age of 15).

I love how you respond to Salinger's wildly inaccurate stereotype with one of your own. Methinks the truth must lie somewhere in between, or as a mix of both.

Edit: and I don't much like nuns. With very few exceptions, they have gone to left-wing dipsy-doodle land in the last 40 years.

Really though, I read CITR as a sophomore in high school and I had no idea how self-consciously neurotic I was supposed to be until I read that piece of ####.

I never read Catcher in the Rye until I was in my late 30's, by which time it just seemed to be a rather dated piece of light fiction, although mildly enjoyable. I guess not being able to appreciate Salinger is one of the problems of not having suffered through an overly neurotic adolescence.

I'd see Holden Caulfield as an insightful phony. He realizes that society is 99% bullshit, and then starts bullshitting, every chance he gets. To me that just makes Salinger himself all the more insightful (which of us is immune to the mote/beam problem?) But Holden can make readers very uncomfortable, and I can certainly see why that translates into disliking the book.

Disclosure: I loved the book at age 11 and I loved it the last time I read it at age 52. I really did.

I really like most of Ebert's reviews. Here, though, I don't follow him on a couple of levels.

Why did a perfectly good story, filled with interesting people, have to be made into one man's ascension to the godlike, especially when no effort is made to give that ascension meaning? And were the most important people in the god-man's life kept mostly offscreen so they wouldn't upstage him?

It's a 2-hour movie. You can really only tell so much of a story in 2 hours, and the story here is about Hobbs. Any time you give to his son or his lover (or Pop or anyone else) you take away from getting to know Hobbs and what makes him tick. Every movie under six hours has to take some shortcuts like this.

Come on, give us a break. The last shot is cheap and phony. Either he hits the homer and then dies, or his bleeding was just a false alarm. If the bleeding was a false alarm, then everything else in the movie was false, too.

I really don't follow him on this. Why is that the only way the movie can go. Why can't this story be about Hobbs's triumph over tragedy? It may not be THE ending that Ebert wants to see but it's an ending and if the story is about redemption or triumph over adversity it works. Why must the bleeding be a false alarm or deadly? Isn't life filled with events that fall between these two extremes?

I'd love to get to know Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley), the cynical, old team manager. Robert Duvall, as the evil sportswriter, Max Mercy, has had his part cut so badly that we only know he's evil because he practically tells us. Richard Farnsworth, as a kindly coach, has a smile that's more genuine than anything else in the movie. But you have to look quick.

And when they make The Natural: The Miniseries, you will get to know all about these people. Spoiler Alert: Pop likes oatmeal.

I'd see Holden Caulfield as an insightful phony.

Unrealistically insightful into others, for a 16-year old, and yet he has no insight into himself.

Unrealistically insightful into others, for a 16-year old, and yet he has no insight into himself.

Making him a pretty typical 16-year-old.

[70] You can really only tell so much of a story in 2 hours, and the story here is about Hobbs. Any time you give to his son or his lover (or Pop or anyone else) you take away from getting to know Hobbs and what makes him tick.

That is the problem. As Ebert stated:

THE NATURAL could have been a decent movie. One reason that it is not: Of all its characters, the only one we don't want to know more about is Roy Hobbs.

Unrealistically insightful into others, for a 16-year old, and yet he has no insight into himself

That's a strong criticism of a lot of YA fiction, I agree: The Outsiders (still a pretty good novel) tends in that direction, and lots of subsequent books just have impossibly precocious narrators. Holden, though, is full of snap judgments, patronizing attitudes, prejudices; there are people he can't figure out (like Mr Antolini). He doesn't strike me as some empathically-gifted kid, just someone who's a bit hyperactive socially and emotionally.

As to having insights into others but not one's self, again, that's the human condition (my one insight from my last 54 years :)

THE NATURAL could have been a decent movie. One reason that it is not: Of all its characters, the only one we don't want to know more about is Roy Hobbs.

Fair enough, I guess, but this is really just who Ebert wants to know about. Hobbs was a supremely talented person who fell into obscurity and made it all the way back to the top. I find that a really interesting story. And let's face it, if we got to know Pop better, we'd probably decide he was a superstitious idiot.

But I am curious if there are any genuine classics that feature main characters that are widely hated. And of course I don't mean charismatic antiheros like, I dunno, Milton's Satan.

Dean Moriarty in On the Road is not the easiest guy in the world to like. Although he does seem to have charisma out the wazoo.

Also I suppose whether On the Road is a genuine classic or not is another discussion.

Essay in The New Yorker on Catcher and Salinger

About where Salinger was coming from and how he changed the literary aesthetic. It's a been a good while since I've read those biographies (unauthorized and incomplete), but this says something about JD:

Salinger spent most of the war with the 4th Infantry Division, where he was in a counter-intelligence unit. He landed at Utah Beach in the fifth hour of the D Day invasion, and ended up in the middle of some of the bloodiest fighting of the liberation—in Hürtgen Forest and then in the Battle of the Bulge, in the winter of 1944. The 4th Division suffered terrible casualties in those engagements, and Salinger, by his own account, in letters he wrote at the time, was traumatized. He fought for eleven months during the advance on Berlin, and by the summer of 1945, after the German surrender, he seems to have had a nervous breakdown. He checked himself into an Army hospital in Nuremberg. Shortly after he was released, and while he was still in Europe, he wrote the first story narrated by Holden Caulfield himself, the real beginning of “The Catcher in the Rye.” It was called “I’m Crazy.” (It was published in Collier’s in December, 1945.)

A point Menand emphasizes is that Salinger is not a '50s writer. He's a '40s writer--those were his formative years. And he reminds us that it was Seymour Glass's war experiences that sent him over the edge. (And that The New Yorker rejected Catcher when it was offered to them to excerpt.

This here is a fine appreciation of Salinger:

A gift of words and silence

Dean Moriarty in On the Road is not the easiest guy in the world to like. Although he does seem to have charisma out the wazoo.

Also I suppose whether On the Road is a genuine classic or not is another discussion.

I'm presently re-reading On the Road (been probably 20 years since I last read it), and I'm surprised that the force of its language still holds. The ending is a somewhat forced poetry, but it's good anyway. You really get the sense of a place and time. Of movement.

On the Road is very much a Catcher-type book. I don't know if the book and its protagonist is looked at that way, but Walker Percy's Binx Bolling in The Moviegoer is a lot like an older Holden Caulfield/Glass Menagerie. As are almost all of Philip Roth's heroes.

Salinger is not a '50s writer. He's a '40s writer--those were his formative years. And he reminds us that it was Seymour Glass's war experiences that sent him over the edge.

Okay. I personally would rather read Catch-22 or watch The Big Red One instead.

While I did enjoy On the Road, my high school literature obsession was William S. Burroughs.

I'd say his main characters were pretty unlikeable, as I don't think likeable people existed in any of his universes. But I'm not entirely sure most of his books had main characters. Looking up his catalogue now I didn't quite read all of his books, but I sure read a bunch of them. I find it very difficult to believe that if I returned to them I'd enjoy them as much as I did as a teenager. I haven't read any of his books since I was about 17, though I did write a paper on the censorship trial of Naked Lunch a couple years ago. Apparently Burroughs and the publishers figured a good, showy censorship trial would garner some attention. But the problem was no one was buying the book, so no one was bothering to stop people from buying the book. They devised a plan to smuggle a copy into the country, but do a really poor job of it and get caught. But several of these attempts failed because no one seemed to realize the book was banned, or if they did, didn't care.*


*Note, this story may actually involve Ulysses which also had a big censorship case, and the Nanked Lunch guys were actively trying to emulate...I get things mixed up easily.

But I am curious if there are any genuine classics that feature main characters that are widely hated. And of course I don't mean charismatic antiheros like, I dunno, Milton's Satan.

For Love of Evil...features Satan in a positive light, so I'm guessing the author should be hated.

And Raistlin Majere is a full on bastard... :)

I love how you respond to Salinger's wildly inaccurate stereotype with one of your own...With very few exceptions, they have gone to left-wing dipsy-doodle land in the last 40 years.

It isn't a wildly inaccurate stereotype. It is the honest truth. One nun I had slapped a female classmate of mine as hard as she could full in the face, snapping her head to the side. And this classmate was 8 years old at the time. The offense? She had the audacity to use her $1 value Easter seals she was supposed to sell for the parish to instead decorate the inside of her spiral notebook. It happened right in front of me. I'll never forget it. But most of the nuns I had weren't so vicious. All they would do is grab you by the hair or the chin and smash your head against the slate chalkboard. Physical abuse for minor infractions were the norm. It was like living in a concentration camp.

And the nuns I had were McCarthyite right wingers all the way. Hated the Vietnam protesters, hated rock and roll, hated secular ideas (I didn't find out that Charles Darwin existed until I got to high school), hated sex, or anything that smacked of sexuality or sensual love. Girls couldn't wear their skirts above the knee. They weren't allowed to wear patent leather shoes. They couldn't wear jewelry to school except religous paraphernalia like a cross and chain or scapulas. Pierced earrings were forbidden, for instance. We were forced to attend church everyday, and had to attend the stations of the cross after school everyday during Lent (I would not be afraid of going to hell, if there was one, because having to attend SoTC would be worse).

hello boys

as for The Natural (movie) i think it would have worked LOTS better if redford had gotten someone else to play him at age 18 like he did in sneakers. and yeah, the symbolism was kinda thick and the villians like out of the cartoons. it's not one of my favorites. or even my favorite redford movie. that is indecent proposal, because i can see without ANY difficulty why it wasn't exactly a tough choice for the girl to make

as for catcher in the rye
well, youse guys talk about it so much i decided to read it a few years back. got through i think 4 chapters before i got drowned in tiresome. he's a spoilt, rich, tiresome teenager who really REALLY could use some parents. i mean the kind who actually TALK to their kid instead of leaving him to sink. any mother whose son is 16 damm well knows that when any male says something like - i'm good, i'm fine, no problem - when his arm, head or heart is broke - you just ignore that stuff and take care of your kid (same goes for adult males)

i disagree that he had actual INSIGHT into people, he knows what they do, he doesn't see what they do because of any sort of real understanding why they do/think what they do/think. and no, he doesn't look inward. i think that is an adult thing, not a teenage thing.

And Raistlin Majere is a full on bastard... :)

Speaking of books that don't measure up when read again later in life, though the Twins trilogy holds up much better than the initial set ...

Speaking of books that don't measure up when read again later in life, though the Twins trilogy holds up much better than the initial set ...

I have that feeling with a lot of science fiction/fantasy books I read when I was younger in life and went back and re-read...One of my favorite book at age 16 was Wolfling by Gordon R. Dickson. Read it again a few years ago after finding it at a used book store, and wow, was it a pretty bad book. I am afraid to go back and read any of the other Dickson books I loved, as I have him as one of my favorite writers of all time, but if that book took that much of a drop, who knows how the others stand up(was never a Dorsai fan) Similarly I could say the same about a lot of books that I read between my 16-21 years, and then reread again, they just did not stand up to my personality changes.

But I am curious if there are any genuine classics that feature main characters that are widely hated.

Lucy from Peanuts.

I struggle with talking about literature, in large part because I feel like much of my taking in of the material is surface level - I'm a quick reader, but not as thoughtful as I'd like to admit to - or be. With that in mind...

I never took Caufield as a character who was intended to be sympathetic or as someone with whom I'd closely identify* - it was a character study with an unreliable narrator. entertaining, clever, and with something to say. Didn't read it until college, because I though Nine Stories was pretty fantastic and figured I ought to give it a go.

* I quickly learned others felt differently, mind you.

Read Catch 22 in grad school (found it on the ground) and loved it. Sequel, not so much.

Working as a janitor for a school board I've had quite a few "found book" experiences due to,
A) Teacher's often being readers
and
B) having 2 hours of work in an 8 hour shift

A Canticle for Lebowitz was a fun one. I seem to recall another about Adolf Hitler's son becoming a politician in 1970s Germany, Dances with Wolves, and Briget Jones's Diary, which I somehow didn't realize was Pride and Prejudice until reading the book. Which is actually even more embarassing than not realizing You've Got Mail is Pride and Prejudice. (Though neither is as embarassing as liking Briget Jones's Diary and You've Got Mail).

But I am curious if there are any genuine classics that feature main characters that are widely hated.

Agamemnon is a real dick in the Iliad.

i disagree that he had actual INSIGHT into people, he knows what they do, he doesn't see what they do because of any sort of real understanding why they do/think what they do/think

That's a fair qualification. I guess I'd say instead that Holden has been disillusioned young, for a lot of the right reasons: but yes, he's often guessing (projecting?) that any given individual he meets might be a goddam phony, though a lot of them certainly turn out to be.

You've Got Mail is Pride and Prejudice

I thought You've Got Mail was Sleepless in Seattle :) No, You've Got Mail is The Shop around the Corner, of course, which hinges on unsuspected identity in a way that P&P doesn't.

Agamemnon is the king (well, the Big Kahuna king anyway), though, and it's good to be the king.

Almost hate to admit it, but I don't think I've ever read anything by William S. Burroughs, not even a piece or excerpt in a magazine. I'm not sure how that came to be.

genuine classics that feature main characters that are widely hated. And of course I don't mean charismatic antiheros

There are villains (as opposed to antiheroes) who are occasionally central to their classics. Gilbert Osmond in The Portrait of a Lady is one. There is so little to like about him that the novel almost doesn't work, because you just are sick from the start that Isabel Archer would even get involved with him. (The film doesn't work at all, because John Malkovich is so loathsome – as opposed to his antihero in Dangerous Liaisons, for instance.)

To bring things full circle, Colin Firth has played both the Valmont character from Liaisons and the Darcy character in P&P and Bridget Jones. Nice range, because I sure the hell wouldn't want to see Malkovich in Pride & Prejudice.

Besides God in The Bible, the Greek gods leave something to be desired, character-wise. Zeus is like some kind of Galactic Panderer. Hera and Athena are definitely not sentimentalizations of womanly virtues, like Mary, mother of Jesus, is. Apollo and Aphrodite are cruel and selfish. There are many others.

Strindberg's Dance of Death has very unlikable main characters. It's the prototype of which I guess Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is the exemplar. The movie hasn't live, but some think it should.

I thought You've Got Mail was Sleepless in Seattle :) No, You've Got Mail is The Shop around the Corner, of course, which hinges on unsuspected identity in a way that P&P doesn't.

I must have been thrown by the use of Pride and Prejudice in the actual movie.

To bring things full circle, Colin Firth has played both the Valmont character from Liaisons and the Darcy character in P&P and Bridget Jones. Nice range, because I sure the hell wouldn't want to see Malkovich in Pride & Prejudice.

He also played the Darcy character in Pride and Prejudice, which (and this time I'm 75% sure I'm right) is Pride and Prejudice.

Uh, Morty, are you sure that you are just trying to foster a conversation? Seems more like you are gleefully lobbing accusations of vanity and philistinism at people that don't like a book that you like. Or, actually, at people that didn't like that book when they were adolescents. It's hilarious to contrast your "give Holden a break, he's 16!" post with the idea that merely registering my 14-year old self's dislike of the book is some sort of tremendous intellectual failing. You're right, I haven't offered any "literary criticism" here. I never intended to, I'm not able to, I read the book when I was ####### 14. Battering me for that fact seems like an odd way of trying to further the conversation.

Yes. Conversations beyond the superficial can get urgent, even passionate. I think there are about ten a day just on this site. I didn't realize I was battering you. I just asked.

The thing is (and since we've last actually engaged, I haven't been addressing you at all--propositions exist separately from personalities), you're not now 14-years old. You should be wondering why you reacted so strongly then and so strongly now. That's what I would think--but if not, not. Obviously, it struck a chord in some way. If my kneejerk reaction to a mention of a character in a book is to say vehemently that I wish he were dead, and now many years later I still felt that way, I would wonder why that is so. Especially if pressed. And if I were interested in what makes good literature and what doesn't, I would wonder what my visceral response means. Does it mean it's not a good book--or maybe that makes it an especially good book. Which? That's all I wanted to know. I wasn't just putting you on the spot for the sake of doing so without a point. You said, though, you haven't thought about it and aren't interested in thinking about it now. Okay, case closed.

Everybody gets a trophy. There are no losers at this school. Happy?

my favorite Salinger is "Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters"

Dorian Gray wasn't a particularly likeable protagonist. Neither were Emma Bovary, Humbert Humbert or Blanche Dubois.