'the horse's mouth' every couple of years

haven't read 'catcher' in years

what is considered by every lit critic to be a modern masterpiece.

"Catcher in the Rye" pales in comparison to "The Boat Rocker".

“Salinger made a career out of being publicized for not seeking publicity,” Kinsella said. “It was controlled and planned, and it kept his name in the media for 50 years.”

Salinger's little Greta Garbo act was pretty annoying.

I think the floodgates will open sooner or later, and all that stuff will be published. Unfortunately, it'll probably also result in The Catcher in the Rye movie, starring Michael Cera, Zooey Deschanel as Jane, Channing Tatum as Stradlater, adapted for the screen by Dave Eggers, directed by Zach Braff, with music by the Shins. I can see the camera now, lingering on Jane's teardrop plopping on the checkerboard...

The following year I had the teacher for another class, and once in passing she mentioned how terrible she thought "Catcher in the Rye" was. So, at least I learned a lesson in not being afraid to offer up my own independent, critical thought.

Though the worst are the kind who read E.E. Cummings...man that guy is so overrated....

That was one of the real problems I had with "Field of Dreams." Here's this guy who supposedly wrote a generation-defining novel along the lines of "The Catcher in the Rye" - and it has a horribly cliched title like "The Boat Rockers"? Nothing with a title that bad could ever mean anything to anybody. It's a little thing, but it took me totally out of the movie.

That's what took you out of Field of Dreams?

If she loves it like most English/Lit teachers do, and you write a negative review, your grade is toast.

An example of a well-chosen title is "The Arsonist's Daughter" written by the Michael Douglas character in "Wonder Boys" (at least the film version). Not a great movie, but the title of the fake book is a good one.

If the teacher is a dumbass, yeah. Not all of us are.

Now I see On the Road for what it is, an accidental Great American Novel that resulted from a lucky combination of drugs and run-on sentences. Other than that book, Kerouac is mostly crap.

Lassus Posted: January 29, 2010 at 12:14 PM (#3449778)
I re-read The Catcher in the Rye last night--first time since I was 21. Read it at 15 and again at 21. My own little good-bye to Salinger.

I had possibly the most awesomely stereotypical Catcher in the Rye moment ever when I, like many others, blasted through the book one night at 14 or so. It wasn't required reading in my high school, which completely blew in terms of anything intelligent or diverse being taught. In fact, the only decent English teacher we had was retiring that year, before I was going to be old enough to take senior English with her, so I had started talking to her to glean whatever I could out of class whenever I could. I ran into her outside of the school library the next morning, me all completely and utterly a-twitter and yammering about how amazing the book was, and how insightful, and this and that and got to the point where I said, "It really felt like I was reading about myself!" "Oh, that's the wonderful thing about Catcher," said Ms. Conway, "it's completely universal." And off she went.

Blank stare of utter deflation.

The book + that one sentence = formative life moment.


(I did always end up liking Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters and Franny and Zooey more, personally.)

my narrow experience

Here's your key phrase.

Yes, obviously

. Go pick up Visions of Cody and tell me if precious little JD could have written three paragraphs of that quality. Salinger is the freaking Wes Anderson of literature; who wants to be a middle-aged man spending decades writing like a child genius?

Indeed, Ray Kinsella was the boy who digressed in Holden's class.

I doubt Kerouac wore jock straps very often.

Kerouac was a big baseball fan. I think I heard that he once invented a tabletop dice game

Though the worst are the kind who read E.E. Cummings...man that guy is so overrated....

And my wife would move this to the top of our Netflix queue, all while lying to me that "Fat City" isn't yet available

the only people I don't get are the ones who like Steinbeck

Very talented and creative poet who has a lot of crap dumped on him

"Nine Stories," dudes

I find this to be an arrogantly modern and cynical view, the implication being that the media had absolutely no interested on their own in the author who wrote one of the most famous books of the last 100 years and then retreated into reclusion

####### Bret Easton Ellis

Yeah!! Thank God he's finally dead. I've been waiting for this day for-#######-ever. Party tonight!!!

Stephen King may be a niche writer, but he is a tremendously skilled writer.* That a person doesn't write 500+ page metaphorical social commentaries or surreal literary acid trips says nothing about his skill as a writer, good or bad.

Steinbeck was hit-and-miss. The Grapes of Wrath is good and I liked East of Eden, but The Red Pony remains the worst piece of literature I've ever had the displeasure to read.

“Salinger made a career out of being publicized for not seeking publicity,” Kinsella said. “It was controlled and planned, and it kept his name in the media for 50 years.”

“Salinger made a career out of being publicized for not seeking publicity,” Kinsella said. “It was controlled and planned, and it kept his name in the media for 50 years.”

Also, since the movie version was brought up, everyone should read Leonard Gardner's Fat City -- the only novel the man made, pitch perfect neo-noir about rundown boxers. Even Denis Johnson acknowledges it as his daddy.

Garry Trudeau once said he was baffled that it was considered arrogant for him to have no interest in making himself famous.

In high school, I read The Hamlet, The Town and the Mansion AKA the Snopes Trilogy by Faulkner.

Of Mice and Men

I was homicidal by my senior year, and said some of the meanest things I've ever said to anyone in my entire life to that teacher. I made her cry in front of class. Twice.

Kinsella, who is in his 70s, said he also is facing death because of failing kidneys and hopes to finish his own finale in the next couple years. "One last kick at the cat," he said.

as Tom Stoppard put it: "an essentially private man, who wished his total indifference to public acclaim to be universally recognized"