This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
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.
UrliMancati: It has been said that Barney is Holden at the end of his life. While the twos do not have so much in common, the reader will definitively love both characters.
Ok, well, I don't know how I feel after reading this book. Obviously it is a masterpiece and I really enjoyed reading it, but I was torn in some places. I know a lot of authors leave their characters and/or books a little open ended so the reader can fill in the blanks for themselves, and this was one of those type of books. My problem is that I don't like to figure out for myself what happened. If I wanted to do that, I would have wrote the book, but these are Salinger's characters and not mine, and I would rather have him tell me what happened in Holden's life. Other than that, it was excellent, Holden has one hell of an adventure, and he is one hell of an interesting kid. As I read through the book (in one night) I found that my reading kept pace with the book, which was very quick, and when I stopped reading for a little for one reason or another, it was almost like I had to catch my breath and slow down, recovering from Holden's crazy world back into my own. Like I said about Catch 22, there is a reason this book is a classic bestseller. It speaks for itself, you don't need me to tell you to read it, but if you haven't read it in a while or at all, it might be a good time to spend some quality time with Holden Caulfield. ( )
“Holden Caulfield is supposed to be this paradigmatic teenager we can all relate to, but we don’t really speak this way or talk about these things,” Ms. Levenson said, summarizing a typical response. At the public charter school where she used to teach, she said, “I had a lot of students comment, ‘I can’t really feel bad for this rich kid with a weekend free in New York City.’ ”
"Some of my best friends are children," says Jerome David Salinger, 32. "In fact, all of my best friends are children." And Salinger has written short stories about his best friends with love, brilliance and 20-20 vision. In his tough-tender first novel, The Catcher in the Rye (a Book-of-the-Month Club midsummer choice), he charts the miseries and ecstasies of an adolescent rebel, and deals out some of the most acidly humorous deadpan satire since the late great Ring Lardner.
This Salinger, he's a short story guy. And he knows how to write about kids. This book though, it's too long. Gets kind of monotonous. And he should've cut out a lot about these jerks and all at that crumby school. They depress me.
"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 the truth."
Quotations
I'm quite illiterate but I read a lot.
You don’t have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
I do not even like ... cars... I’d rather have a goddamn horse. A horse is at least human, for God’s sake.”
I always pick a gorgeous time to fall over a suitcase or something.
The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move.... Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
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.
"Hey, listen," I said. "You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?" I realized it was only one chance in a million.
Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.
Certain things they should stay as they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.
Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, that aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to understand your measurements and dress your mind accordingly.
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.
▾Library descriptions
No library descriptions found.
▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
The hero-narrator of The Catcher 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 thing 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.
J.D. Salinger's classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.
Haiku summary
Boy in funny hat Wanders around N.Y.C. Phonies everywhere. (Christopher451)
A quoi bon la vie. Ses chemins nous mènent au trou. Attrape mon coeur!
Bottle up your grief. Men do not have emotions. Lie until you die. (alsocass)
)
Google Books — Loading...
87
Hachette Book Group
Penguin Australia
Looking ahead to Salinger
Wikipedia in English (10)
Other than that, it was excellent, Holden has one hell of an adventure, and he is one hell of an interesting kid. As I read through the book (in one night) I found that my reading kept pace with the book, which was very quick, and when I stopped reading for a little for one reason or another, it was almost like I had to catch my breath and slow down, recovering from Holden's crazy world back into my own. Like I said about Catch 22, there is a reason this book is a classic bestseller. It speaks for itself, you don't need me to tell you to read it, but if you haven't read it in a while or at all, it might be a good time to spend some quality time with Holden Caulfield. (