Accurate as it may be, I never got why I should care about his story. I don't need my protagonist to be likable, but he didn't have anything to recommend him to me.

This was pretty much my reaction. And I didn't really get what was supposed to be so profound and life-changing. At all.

I've read it two or three times, the first for class and the other two just for itself. The last time was close to a decade ago so I don't know what will have changed when I read it again, but chances are it will utterly wreck me. The huge, huge thing I remember from all three reads, aside from Holden's now-much-imitated but still utterly distinctive voice, is his huge love for his siblings. The dead brother is a hole in him that won't be filled, that he mostly lives with but never forgets, and Phoebe is to him what Matilda is to Emmett.

The scene where Holden gets all twisted up and despairing looking at the "Fuck you" scratched onto a wall and wanting to rub it out so Phoebe can never see it, and realizing he'll never be able to erase all the "Fuck you"s in the world? That's not exactly Emmett in the details, since he already swears like a sailor, but that ferocious hunger to protect the wee beloved is purely and precisely him. Wanting to be the catcher in the rye, saving all the little kids as they run around wildly, is pure Emmett. Watching Phoebe on the merry-go-round and crumbling under the weight of her presence, her self, how purely and separately herself and yet central to him she is, all Emmett.

The scenes with Mister Antolini kind of wrecked me, too--all the blundering and misunderstanding and that small sorrowful gesture of fumbling kindness and pity, and Holden's reflexive, destructive terror.

I totally and completely grok why it rubs so many people the wrong way and why it can be a completely unenjoyable, even loathsome experience, but I feel weirdly protective of it, as if it were an actual 15-year-old depressed boy wobbling into a nervous breakdown instead of just a book about him.

I read it on my own, and I think I liked it. But I don't remember many details about it.

My copy of Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs just arrived! I had been waiting for it to come out in paperback. It's perfect timing because TCG is working late, and I have no plans for the evening.

I can't imagine what it would be like to read in the fifties, since everyone's a wiseass now and the shocking part to me reading in 1990 or whatever is that I didn't see anything in it to make it the de facto book for serial killing psychos. Now, I understand that it was feeding an impulse in those already Not Right but the first time I read it, I expected it to be violent since Mark Chapman loved it so much...I wonder if Salinger ever knew that and if it ever made him sad. Because Holden is obviously smarting off when he says he's "hunting people".

I liked Catcher and would like to read it again. I LOVED Franny and Zooey and several of the Nine Stories.

My guess is I'd like Catcher more at this age (when I'm no longer expected to identify with Holden) than I did at 14-ish, when he mainly reminded me why I preferred books to people.

Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger

CORNISH, NH—In this big dramatic production that didn't do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud. "He had a real impact on the literary world and on millions of readers," said hot-shot English professor David Clarke, who is just like the rest of them, and even works at one of those crumby schools that rich people send their kids to so they don't have to look at them for four years. "There will never be another voice like his." Which is exactly the lousy kind of goddamn thing that people say, because really it could mean lots of things, or nothing at all even, and it's just a perfect example of why you should never tell anybody anything.

I never liked anything Salinger wrote. *shrug*. It might be worth re-reading as an adult (i initially read as a teen, on my own, never had classroom discussion or such) but i kinda doubt i'll ever get around to it. Especially when there are so many other books to read that DO appeal to me.

I had a major breakthrough a couple years ago that i don't HAVE to finish every book i start. I checked out Camus' _the Plague_ from the library because i vaguelly recalled _The Stranger_ being interesting and i find pretty much everything about the black plague to be fascinating. I didn't even get halfway through the book before i realised that i did not want to finish it, and would not improve my life in any significant way by slugging through the rest of the slight tome. It was the first time i ever even considered NOT finishing a book. Very liberating. In much the same bent, even though i have started the second part of the vampire diaries, i shall not finish it when the new books come out. Just not. And i rather enjoyed the first four books with the sort of guilty pleasure that had me seek out the twilight series.

Two Lumps take on The Catcher in the Rye: [link]

Catcher did nothing for me. But I read it late. I have a feeling you have to be in a certain pretty narrow window to really connect with it.

I think you can insert "Anything written by Ayn Rand" for Catcher here.

I enjoyed Catcher when I read it in high school, in spite of Holden as being the Whiniest Person. Lots of my students love it.