I don't know...I did like Holden, but like is different from "think is right about everything," right? Because, as a guy, like as my neighbor or something, I think I'd *like* Mike Huckabee. But as a politician, his view of America would probably make me wake up screaming.

Maybe the reaction to Holden is different now cause any asshole with a web connection can rip him off in their "I hate phonies," blog, that what must have seemed daring to the first people to read it is what seems like has become the national tone. Or at least, the conservatism and conformity now comes with an overlay of "We know you're too smart to be pitched to,"

that what must have seemed daring to the first people to read it is what seems like has become the national tone.

And I think erika nails it.

I am a little older than you, Hil, and I took Holden to be a sort of James Dean Rebel without a Cause anti-hero and I did like him. As I grew older, he began to annoy me, but my first impression was one of identifying with him (even though we could hardly have less in common). I am not sure that this is what Salinger meant to do, however, and I think his vision might have been closer to what you were feeling.

Of course, I also really liked Heathcliff.

And I have to agree with erika as well.

Yeah. It's like, I can see why Catcher made such a stir when it was first released, but it's unfair to expect kids now (who are perfectly aware that the world is full of phonies) to find Holden refreshing or groundbreaking. Plenty of books that kids will probably have already read by the time they're handed CitR were really strongly influenced by it, so I can totally understand kids who are told "this is an archtypical teenage figure who you will relate to" responding with "huh?"

If the things we were supposed to be agreeing with were that people are fake, and adults frequently don't know best, and people act in their own best interest, well, I got all that from Judy Blume and Beverley Cleary. This article seems to be expecting kids today to have the same emotional reaction to the book as kids in the early fifties had, but that's impossible, because kids today are approaching the world totally differently -- teenagers are expected to be cynical, and Holden almost seems like a wide-eyed innocent.

Thank you, Anne. Yeah, everybody's a wiseass who puts their sexploits on a webpage and names their band for the irony and...I'm not surprised they read that and think "What?" Oh, yeah, I was initially all about Heathcliff/Cathy once. And I guess there is a tiny part of me that still likes it as Buffy/ Spike or Tommy/Janet.ETA: And when I read "Catcher..." I halfway expected something else, due to the fact that many notable serial killers reported being enamored of it.

I am a little older than you, Hil, and I took Holden to be a sort of James Dean Rebel without a Cause anti-hero and I did like him.

Rebel Without a Cause was actually the other thing I was thinking of in stuff that made up that early-fifties teenage dynamic. I think that, among my kids-of-hippies cohort, there were a lot of times that we wished the world would be a little less real, and I felt a lot of "You don't know what you're asking for -- you really don't want it" when the kids in Rebel wanted their parents to talk about their emotions. (My other major impression from watching Rebel was "Whoa, someone's been spending WAY too much time with the Freud.")

With all of this stuff, I can get it from a historical perspective, but it's not anything that I can really relate to, and that article was just annoying me with things like this:

The culture is also more competitive. These days, teenagers seem more interested in getting into Harvard than in flunking out of Pencey Prep. Young people, with their compulsive text-messaging and hyperactive pop culture metabolism, are more enchanted by wide-eyed, quidditch-playing Harry Potter of Hogwarts than by the smirking manager of Pencey’s fencing team (who was lame enough to lose the team’s equipment on the subway, after all). Today’s pop culture heroes, it seems, are the nerds who conquer the world — like Harry — not the beautiful losers who reject it.

It's not that we don't love the losers who reject the world. It's that to many of us, Holden is the world we want to reject. Him hiring a prostitute didn't seem daring to me, it just seemed like all the political scandals that I'd been hearing about my entire life. Or like the causes of the divorces of half my friends' parents. In other words, it seemed like the adult world of my teenage years, and I couldn't get why someone who was running away from the world would want to be a part of that.

...wow. Last time I read that book was about 12 years ago. I had no idea I had that much thought about it built up inside.

Speaking of classics and required reading and such, I just got Nate's proposed summer reading list and thank GOD he only has to pick one book to read. What a depressing list!

The Spy Who Came in From the Sea / Peggy Nolan A fourteen-year-old moves to Florida at the height of World War II to join his father, a Navy seaman, and soon develops such a reputation for exaggeration that when he announces having seen an enemy spy land on the beach, no one believes him.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens / Steven Covey

The House of Dies Drear / Virginia Hamilton A family moves into an enormous house once used as a hiding place for runaway slaves. Mysterious sounds and events as well as the discovery of secret passageways make the family believe they are in grave danger.

Stand Tall / Joan Bauer Tree, a six-foot-three-inch twelve-year-old, copes with his parents' recent divorce and his failure as an athlete by helping his grandfather, a Vietnam vet and recent amputee, and Sophie, a new girl at school.

Black Beauty / Anna Sewell A horse in nineteenth-century England recounts his experiences with both good and bad masters.

The Westing Game / Ellen Raskin The mysterious death of an eccentric millionaire brings together an unlikely assortment of heirs who must uncover the circumstances of his death before they can claim their inheritance.

Julie of the Wolves / Jean Craighead George While running away from home and an unwanted marriage, a thirteen-year-old Eskimo girl becomes lost on the North Slope of Alaska and is befriended by a wolf pack.

Hope Was Here / Joan Bauer When sixteen-year-old Hope and the aunt who has raised her move from Brooklyn to Mulhoney, Wisconsin, to work as waitress and cook in the Welcome Stairways diner, they become involved with the diner owner's political campaign to oust the town's corrupt mayor.

The Not-So-Star-spangled Life of Sunita Sen / Mitali Perkins When her grandparents come for a visit from India to California, thirteen-year-old Sunita finds herself resenting her Indian heritage and embarrassed by the differences she feels between herself and her friends.

The Westing Game! That one is one of my favorite books ever.

I think the only other one I've read from that list is Black Beauty. The House of Dies Drear sounds really familiar, but I can't remember actually reading it.