Holden Caulfield
In reading responses to Erin O’Connor’s question about what books should be assigned in high school, I found someone who said how much they loved The Catcher in the Rye.
This book was the only book that I have ever been assigned that I didn’t finish reading. (I finally forced myself to finish it a few years later.) Was I the only disaffected teen who *didn’t* identify and absolutely hated the book? (The year after it was assigned, I was assigned Cat’s Eye. That worked better for me, and made me realise that Atwood’s writing got far more interesting than The Handmaid’s Tale.)
Seriously. Someone tell me they didn’t identify with or like the book. Lie to me, if you must.
May 27th, 2004 at 6:25 pm
I thought it wasn’t great. I did finish it, but in those days I finished every book I started; I didn’t have the concept that books didn’t have to be finished. It didn’t grab me like Huckleberry Finn or Cannery Row & Sweet Thursday or The Secret Sharer or Youth or even the coming-of-age stories I read for English class, Shane and The Call of the Wild. I liked it better than Great Expectations — (I hated that book — that was another English class).
May 27th, 2004 at 9:02 pm
Oh, gah, Great Expectations! Bleah!
I don’t remember Catcher in the Rye all that well. It didn’t impress me one way or the other, I guess.
May 28th, 2004 at 12:00 am
In grade 10 — the year I was assigned Catcher in the Rye — the book after it was 1984 for my class, but Great Expectations for the other class.
Two people who don’t like Catcher in the Rye! My life is good.
May 28th, 2004 at 12:00 am
In thinking, it might have been David Copperfield they were forced to read. Dickens never did much for me anyways. Orwell was more my speed.
May 28th, 2004 at 1:18 am
B read it a few years ago. He liked it but he also liked it because it had been banned at one time. He went on and on about it. I still haven’t read it. We have very different reading tastes.
May 28th, 2004 at 1:57 pm
I’ve never read it, and I really feel no need to. However, having read Cat’s Eye in grad school, I did totally identify with it. THAT is what it is like to grow up a girl!
May 28th, 2004 at 4:56 pm
I agree with you completely on what you’ve said, wolfangel. Salinger: blah, Dickens: blah, Orwell: great.
May 29th, 2004 at 12:25 pm
I didn’t identify with Catcher in the Rye. I felt it was written specifically for bored rich boys growing up long ago in a very sheltered (though misogynistic) society and I’m not one of them and never have been. It’s not the best Salinger out there, by far.
May 30th, 2004 at 11:09 pm
This is so exciting. No one I have ever asked before — a sample of quite few, admittedly — ever answered that no, they didn’t identify with Holden, and, in fact, they didn’t like the book.
Cat’s Eye — everyone should read Cat’s Eye. Then you should all read Art & Lies, because it’s so beautiful.
October 22nd, 2006 at 1:13 pm
I HATED the book, BUT I really identified with Catcher in the Rye because I was going through a bit of the same thing as far as getting kicked out of my school at the time, lying about a ton of stuff, and alienating myself from other people so I didn’t have to make any confrontations.
But the book in Gr. 10 English that I really loved was Heart of Darkness, easily one of my favourite books.
November 6th, 2006 at 4:49 am
I was never assigned catched in the rye at school, but having read its some six years later (i wanted to know what the fuss was about, really) I’ve found that I really do identify with holden. The book itself was far from magnificent however. I have always been a bit withdrawn myself, and i got a lot out of it. I don’t know whether i should be happy or sad.