What are you reading in 2024?

[Ryujin]

As someone who has taught Catcher in the Rye, I feel that it is a great book, very much of its time, hugely culturally significant, and your characterization of its critics as "whiny kids" has a lot to do with why many younger readers might dislike it. Especially when wielded by an old Gen-Xer like me, you have to be careful not to be "adult-splaining" teenagers to, well, teenagers.

Especially when the book is from a different time. Like, not all teenagers are troubled, wealthy, white, private school kids from 1940s Manhattan who panic when they see an F-bomb. I really love Salinger's writing, what little he published, but the guy was a mess with a very idiosyncratic view of the world. Catcher in the Rye did help invent the concept of the teenager in a significant way, though. For good and, often, bad.

I can see why actual teens would be resentful.

Edit: when I have taught it, I have done so in the context of an entire unit on the teenager industrial complex, situating it in the rise of teen-oriented media of the mid-20th century that was frequently exploitative. That one book contributed greatly to our ongoing conception of teens as a distinct and problematic demographic. We study how teenagers didn't really exist until the 20th century, and all of the baggage that the term has acquired over the past century.

I don't think you can really understand that book unless you study it in the context of the rise of public education, which essentially forced the creation of teenage culture, the rise of mass media that responded to and contributed to the codification of that culture, and the economic boom in the United States that made adolescents a coveted market.

So in Catcher in the Rye you see a phenomenally successful (in the sense of being phenomenally popular and talked about) attempt by an adult to understand and codify a newly emergent cultural phenomenon, the American male teenager.

Have you thought of including how this naturally led to the (for the lack of a better term) Teensploitation films of the '50s and '60s? Stuff like "Rebel Without a Cause"? The many hot rod based B Movies?

 

[Arnie_Wan_Kenobi]

Random question- I love Catcher in the Rye so much, but the view I see online is mostly negative (whiny kid or something).

Do you think it’s a good book?

Ooooh boy. /Sam Beckett voice.

There are a few things working against Catcher, starting with what @overgeeked mentioned: Americans like to be pissy about what they're assigned to do in school.

And yes, Holden Caulfield is whiny, especially when you look at the fact he's from a VERY upper-middle class family: Apartment in NYC, private schools, summers in Maine. BUT, he's also dealing with unresolved trauma surrounding his brother's death; his mom is as well, and as a result has shut out her other kids; his brother is implied to have seen some of the worst combat in World War II; Holden's crush was sexually assaulted by her stepdad; it's implied Holden and another student were both sexually assaulted at school; the popular kid gets away with date-r*pe in the coach's car: there's an undercurrent of mental health concerns that wouldn't be out of place in a novel written today. And this kid: moneyed, educated, bright--he should be doing GREAT despite all of that. But he's not. Because underneath it al l, there's the harsh reality that the systems that do exist to support this kid have failed on every possible front.

ETA: The trauma listed above is, overall, VERY SUBTLE. The reader really needs to read between the lines (and Holden's complaints) to notice them, let alone notice HOW they're affecting Holden. And I'll be honest, when you're asking the average 16 year old to read a chapter a night and hold that in their head--a lot of it gets lost in the weeds. Or the rye.

Frankly, the subject matter and point of view would be celebrated as "raw and real"--in a novel written today.

That said, a lot of the high school students who read "Catcher" today can't relate to the point-of-view of Holden's socioeconomic status, and a lot of teachers (in my limited experience of teaching the novel for 23 years) don't address the trauma Holden is dealing with*, rather choosing to focus on the angle of "He's an anti-hero, a teen (like you, my students!) who speaks truth to power." Not that he's a broken kid for whom life froze five years earlier. When I teach it, I (try) to bring in one of our school counselors or social workers to talk about the systems that failed then and that exist today.

It's also a victim of its own success. It was one of the first novels from that voice to "break big," and (as it does) exposure led to fatigue (see Drizzt or Lord of the Rings for examples related to why we're all here). And along the way there have been countless imitators, iterations, and other angsty teens dual-wielding scimitars. (Wait, ignore that last one.) ETA2: And, as noted in my next post below, it's been connected to some VERY high-profile deaths.

It's also great for teaching voice and unreliable narrator, which, for my sophomores, dovetails well into developing critical thinking. Holden sets up right away that he's not going to tell us the whole story, so we (my students and I) need to turn on our "horse hockey" detectors right out of the gate. It gives students a chance to really analyze what IS true, what is PROBABLY true, and what is CLEARLY him trying to be too cool for the room. It can be a lot of fun to sift through his self-aggrandizing and read what's being said under the surface. That's when many of my students really start to relate and understand the character.

And since Catcher has spawned so many imitators, those are skills that are just as useful in reading other works. And literally everything on the internet.


I came to "Catcher" later; we didn't read it in my high school (rather, "Franny and Zooey"), so I didn't read it from the same age-POV as Holden; I was twenty-two or twenty-three when I finally read it, so I had some more maturity on me (my co workers are laughing at me using "maturity" and "me" in the same sentence). And when I read it the first time...yeah, I thought he was a whiny kid. But as I looked at Holden and I looked at my students, I saw a lot of the same concerns presenting themselves. So, honestly, yeah. It's one of the most "Real" books I've had the opportunity to teach, and I do think it's a "good" novel.


*That's not an indictment. Time, curricular dictates, comfort with mental health issues, how it was taught to them: all of these can affect how and why a teacher approaches the novel. I have two education degrees and a counseling degree. And a dad who got kicked out of a school FOR reading "Catcher." The mental health angle comes free with my own baggage.

 

[Ryujin]

Ooooh boy. /Sam Beckett voice.

There are three things working against Catcher, starting with what @overgeeked mentioned: Americans like to be pissy about what they're assigned to do in school.

And yes, Holden Caulfield is whiny, especially when you look at the fact he's from a VERY upper-middle class family: Apartment in NYC, private schools, summers in Maine. BUT, he's also dealing with unresolved trauma surrounding his brother's death; his mom is as well, and as a result has shut out her other kids; his brother is implied to have seen some of the worst combat in World War II; Holden's crush was sexually assaulted by her stepdad; it's implied Holden and another student were both sexually assaulted at school; the popular kid gets away with date-r*pe in the coach's car: there's an undercurrent of mental health concerns that wouldn't be out of place in a novel written today. And this kid: moneyed, educated, bright--he should be doing GREAT despite all of that. But he's not. Because underneath it all, there's the harsh reality that the systems that do exist to support this kid have failed on every possible front

Frankly, the subject matter and point of view would be celebrated as "raw and real"--in a novel written today.

That said, a lot of the high school students who read "Catcher" today can't relate to the point-of-view of Holden's socioeconomic status, and a lot of teachers (in my limited experience of teaching the novel for 23 years) don't address the trauma Holden is dealing with*, rather choosing to focus on the angle of "He's an anti-hero, a teen (like you, my students!) who speaks truth to power." Not that he's a broken kid for whom life froze five years earlier. When I teach it, I (try) to bring in one of our school counselors or social workers to talk about the systems that failed then and that exist today.

It's also a victim of its own success. It was one of the first novels from that voice to "break big," and (as it does) exposure led to fatigue (see Drizzt or Lord of the Rings for examples related to why we're all here). And along the way there have been countless imitators, iterations, and other angsty teens dual-wielding scimitars. (Wait, ignore that last one.)

It's also great for teaching voice and unreliable narrator, which, for my sophomores, dovetails well into developing critical thinking. Holden sets up right away that he's not going to tell us the whole story, so we (my students and I) need to turn on our "horse hockey" detectors right out of the gate. It gives students a chance to really analyze what IS true, what is PROBABLY true, and what is CLEARLY him trying to be cool. It can be a lot of fun to sift through his self-aggrandizing and read what's being said under the surface. That's when many of my students really start to relate and understand the character.

And since Catcher has spawned so many imitators, those are skills that are just as useful in reading other works. And literally everything on the internet.


I came to "Catcher" later; we didn't read it in my high school (rather, "Franny and Zooey"), so I didn't read it from the same age-POV as Holden; I was twenty-two or twenty-three when I finally read it, so I had some more maturity on me (my co workers are laughing at me using "maturity" and "me" in the same sentence). And when I read it the first time...yeah, I thought he was a whiny kid. But as I looked at Holden and I looked at my students, I saw a lot of the same concerns presenting themselves. So, honestly, yeah. It's one of the most "Real" books I've had the opportunity to teach, and I do think it's a "good" novel.


*That's not an indictment. Time, curricular dictates, comfort with mental health issues, how it was taught to them: all of these can affect how and why a teacher approaches the novel. I have two education degrees and a counseling degree. The mental health angle comes naturally.

Four out of 5 serial killers approve.

 

[Arnie_Wan_Kenobi]

Four out of 5 serial killers approve.

I COMPLETELY forgot to address Mark David Chapman, John Hinkley, Jr., or Kurt Cobain in my response.
(ETA: We do talk about it in my class, though. I take a day to go thought the censorship history.)

 

[trappedslider]

I COMPLETELY forgot to address Mark David Chapman, John Hinkley, Jr., or Kurt Cobain in my response.

I was going to do that but then you got ahead of me


EDIT: I'm not sure what the other high school senior English classes were reading, but we did les miserables (abridged because the teacher figured we didn't need to learn about waterloo or the Paris sewer system of the time), I was the only one who showed excitement due to having brothers who had already do done this when they were in HS so i had a copy of the book and due to my mom who introduced me to the musical and the non-musical movie. I then made the teacher blink when i used the word dichotomy to describe something in the book. This was also incidentally the same teacher who told i should look into getting my creative writing published.

 

[Arnie_Wan_Kenobi]

I was going to do that but then you got ahead of me

It's kind of a shame. That sort of controversy doesn't seem to hook teens like it used to.

 

[Clint_L]

Have you thought of including how this naturally led to the (for the lack of a better term) Teensploitation films of the '50s and '60s? Stuff like "Rebel Without a Cause"? The many hot rod based B Movies?

I've not only thought of it, but very much included those. In fact, we look at teen cinema through to the present day.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I kind of want take Clint L and Arnie Wan's classes, they sound like bangers

 

[Bohandas]

Ooooh boy. /Sam Beckett voice.

There are a few things working against Catcher, starting with what @overgeeked mentioned: Americans like to be pissy about what they're assigned to do in school.

And yes, Holden Caulfield is whiny, especially when you look at the fact he's from a VERY upper-middle class family: Apartment in NYC, private schools, summers in Maine. BUT, he's also dealing with unresolved trauma surrounding his brother's death; his mom is as well, and as a result has shut out her other kids; his brother is implied to have seen some of the worst combat in World War II; Holden's crush was sexually assaulted by her stepdad; it's implied Holden and another student were both sexually assaulted at school; the popular kid gets away with date-r*pe in the coach's car: there's an undercurrent of mental health concerns that wouldn't be out of place in a novel written today. And this kid: moneyed, educated, bright--he should be doing GREAT despite all of that. But he's not. Because underneath it al l, there's the harsh reality that the systems that do exist to support this kid have failed on every possible front.

ETA: The trauma listed above is, overall, VERY SUBTLE. The reader really needs to read between the lines (and Holden's complaints) to notice them, let alone notice HOW they're affecting Holden. And I'll be honest, when you're asking the average 16 year old to read a chapter a night and hold that in their head--a lot of it gets lost in the weeds. Or the rye.

Frankly, the subject matter and point of view would be celebrated as "raw and real"--in a novel written today.

That said, a lot of the high school students who read "Catcher" today can't relate to the point-of-view of Holden's socioeconomic status, and a lot of teachers (in my limited experience of teaching the novel for 23 years) don't address the trauma Holden is dealing with*, rather choosing to focus on the angle of "He's an anti-hero, a teen (like you, my students!) who speaks truth to power." Not that he's a broken kid for whom life froze five years earlier. When I teach it, I (try) to bring in one of our school counselors or social workers to talk about the systems that failed then and that exist today.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Teachers and critics try to present Holden as if he was some kind of everyman even though he's posh, his life is* this bizarre melodrama, and he's literally insane.

Also the culture has entirely changed since the book was written but, again, it's more often than not presented with Holden as an everyman, rather than as the novel being a historical exercise like The Canterbury Tales.

There's nothing about Holden that's relatable

Most books covered in English class aren't relatable



*Allegedly

EDIT:

Highschool english class is like somebody's trying to to the experiment from the frame story of MST3K, but with books. "We'll send them dry books, the worst we can find. They'll have to sit and read them all and we'll monitor their minds"

EDIT:
Except that even without the commentary track most of those movies don't hit even nearly the same level of unenjoyable as Catcher In The Rye, or The Great Gatsby, or anything written by John Steinbeck. I watch the original non-MST3k version of Santa Claus Conquers The Martians every year at christmastime

 

[John Lloyd1]

Especially when the book is from a different time. Like, not all teenagers are troubled, wealthy, white, private school boys from 1940s Manhattan who panic when they see an F-bomb.

I read the book a few years ago and wasn't that impressed. My memory of it is a bit vague (not a good sign for the book) so I can't say for certain what about it made me feel meh.

As a GenXer who never did this book in school, I picked it up to see what this classic was like. I must admit that I don't always react well to books with privileged protagonists or abusive ones. And this book seems to fit this category. For example, sometimes I find the class stereotypes in Wind in the Willows extremely annoying and Austin books pointless.

It is not as if I don't find some with these themes good: coming of age (Looking for Alibrandi, Girl Interrupted), self destructive (Trainspotting) and dystopian teen culture (Clockwork Orange).