8 ms·
Did Salinger Go Awry?
- zwieback 8y agoYes, most definitely did. And it's hard to go back to his works once you're not a teenager anymore. Which doesn't mean he wasn't great in his way.
- dvh 8y agoHe also was an inspiration for Field of dreams (with Costner) but didn't agreed to be mentioned and threatened suing so he was replaced by fictional recluse writer Terrence Mann, played by Darth Vader's voice actor (sorry, forgot the name)
- kbenson 8y agoJames Earl Jones? That's the first time I've heard him primarily referred to as Vader's voice actor. It's a commonly known factoid, but he's very well known otherwise.
- SilasX 8y agoHe supposedly didn't even want the credit because Star Wars looked like it was going to be low-budget shlock when they were making it.
- coldtea 8y agoMy main way of thinking about Earl (whom I've seen in other movies, e.g. "Coming to America") or trying to convey who he is to another, is as "the guy who did Vader's voice".
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- GCA10 8y agoIt pains me to see high school English teachers of a certain age keep assigning "Catcher in the Rye" to their students. Those forced readings must account for a large share of the 250,000 copies sold per year. As the Tablet article acknowledges, most of Salinger's writing is a relic of 1950s NYC. Why linger, stuck, in that misshapen world? We're blessed with so many newer authors and so many different cultures that have something to say. High school is a great time for students to discover authors that speak to them -- whether that's Zadie Smith or Neal Stephenson. If that means hitting "refresh" on the assigned reading list, please have the courage to do so! Let Salinger fade into the back stacks of libraries, hanging out with Thackeray, Dreiser and other novelists in the land of long-ago bestsellers that now rest quietly in obscurity.
- api 8y agoI felt the same way when they sang Imagine at New Years 2019 in Times Square. America is still stuck in the mid 20th century.
- germinalphrase 8y agoChristmas often feels this way as well. The musical canon was was locked in with the childhood of baby boomers.
- ghaff 8y agoA lot of Christmas is locked into Victorian England which itself derived from Germany.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 0xb100db1ade 8y agoI assume you have seen the xkcd illustrating this issue: https://www.xkcd.com/988/ https://www.xkcd.com/988/
- musicale 8y agoWindow may be shifting - ASCAP's top 25 for 2018 included: 1. "All I Want For Christmas Is You" (1994) 7. "Last Christmas" (1984) 22. "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24" (1995) (OT: 25. "Wonderful Christmastime" (1979) persists as a favored lump of coal for radio/streaming Krampuses everywhere.) https://www.ascap.com/press/2018/11/11-29-holiday-songs-2018 https://www.ascap.com/press/2018/11/11-29-holiday-songs-2018
- labster 8y agoI'm sure in 40 years kids will be saying that we're still stuck in the turn of the millennium. But I also hate Imagine. A world where no one plans anything, and there's nothing worth fighting for and all of our culture is gone, replaced with godless communism. Sounds like a real dystopia to me. I can imagine Lennon's world, and I'd fight it to the end. The music is solid though, as expected of Lennon.
- gonzus 8y agoI will probably burn all my virtual karma, but I just need to say this: I hated Catcher in the Rye with a passion. I used to do a lot of reading, still do my fair share, but just could not stand that book.
- germinalphrase 8y agoI’m a high school English teacher, and I’ve never liked it. Didn’t like it in high school; don’t care for it now (and don’t teach it).
- GCA10 8y agoThank you!
- mrspeaker 8y agoProbably could burn less virtual karma if you made your comment more interesting by saying WHY you hated it. The plot? The characters? The typesetting? The pages gave you paper-cuts? Tell us Why!
- gonzus 8y agoYou are right, I was just ranting... As others have already mentioned, I think the best summary is "Holden Caulfield is full of shit". I hated his whiny attitude throughout the whole book, and I did not feel any sense of closure at the end.
- gweinberg 8y agoI felt he was full of shit also but since I was just reading for pleasure instead of being assigned the book, I stopped really early.
- j1vms 8y agoNot a big fan of it either, though it's important to recognize that given the era it was released (early 1950s), it was quite ahead of its time. Perhaps ahead by at least 2 decades in anticipating American youth's punk culture, that we see from the mid-70s onward. As a side note, you might give his later Franny and Zooey (1961) a try, finding a more nuanced Salinger at work.
- pfarnsworth 8y agoCatcher in the Rye was substantially the most important book I've read in my life. It put in words the exact things I was feeling, and became a bible to me. As I read the book several times as I got older, I remembered how I felt about compromise as a teenager, and yet understood what the teacher was trying to tell Holden. Things aren't as cut-and-dry to an adult as they are to a 16 year old. That said, I believe this article is largely hogwash. Salinger wrote one phenomenal book. His other books, I felt, were boring and didn't have any of the same effects as Catcher in the Rye did. He's the literally equivalent of a one hit wonder. And there's nothing wrong with it. I won't ever do what he did. But to romanticize Salinger's life as having some greater caller or meeting is a bit ridiculous. He wrote one good book and that's it, and he was a bit of a kook. End of story.
- firebones 8y agoFor all the Catcher hate in this thread, the short story collection "Nine Stories" may be more interesting to those who quit on Salinger based solely on traumatic coerced readings of Catcher.