Monday 23 August 2010

Whitwham on Salinger

Just come across an amusing article by my old friend Ian Whitwham about the relevance/irrelevance of J. D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye".
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1 comment:

  1. sibadd24 August 2010 at 12:43

    We 'did' Catcher at School - Westminster - in 1955. It's rather a relief to learn there are others who 'deemed Holden Caulfield a self-indulgent arse, "a narcissistic tosser who's just up himself"' though I didn't have that particular phrase at the time, and most of my english class took the mainline view. Was the problem that it was our teacher, an authority, telling us this book was so good that made this rebel suspect? Was it that we'd already done the Sorrows of Young Werther written 180 years earlier and been bemused by it. I did love Down with Skool tho'. It gets better with age, but few books are more subversive than Pride and Prejudice - diffusing the bizarre and dangerous idea that most of the world and especially the Taliban so detest - that men and women should be in love to get married; that feelings are more important than property in that relationship. No wonder they hid Austen's books from young women. No wonder there's no mention on her simple grave in Winchester Cathedral (where I was yesterday) of her being a writer.

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