What's up with The Catcher in the Rye?

Curious as to what all the hype was about, I read The Catcher in the Rye. I didn't get my answer so I read it again, and I still missed it. I asked my geeky bookwormy best friend and he doesn't get it either. Can anyone please explain to us what makes it so great? I'm not bad-mouthing the book, but I really just found it to be a bunch of boooring rambling nothingness. Well, I suppose I know what people love about it, but it just doesn't have any effect on me, so maybe if you could say what The Catcher in the Rye means to you. I'm genuinely, (not insultingly), interested.

 

I never "got" it either.
Supposedly it was the book that "inspired" the murder of John Lennon.

 

Yeah it was. The guy entered it as his statement after he killed him. It was the stuff about the phonies.

 

I liked it alot, i just felt like i could relate to him, and i thought that was awesome. I also liked how the fact that holden wasnt some hero, he was just an ordinary kid experiencing life.

 

*electrica*,

Look at the copyright date and then you might get it.

The first Modern Post-War Teenager in literature.

Sophisticated yet cynical and jaded, Holden Caulfield was the first teenager to view his own inevitable fate when he pierces the phoney delusions and pretentions of our adult world he was doomed to be a part of.

Like pictures of our Earth from space, today we take it for granted, but, when they and 'Catcher In The Rye' first appeared to the world, it was breathtaking.

 

i think it was that he felt like he was outside looking in - all the time... it was a time of change and realisation that a lot of people can identify with...and basically what m6m said!

 

I'm aware of when it was written. And like everyone else I see a lot of myself in the character, I guess despite that it just never spoke to me.

 

It was another coming of age story, where Holden realises that he isnt the catcher in the rye, but that he needed to be protected. He wanted to protect his little sister from loosing her innocence, through the repetition used (otherwise know as coversational language) you create an idea into Holden's mind, and see how he catagorises people into phoeys and innocence. And it isnt until he relises that you have to stop living your life in fear and to accept what happens (this is shown through the metaphor in the 2nd last chapter).

I will stop now otherwise ill end up writing a bloody essay

 

That was good Baby Fire-fly.
I bet you could write excellent essays.

 

Lol thanx, but seriously id go on for hours....and hours......and hours....

 

Actually, about the connection to John Lennon and MDC, The Catcher In The Rye is thought to be the codename of an elite clique of intelligence officers in the US Government, particularly the CIA. The book appears in several CIA operations, including Jonestown, and of course, John Lennon's assassination. Seems to be their calling card.

 

You are not wrong! Trust your own judgement. It is a highly overrated book, without doubt. The timing of it's publication was it's real significance.

Many, many people blindly follow the herd and if such and such says this is good, well, many people don't bother to find out for themselves if that is really the case, and even if they do, they doubt their own judgement and follow the herd's judgment!

Good for you, babes. We have an 'individual' developing quite nicely, here.

 

Thank you. I was wondering how the publication date could make it quite so significant now. I know you can look back and appreciate it for what it was in its time, but people today have many modern characters to identify with.
But if you love it, then okay.

 

Catcher in the Rye was so different from everything that came before it. The real question might be "What influence did this book have on what came after it?"

 

It had no effect on me whatsoever. I didn't even enjoy reading it....

 

Because it was the first is why throughout the world it is constantly referenced.

'Catcher in the Rye's' Global significance is its publication date.

Yes, there has since been millions of like characters and social critiques in literature, but try to reference them and most will shake their heads not knowing who or what you're talking about.

Yet, you can go anywhere in the world and reference Holden Caulfield and 'Catcher in the Rye' and they will immediately understand the personality and social milieu that you are attempting to discribe.

Holden Caulfield and 'Catcher in the Rye' are now mytho-poetic archetypes that have influenced the very cultural milieu that we've all grown-up in.

And, like all archetypes, they have helped to shape who each of us are whether we know it or not.

Some of us may be ignorant of its influence in our world, or even think that, by ignoring it, we're somehow more individual, but that's simply a self conceit.

One either knows what everyone's talking about when they reference the work, or the're simply left in the dark.

You don't have to love 'Catcher in the Rye'! You don't even have to like it!

That's irrelevant, because 'Catcher in the Rye' is now an Archetype; an internationally useful discriptive communication tool.

A tool for expressing our Collective Experience that people everywhere immediately understand.

And it's usually just the first of its kind that will ever become that kind of archetypal tool.

 

I totally get all of what you're saying, m6m, but it doesn't really have anything to do with what I was saying. My point was what is it specifically about the book, what happens in it, the characters and such that makes people love it. It turns out that it was pretty much exactly what I thought it was, the phonies, the self-realisation, etc, I just didn't feel it.
And I hope that conceit thing wasn't aimed at me or anyone else who posted. No one said ignoring the influence made an individual. I think he was referring to just questioning things and not liking whatever anyone tells you to. And I did say in my original post that I was innocently curious about it and not trying to put the book down in any way.

 

Just like real-life.

So your answering your own question, because at that time that was unique.

Like you, I missed it also when I read it.

But, I hope now you have a better idea of 'why the hype'.

'Cause like,

The Wind Cries Paul said: There's no hero, just an ordinary kid experiencing
a non-heroic ordinary life.

Or like,
Clockworkorangeagain said: He's on the outside looking in.

And especially like,
Baby fire-fly said: A glimps into Holden's mind and how it works, how he had
to stop living in fear and except life as it happens.

The self-conceit comment was directed to all of us who like to flatter ourselves that we possess a superior individualism simply by questioning popular assumptions.

 

I don't know what the big deal was either.

I think it was more about the way he wrote it not so much what he wrote about.

But then again most of the books people tell you that you have to read aren't really much of anything.

I did however enjoy J.D. Salinger's 'Franny and Zooey'.

 

Well it's not as if it's the first book ever written that was filled with boring, rambling nothingness.