The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Title: The Catcher in the Rye

Author: J. D. Salinger (American, 1919-2010)
Originally published: 1951
Page count: 273


Dates read: 7/21/2020-7/30/2020
2020 book goal progress: 20 out of 20
Month category: July - American / Patriotic 
Back to the Classics category:
Classic with Nature in the Title


Read my other book reviews for my 2020 goal HERE.


Description on back of book:
The Catcher in the Rye is a comic and touching novel about a raw American adolescent, which has become recognized as a key book of the present decade.

First sentence:
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

Favorite quotes:
"I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse."

"Many, many people have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."

CAWPILE Rating: Overall - 1.7 - ⭐
Characters      - 1
Atmosphere   - 4
Writing Style - 4
Plot                - 1
Intrigue          - 1
Logic             - 1
Enjoyment     - 0
What is a CAWPILE Rating?

Review:

Wow. This was a horrible book. I did not find it comical or touching at all - as the description of the book says. I also have no idea how this became a "key book of the present decade." I read this in high school and didn't remember anything about it, but I had positive feelings towards it - well I definitely don't have those feelings now. It is a quick and easy read, which is the only reason I actually finished the book.

Holden Caufield is an extremely pessimistic, judgemental, lazy, unambitious jerk. He runs away from all his problems and whines about everything. He comes up with all these crazy grandiose plans and thinks he is better than everyone around him. He calls everyone phonies and continually says he's depressed. He definitely has some significant issues, but depression is not what I would diagnose him with.

There are a few things I liked in the book: his sister, his (dead) brother, the two nuns, and the teacher we meet in the end. I also like the tie in of the title of the book to a poem - even though he remembered the poem incorrectly. His solitary saving grace was how he said whenever he was messing around with a girl and she asked him to stop, he would.

Overall - the book is a total waste of time. Go read something else.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let JD Salinger have the last words:

"If you go along with academic education any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming of you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."