tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post300411780103550493..comments2023-12-14T10:28:43.397+00:00Comments on Declan Burke: Happy Birthday-Ish, Holden CaulfieldUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post-74402551717048955582011-07-19T20:55:16.212+01:002011-07-19T20:55:16.212+01:00I have a vague memory of some article or other I m...I have a vague memory of some article or other I may or may not have written about "The Catcher in the Rye". Perhaps this lacuna represents my lack of enthusiasm for the book best of all.<br /><br />"Franny and Zooey" was more gripping and interesting I found... but I don't seem to remember why.<br /><br />Boy, this brings me back to a world that is now very buried in the past.Tales from the Birch Wood.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15427603252937311851noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post-30457858574503308832011-07-17T19:29:33.475+01:002011-07-17T19:29:33.475+01:00I think John makes a good point. Life was supposed...I think John makes a good point. Life was supposed to be so orderly, but adolescence is a time of roiling hormones, and anxieties and annoyances. The world was not the orderly Levittown of our tv and movie screens. there were a lot of messes,"small" wars, the communist witch hunts-it wasn't post war heaven, and Holden really speaks to the carefully hidden or ignored messes.lil Glucksternhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09288522126331817172noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post-47437921525025951602011-07-17T14:03:47.121+01:002011-07-17T14:03:47.121+01:00As enduring as the novel is, it also really captur...As enduring as the novel is, it also really captured the moment of post-war America when it was still in flux and the "fifties" as we see them in their "Ozzie and Harriet" blandness were just beginning - or just beginning to be seriously forced on America. From the end of the war until the Eisenhower administration there was a lot of turmoil (Truman integrated the armed forces, lots of strikes and labour unrest, all thos people who suffered most in the Depression wanted a different system) and America could have gone on a few different directions.John McFetridgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09442198820998606682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post-2800153468512740302011-07-17T11:46:05.408+01:002011-07-17T11:46:05.408+01:00Adrian - Nice touch about Salinger's war exper...Adrian - Nice touch about Salinger's war experience. Puts the novel in perspective, certainly. Someone else mentioned on Twitter that Catcher is tainted due to its association with Chapman and Hinkley, but I don't know ... Is it fair to tarnish a book because of some nutbag's association with it? <br /><br />Cheers, DecDeclan Burkehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14322645323239292406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4938060587020568315.post-65376476811063884852011-07-17T01:28:16.218+01:002011-07-17T01:28:16.218+01:00Dec
By the time Salinger came to write the book, ...Dec<br /><br />By the time Salinger came to write the book, he'd fought through the Normandy campaign and the horrific battles of the Heurtgen Forest. He'd been part of an intelligence scouting unit that had liberated the first extermination camps. There are many layers to Catcher in the Rye but to me the book is mostly about Holden trying to cope with death. The death of his brother Allie. <br /><br />The scene where he writes the essay about Allie's baseball mitt is one of the most moving in the novel. <br /><br />Incidentally my wife wrote an essay for a book once that she called The Kvetcher in the Rye which explores Holden's complicated religious background. It turns out that he, like JD Salinger himself , has an Irish Catholic mother and a Jewish father. Just like Leopold Bloom too.adrian mckintyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03349942973907386269noreply@blogger.com