J.D. Salinger Undead Pool

[pxib]

Which do we see first? Previously unpublished manuscripts from his estate, "previously unpublished manuscripts" from people who were "holding onto them for him", or "previously unpublished interview"? Is there a flood of movie adaptations of his work now that he can no longer summon his lawyers, or did his lawyers figure out a way to keep his complete authorial control alive from BEYOND THE GRAVE?

[rattran]

I like how all the news reports are how his disaffected anti-hero set the tone for a generation. What generation? Everyone who had to read it in high school?

[Flatfoot]

The only thing that's stuck with me from the book how Holden's teacher used his thumb to pick his nose. Not really a big fan of Catcher.

[Teleku]

I'm sad that an intelligent, well read man died.  Having said that, I hated Catcher SO FUCKING MUCH.  It is the only book I've wanted to burn.  And I'm a big literary anti-book burning nut.  Fahrenheit 451 is an amazing book, and I'm deeply against censorship.  But fuck Catcher in the Rye.  I wanted to personally strangle Holden Caulfield with every fiber of my being.  There was no worst book I was made to read in all my school studies (including the 400 page book about how much Athenian men loved to fuck little boys) than Catcher in the Rye.  It took everything I could muster not to rip that book up and throw it across the room.  FUCK.

So its been a bad week for lefty authors.  First Howard Zinn, and now JD Salinger.  I hope the 3rd person in the "celebrities die in 3's" curse is another old ass 60's lefty.  I really don't want somebody like John Stuart to kick the bucket or something.

[dusematic]

Who has that much rage against Catcher in The Rye? LOL.  It's an impressive literary work by an author with a flair for excellent dialogue.  But it's not robot baby Jesus.

[schild]

Catcher was great when it wasn't forced on me.

[Selby]

Catcher was great when it wasn't forced on me.

This.  The teacher I had for this book forced all sorts of metaphors and "what the author REALLY means here..." when I just thought it was a decent book about a disaffected kid who doesn't relate well and hates other people (almost like my life).  Having to write papers just to please the teacher made me never want to read it again.  My personal thoughts on books are if the author's deeper inner hidden meaning is *that* hard to get, perhaps it wasn't what he was going for or perhaps he should have just NOT been so obscure.

[Signe]

Who is John Stuart?  Or is that supposed to be John Stewart?  I'm not being snarky or a spelling nazi or anything like that, I just don't know.

[Teleku]

Yes, I actually meant Jon Stewart.  There are to many ways to spell those names.  

Catcher was great when it wasn't forced on me.

This might be a possibility, so I should probably read it again now that I'm older.  But still, my memory was picking up the book and reading endless pages of "WAAAAGH" and spending endless pages yelling "AAAAAARRRGGH".

[Samwise]

I remember liking Catcher in the Rye quite a bit, both when my mom made me read it at age 10 and when my teacher made me read it at age 15.  I'm going to find a copy and see how different it is at age whatever I am now.

[dusematic]

It's clean, sparse, energetic prose.  You don't have to be fucking Mark David Chapman or anything, but you'd have to be a total douche to hate the book.

[Teleku]

Coming from the person who is probably the biggest douche on the entire board (and that really takes alot of effort)..... that means absolutely nothing.

[dusematic]

It takes more effort than you'd think.

[Vision]

I like Catcher, but it just seemed like a dumbed down version of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

[schild]

I like Catcher, but it just seemed like a dumbed down version of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

:groan:

You wouldn't think that if you had to teach it in Art Theory to college freshmen.

[Big Gulp]

It's clean, sparse, energetic prose.  You don't have to be fucking Mark David Chapman or anything, but you'd have to be a total douche to hate the book.

Sorry, he just came off to me as a spoiled little rich kid.  Didn't empathize with him one iota.  Although we do have a weird family connection to the book, because apparently the school he's at at in the beginning of the book was based on the military school my Dad was sent to.  Supposedly, any way.  My Dad has claimed something to that effect.

[Hoax]

I read it of my own volition when I was 20'ish, thought it was good.

[dusematic]

It's clean, sparse, energetic prose.  You don't have to be fucking Mark David Chapman or anything, but you'd have to be a total douche to hate the book.

Sorry, he just came off to me as a spoiled little rich kid.  Didn't empathize with him one iota.  Although we do have a weird family connection to the book, because apparently the school he's at at in the beginning of the book was based on the military school my Dad was sent to.  Supposedly, any way.  My Dad has claimed something to that effect.

Did you also dislike Seinfeld because they were bad people?  Or do you not consider that a fair comparison?  What about every other artistic work with flawed or unsympathetic characters?  Of course he's a "spoiled little rich kid."  If you look at a teenager's problems through the prism of an adult, they don't often seem significant.  Anyway, it's not like I'm championing this book.  I said it was well written.  I didn't cream in my panties while reading it or anything. Like I said above, I just thought hating this book was ridiculous.  Go hate New Moon.  This thing was at least well-written.

[Vision]

I like Catcher, but it just seemed like a dumbed down version of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

:groan:
You wouldn't think that if you had to teach it in Art Theory to college freshmen.

Because it is terrible trying to get Freshmen to understand it, or because Portrait is a bad book?

[Ingmar]

I like how all the news reports are how his disaffected anti-hero set the tone for a generation. What generation? Everyone who had to read it in high school?

Whatever generation Mark David Chapman was in.

[dusematic]

I like how all the news reports are how his disaffected anti-hero set the tone for a generation. What generation? Everyone who had to read it in high school?

Whatever generation Mark David Chapman was in.

lol, no wonder we're fucked.

[ghost]

Good books cause strong emotional responses.  Just because you didn't like the main character doesn't make the book bad. 

[Quinton]

Catcher was great when it wasn't forced on me.

Somehow I managed to never have it as required reading.  Just ordered a copy from Amazon.

I've been a heavy reader since I could first read, and the only thing that has ever had a negative impact on the enjoyability of reading for me is crappy english classes where I was expected to read only a chapter a week or some nonsense like that and be told how to "understand" the content of the book.

Thankfully that has only applied to an almost immeasurably tiny number of books in my life.

[dusematic]

Didn't you guys have sparknotes and cliffnotes in highschool?  Whenever I had to read a shitty book I just resorted to that. 

[Selby]

Didn't you guys have sparknotes and cliffnotes in highschool?

Out school's policy in the honor's program was that if you were caught with them, the teacher could fail you from the class if they so chose to.  So if people *did* have them, they were extremely discrete as I never saw any around.

[Chimpy]

All of my teachers had copies of the CliffNotes for everything we had to read, and then tailored their tests so that people who did not do anything outside of using the CliffNotes would just barely pass.

[Teleku]

Yeah, that's pretty much what all the good teachers I had did.  Except there was almost no way to pass if you just read the cliff notes.

[Chimpy]

Yeah, that's pretty much what all the good teachers I had did.  Except there was almost no way to pass if you just read the cliff notes.

I went to a very small high school, so they did their best to not fail anyone that actually put some effort (however misguided) into a test.

[dusematic]

Yeah, that's pretty much what all the good teachers I had did.  Except there was almost no way to pass if you just read the cliff notes.

How did they manage that?  Did they delve into really insignificant minutiae?  I mean if you know the plot through and through and are original enough to come up with your own insights, I'm not sure how you structure a meaningful test that is designed to fail someone who didn't actually read the entire novel, but nonetheless has a firm grasp of its structure.  It's probably impossible, and it's just that the people who are reading Cliff's Notes are often those that can't  be bothered to do even that much properly, and do a botched skimjob of the notes, thus leading to their academic ruin.

[Triforcer]

I always wondered how the guy supported himself after basically doing nothing and publishing nothing for 50 years.  Did royalties from Catcher set him up THAT well, or was he secretly stocking shelves at Kmart the whole time?

[Teleku]

Yeah, that's pretty much what all the good teachers I had did.  Except there was almost no way to pass if you just read the cliff notes.

How did they manage that?  Did they delve into really insignificant minutiae?  I mean if you know the plot through and through and are original enough to come up with your own insights, I'm not sure how you structure a meaningful test that is designed to fail someone who didn't actually read the entire novel, but nonetheless has a firm grasp of its structure.  It's probably impossible, and it's just that the people who are reading Cliff's Notes are often those that can't  be bothered to do even that much properly, and do a botched skimjob of the notes, thus leading to their academic ruin.

Yeah, more or less that.  Trying to come up with, in your own words, the underlying meaning of any given book is hard for most of the dumb asses who just grab the cliff notes.  As I mentioned, the teachers read all the cliff notes, and if you wrote word for word or close (as some people did) explanations, you got failed.  Also, one English teacher I had would give weekly quiz's on what ever books we were to be reading.  He would ask 10 questions, all of which were very very easy.  But very pointless, and would only be known by those who read the actual book (cliff notes wouldn't have bothered).  These quiz's only made up 10% of the grade, but if you were not reading, you were going to fail them all, and knock an entire letter grade off your grade before even walking into the test, where you would continue to get reamed.

[dusematic]

I always wondered how the guy supported himself after basically doing nothing and publishing nothing for 50 years.  Did royalties from Catcher set him up THAT well, or was he secretly stocking shelves at Kmart the whole time?

It still sells a quarter million copies a year (just looked it up).  I'd say that's plenty, especially since after the first run through, additional reprintings offer higher royalties.

[schild]

Writing a book that gets into schools is pretty much a golden ticket. It doesn't even have to be Catcher big.

[Vision]

Of all the books I've ever had to read in middle/high/and college schooling, and I like to think I've been forced to read quite a few, I would say The Giver had to be the most rewarding, especially looking back. And I read it in 5th fucking grade.

[Sheepherder]

The Giver had to be the most rewarding, especially looking back.

The teacher who made me read that shitpile is now in prison awaiting trial for invasion of privacy and possessing child pornography.  I should mail him a copy.