Sunday, July 5, 2009

Maybe you have to be a 16 year old boy to fully appreciate it.

I've tried a couple times over the years to read this novel, but after reading a couple chapters I couldn't find the point of it.

Clint and Max both love it though, so I decided to give er another go. Is Holden Caulfield the saddest character ever?
Yeesh.
Because this story is set in the '50's and because I've watched Rebel Without a Cause with my dad about a hundered kazillion times, I kept seeing James Dean's face as I read Holden's thoughts.
.
Like Swede (in Peace Like a River) and Scout (in To Kill a Mockingbird), I found his little sister, Phoebe, to be precious.
.
I Wikipedia'd the book and found this interesting:
J.D. Salinger told Maynard in the seventies that Jerry Lewis "tried for years to get his hands on the part of Holden,"despite Lewis not having read the novel until he was in his thirties. Celebrities ranging from Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson to Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio have since made efforts to make a film adaptation. In an interview with Premiere magazine, John Cusack commented that his one regret about turning twenty-one was that he had become too old to play Holden Caulfield.

(Maybe I found it interesting because I like John Cusack.?)

Anyway, this turned out to NOT be light fluffy summer patio reading material I hoped to escape into this afternoon. Sigh... Don't tell me I have to read a Janette Oke book.

Three things I'm thankful for:

1. When I came home from taking dad and mom to the Spaghetti Factory tonight, I found a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookie dough in the fridge. Drew and his friends had been baking. This made me smile.

2. Drew came to church with me today. Unfortunately it was under much duress and my house suffered another hole in the wall as a sign of his great displeasure and he only came to avoid all the groundings he would suffer for the rest of the summer if he didn't have his butt in the truck in 3 minutes, but still. He came. And said sorry for the all the unkind words he said - and there were many. So there's that.

3. Clint arrived safely in Paraguay after 30 hours of travel.

Shalom,

1 comment:

Trev said...

I just read catcher in the rye recently myself - and I'm with you Jane, I'm even too old to "get it". I think it's something that was very cutting edge/controversial for its time.

I did, however, find haulden's view of the world quite unique. It was a story that didn't go anywhere in a time when stories were supposed to go somewhere ;-)