Salinger, J. D.

Average customer rating:

I love Holden
Disgusted With Human Behavior?
Best classic read out there!
Angst
It has a point, but rambles

The Catcher in the Rye

Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

To Kill a Mockingbird
The Great Gatsby
Of Mice and Men (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
Lord of the Flies : (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
Catch-22

ASIN: 0316769487

Book Description

Ever since it was first published in 1951, this novel has been the coming-of-age story against which all others are judged. Read and cherished by generations, the story of Holden Caulfield is truly one of America's literary treasures.

Amazon.com

Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins,

"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. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them."

His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation.

Customer Reviews:

I love Holden.......2007-06-26

It makes me sad that so many young people don't like this book, since reading it was a highlight of my own youth. Although I was already a great reader, I'd never had a character come alive the way Holden did; I've remembered and loved him all my life as though he were a real person that I once knew. I read it again in my 50s, and loved it even more. I'd either forgotten, or never appreciated, how hilarious it is: Holden's observations about the people he encounters are dead-on and very funny. I especially don't get why people think Holden is a whiner who hates everyone. To me he is very perceptive and intelligent and interested in everyone: he's always trying to chat with everyone he meets, although he doesn't get a lot back from most of them.

Disgusted With Human Behavior?.......2007-06-15

If you are disgusted with human behavior, well then so is Holden Caulfield. I read this book after it was recommended to me by a friend in college. I had just finished telling him that THE BELL JAR is my favorite book of all time, and he instantly replied by telling me that if I had enjoyed THE BELL JAR then I would definitley love THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, and love it I did! Although Holden is extremely biased when it comes to judging his environment yet not applying the same standards to himself, his ability to judge people is piercingly insightful and intriguingly accurate. I fell in love with this book and read it in a lil' over 3 hours. I highly recommend this book, especially if you are the type that thinks that this world is a little bit too superficial and "phony!!!"

Best classic read out there!.......2007-06-13

I'm NOT kidding. Of all the short classics such as Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, 1984, et cetera, this beats them all for me. Salinger gives us a unique view of the world through a very intuitive young man (17 yrs old I believe). It really gets into the minds and hearts of most people and reveals the void therein. This was a very controversial book back in the '40s due to its casual use of profanity and adolescent sexuality, but I think it can be easily disregarded. Enjoy!

Angst.......2007-06-12

The Catcher in the Rye displayed a teenager's angst in a world seemingly turned against him. Salinger's novel revolves around Holden Caulfield, an angry teenager who feels he has nothing going for him in a world that gets more superficial by the minute. Ok, this book is totally awesome if you just want to vent. Salinger does a great job in accurately portraying the pure anger and despair every teenager has sometimes experienced in his/her moody world. But don't take this novel lightly. Salinger didn't write this book merely to sympathize with the teenage world. Rather, he has some crucial themes relating to a world that is unsympathetic and the power of healing and moving on.

Holden believes that the majority of what's going on in his life is on the verge of being worthless. His happy life the way that he knew was shattered when his younger brother died of cancer. The Caulfield family was destroyed. Salinger then comes in to analyze the family's response to a major tragedy. The parents force themselves to quietly cope and as a result send Holden off to a preppy boarding school. Here, Holden reveals to the reader that his faith in the world completely vanished, and now he has to learn how to accept himself and those around him.

It was a straightforward analysis on the pathetic hypocrisy of our society, and this was what I enjoyed the most was how easily I could understand this boy's pain due to the vivid portrayals by Salinger. Read it.

It has a point, but rambles.......2007-06-11

This book is considered a classic contribution to American literature. I see the value in Holden's journey of self discovery, but do not think it was as good as billed. Salinger repeats himself and seems to ramble throughout the book. He often digresses from his original thought. Despite this fairly annoying habit, Salinger does provide a unique glimpse into the life of a private school dropout in the forties as he tries to find himself. I have read worse, but have also read much better.

Average customer rating:

Another Salinger Classic
What a snooze!
a meditation on grief
Sequel to Catcher, or single reading
Salinger Crosses Over

Franny and Zooey
J.D. Salinger
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Nine Stories
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction
The Catcher in the Rye
Slaughterhouse-Five
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

ASIN: 0316769029

Book Description

The author writes: Franny came out in The New Yorker</EM< Zooey. Both stories are early, critical entries in a narrative series I'm doing about a family of settlers in twentieth-century New York, the Glasses. It is a long-term project, patently an ambitious one, and there is a real-enough danger, I suppose, that sooner or later I'll bog down, perhaps disappear entirely, in my own methods, locutions, and mannerisms. On the whole, though, I'm very hopeful. I love working on these Glass stories, I've been waiting for them most of my life, and I think I have fairly decent, monomaniacal plans to finish them with due care and all-available skill.

Customer Reviews:

Another Salinger Classic.......2007-06-13

(Review based on the Penguin edition of said book)

After having read "The Catcher in the Rye" and "Nine Stories", "Franny & Zooey" was the logical step onward. I absolutely adore JD Salinger, and that book didn't disappoint me at all.

In this short novel - in two parts - you get to know more about the Glass family, first touched upon in "Nine Stories".

Salinger is definitely one of the most talented writers I've ever had the pleasure to read, and I just can't get enough of his writings. He's at once witty, profound, extremely intelligent, humane, well-read, and God knows how many other adjectives I could list here.

So what's this book about? I'd say, perhaps wrongly, that it's about life for people who are too intelligent to have an easy ride through it. But even that sort of description doesn't do the book justice. I just don't know how to describe this book without failing to do so; I think it's better to just trust me and go buy it right away (provided you read the two former books I mentioned at the beginning of this review). You have to experience this!

I'm sorry about my reviews in general (and this one among them) because I never really write anything amazing unless I have something negative to say and criticise; the better the book, the worse the review. Salinger's treasures are too subtle to be apptly described in a review. I could say I love his style and everything, that I find him extraordinary and talented as hell, but that wouldn't do much convincing of anyone reading this review. Salinger may not please everyone, but you definitely must find out for yourself if you like his books or not.

What a snooze!.......2007-06-02

Wow, two hundred pages of useless banter with no action. Why this is an adored classic, I really don't know. What a snooze!

a meditation on grief .......2007-04-02

It wasn't until my fourth reading or so of Franny and Zooey that I began to understand that J.D. Salinger's topic is grief. Grief over his brother's death is the force that drives Holden Caufield as it is the source of Franny's breakdown. Franny and Zooey is a book of remarkable spriritual insight. I marvel at each reading.

Sequel to Catcher, or single reading.......2007-01-21

If after reading the Catcher in the Rye, thou art in quest for a solution to Holden's insufferable discontent, or would like to read some Salinger without necessarily being ridiculously biased to the point that it affects your appreciation of the story itself, get Franny and Zooey, which I think is a better book than Catcher, and also holds Salinger's existential answers.
F&Z is divided in 2 parts: the first part, considerably shorter, is FRANNY. We are told the story of Franny Glass (had you read Nine Stories you would've met her oldest brother, Seymour). Or rather, we are told the story of Franny Glass's nervous breakdown reaching its boiling point. She has come to visit her boyfriend Lane Coutell at University. She is not at all well: irritable, nervous, impatient, and moody, as opposed to her usual docile nature. We soon find out that she is obsessed with a book named The Way of the Pilgrim, in which a Russian peasant-turned-spiritual voyager, explains the method of achieving closeness to God by incessantly repeating the Jesus Prayer.
As usual with Salinger's favorites, Franny feels absolutely out of place and utterly misunderstood by Lane. Her disorientation as to what to do, her inconformity with school and society at its peak, and her anxiousness for achieving that state of perfection described in The Way of the Pilgrim, make her collapse.

Then comes ZOOEY, the longer tale. We are introduced to the fully fascinating Glass family... These were all remarkably intelligent children. Zooey and Franny were both partly raised by their two older brothers and thus, by their fascination with Eastern philosophy. Indeed, the book oozes with spirituality and long dissertations on religion and human nature- and surprisingly enough, it doesn't sound pretentious or distant, but oddly familiar. Perhaps because of Salinger's knowledge and regard for these theories.
In order not to narrate with too much detail, it is enough to say that it merely concerns Zooey's attempts at helping Franny to make sense. His rants about individuality and tolerance are rather self-indulgent, but do not cease to be fascinating. What is most important is that he answers all the questions left suspended by the abrupt ending of the Catcher in the Rye: what can Franny and Holden do with their constant disdain of others, their judgment of the "phonies", their sensitivity, and their lack of figures to look up to or seek support from? Obviously I will not translate his conclusions, but it is unquestionably worth reading... perhaps even more than the Catcher in the Rye. It is not as humorous, but certainly twice as endearing, and much more authentic.

Salinger Crosses Over.......2006-04-22

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's," declares Zooey Glass to his sister Franny, and Salinger italicizes the words "on his own terms" in case there was any doubt. Not that you doubt Salinger's artistic integrity. His sanity, however, is another story.

Madness is at the center of J.D. Salinger's "Franny And Zooey," published together in 1961 after first seeing print as separate stories in "The New Yorker" ("Franny" in 1955, "Zooey" two years later.) While the two stories work in tandem as they deal with the same concerns and main characters and are set a day or two apart, they feel quite distant from one another. Salinger abandons the discipline and wonderful ambiguity of "Franny" for a rambling philosophical tract that seems to be written more for Salinger and his fictional brainchildren than any outside reader.

In "Franny," the title character is a college student who has had it with pedantic professors and her stuck-up boyfriend. She longs for spiritual contentment, one detached from materialistic ego. Failing, she sinks into a state of near catatonia as she recites a prayer over and over trying to make a decisive break.

It is one of the finest stories Salinger wrote, which means a lot considering he wrote "For Esme With Love And Squalor" and "The Laughing Man." In the opening paragraph alone, we get a wonderful sense of place watching Yale boys await their dates' arrival via train, Salinger displaying both that pungent wit and considerable humanistic charm which made "Catcher In The Rye" so special.

As they huddle in groups in their overcoats against the autumn chill, "each young man, in his strident, conversational turn, was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, non-matriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries."

By focusing on one of these men, Lane Coutell, and letting us meet his date Franny Glass through his eyes, Salinger immediately sets the right tone, describing her spiritual crisis in a series of awkward pauses over martinis and uneaten food. Lane is a decent young man, but absolutely not what she needs at that moment, made clearer as she begins to fall apart before him. She worries about her soul; he worries about her lousing up his homecoming weekend.

It's a fun, subtly presented dichotomy. As she talks about her admiration for a pilgrim she has read of who has dedicated his life to prayer, one is reminded of how well Salinger used spirituality to inform his sublime short story "Teddy."

"Franny" ends poignantly, if abruptly, but instead of leaving well enough alone, he wrote the sequel story "Zooey," more than three times the length of "Franny" and more an endurance run than sprint. Now back home, Franny lies on a sofa in her parents' apartment as her brother Zooey tries to rouse her from her mental state by telling her what life is really all about.

Calling "Zooey" a mess is to be kind. It is pompous, fuzzy-minded, and as divorced from reality as "Franny" was grounded in it. Salinger itemizes the contents of every overstuffed room in the Glass house, even the medicine cabinet. Long, rambling conversations are written out in stenographic detail, while paragraphs detail Zooey's shaving methods and his attitudes toward various brilliant siblings, alive and dead.

I don't want to say "Zooey" is terrible, because it isn't. Salinger offers some interesting concepts. Though the Glass family is pretty insufferable in their intellectual and spiritual superiority (and becomes more so, in later Salinger works), their complicated interrelationships are detailed in amusing fashion. Every now and again Salinger hits a great note.

You may like "Zooey" for what it is; if so you can be happy knowing you have that much in common with the author. The rest of us will have to make do with "Franny," a fair bit of solace indeed.

Average customer rating:

J.D. Salinger, Where are you?
A fantastic compelation of vaguely interrelating--yet highly applicaple--tales.
Before he became a grumpy old man
A fine collection from a master
Very Good Read

Nine Stories
J.D. Salinger
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Franny and Zooey
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction
The Catcher in the Rye
Slaughterhouse-Five
On the Road

ASIN: 0316769509

Amazon.com

In the J.D. Salinger benchmark "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Seymour Glass floats his beach mate Sybil on a raft and tells her about these creatures' tragic flaw. Though they seem normal, if one swims into a hole filled with bananas, it will overeat until it's too fat to escape. Meanwhile, Seymour's wife, Muriel, is back at their Florida hotel, assuring her mother not to worry--Seymour hasn't lost control. Mention of a book he sent her from Germany and several references to his psychiatrist lead the reader to believe that World War II has undone him.

The war hangs over these wry stories of loss and occasionally unsuppressed rage. Salinger's children are fragile, odd, hypersmart, whereas his grownups (even the materially content) seem beaten down by circumstances--some neurasthenic, others (often female) deeply unsympathetic. The greatest piece in this disturbing book may be "The Laughing Man," which starts out as a man's recollection of the pleasures of storytelling and ends with the intersection between adult need and childish innocence. The narrator remembers how, at nine, he and his fellow Comanches would be picked up each afternoon by the Chief--a Staten Island law student paid to keep them busy. At the end of each day, the Chief winds them down with the saga of a hideously deformed, gentle, world-class criminal. With his stalwart companions, which include "a glib timber wolf" and "a lovable dwarf," the Laughing Man regularly crosses the Paris-China border in order to avoid capture by "the internationally famous detective" Marcel Dufarge and his daughter, "an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite." The masked hero's luck comes to an end on the same day that things go awry between the Chief and his girlfriend, hardly a coincidence. "A few minutes later, when I stepped out of the Chief's bus, the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked like someone's poppy-petal mask. I arrived home with my teeth chattering uncontrollably and was told to go straight to bed."

Book Description

Since the publication of The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, the works of J.D. Salinger have been acclaimed for their humor, intensity, and their lack of phoniness. A collection of short fiction, Nine Stories contains works with those qualities that make Salinger such a well-loved author.

Customer Reviews:

J.D. Salinger, Where are you?.......2006-10-06

I am among those who describe J. D. Salinger as America's least-heard-from, most-missed-author.

I don't know why he stopped writing. Maybe he thought he had said all he had to say. And in these "Nine Stories," he certainly said it all, and so eloquently.

My favorite three stories are (in descending order): "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"; "After the War with the Eskimos"; and "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes."

"Bananafish" speaks for itself. After reading "Franny and Zooey" (certainly the most brilliant treatise on Christianity ever written, my apologies to C. S. Lewis) and "Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters", I understood why certain people (like Seymour Glass) are just too beautiful for this world.

"After the War with the Eskimos" can't help but touch the heart of anyone who ever loved Holden Caulfield.

"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" inspired me to write a story which, I fear, is terribly derivitive. My characters sound a lot more like "The Sopranos" than J. D.'s upper-crusty New Yorkers, but the pathos is the same. Salinger understands the human heart. Maybe that's why he is so silent.

A fantastic compelation of vaguely interrelating--yet highly applicaple--tales........2006-08-31

To be truthful, I had never been a big fan of Salinger's before I read this book. Personally, I found Catcher in the Rye to be overly dramatic and very cold. Two story-killing traits that are not found in Nine Stories.

What is so appealing about Nine Stories is the way Salinger weaves a fantastic story, sometimes without even coming out and saying it. Whereas other authors would fill you in on the precursors to the events discussed in a story, Salinger would rather pick up at a certain point in a conflict, and allow the reader to draw his/her own conclusions from there. One prime example of this is found in "Pretty Mouth and Green my Eyes", where the main characters discuss a court case--keeping in mind that Salinger has not said the two were lawyers. This type of "fill yourself in" reading is very appealing and allows for a more incompassing and involved reading experience.

The book features a fantastic line-up of wonderfully written tales, filled with everyday people and everyday problems. It is Salingers way of making these stories so applicaple to the reader's life that makes the stories so fascinating.

Yet one of the most appealing aspects of these short stories is Salinger's ability to keep his down to earth writing stile in a yin and yang balance with Light, airy banter between his characters. These stories allow the reader to really delve into a character's depth through their dialogue alone--a detail that is very rare inthe literature realm.

Every story is simply fantastic. This is truely a gratifying read.

Before he became a grumpy old man.......2006-08-30

Before he became a curmudgeonly hermit on the level of a B. Traven or a Thomas Pynchon, Salinger was a close and sympathetic observer of youth and life amongst the New York upper-middle classes. The short stories he wrote from the early 40s through the late 50s placed him among the ranks of the best practitioners of the art. In all, Salinger wrote approximately two dozen short stories, most of which appeared within the pages of "The NewYorker," along with those of his contemporary John Cheever, who was exploring the same territory but with a different emphasis. Salinger specialized in quirky, high-quality tales spiced with equal amounts humor, philosophy, yearning, and sadness, and the far-too-few stories in this volume are a good representative of his work. The emotional trauma of WWII - something which affected him personally and perhaps contributed to the man he is now - is depicted in differing ways in such stories as "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut", "For Esme - With Love and Squalor," and "A Perfect Day for Bananafish." "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" is written almost entirely as dialogue, "The Laughing Man" takes as its theme the magic of story-telling, while "Down at the Dinghy" and "Teddy" illustrate Salinger's famous empathy with children. It's a pity and a mystery that Salinger only included nine of his many wonderful stories in this volume. Apparently, to this day he refuses to allow any of his stories to be reprinted in anthologies, and has withdrawn permission to keep his stories in new editions of such older anthologies as "Short Story Masterpieces" or "Fifty Great Short Stories." It's as if Salinger the artist for the last forty years has practiced a type of Zen self-abnegation, erasing not just his present but his past. Why write if you don't want to be read? What purpose, other than self-therapy, does art serve without an audience? (But don't despair. If you surf the samizdat of the net carefully, you'll find other stories by Salinger.)

A fine collection from a master.......2006-07-14

It seems silly to talk about the literary merits of this book of Salinger's short stories. He's a master writer with complex characters and fantastic dialogue. These stories are populated with vintage Salinger characters: high society intellectuals who have everything in the world but happiness. Although I didn't enjoy NINE STORIES as much as I liked CATCHER IN THE RYE and didn't love most of the characters as much as I loved the characters in FRANNY & ZOOEY, there are a few gems. "The Laughing Man," in which the narrator recalls his Comanche Chief (like a Boy Scout leader) and the way he enchanted the troop with his magnificent stories until his adult world crashed the party, seemed particularly relatable for some reason. And "For Esmé--With Love and Squalor," a story written by a traumatized soldier to a young girl he met on leave, is a charming and disturbing story. Overall, a very fine collection.

Very Good Read.......2006-07-08

One of the books I've returned to several times, often to just one or two of the stories that I know I can count for a good time. Despite having such a limited output, I can say without hesitation that Salinger is one of my favorites. I especially appreciate the Glass family stories. I love the way the mundane becomes so real and interesting,and often funny. Check it out!, even if you're not a fan of short stories.

Average customer rating:

Why have you not read this book?
Don't wait as long as I did to read this book!
An Attempt To Prevent a Beloved Sibling From Falling Off The Edge Where He Was Standing

The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
Manufacturer: Bantam
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Similar Items:

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Pernnial Moderns Classics)
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
Franny and Zooey
Wuthering Heights (Bantam Classics)

ASIN: B000BR53YU

Product Description

J. D. Salinger's famous classic about a boy coming of age. At the time of publication it caused quite an uproar because of it's language and was banned from many libraries, although it is fairly mild by modern stndards.

Customer Reviews:

Why have you not read this book?.......2007-05-26

I am always encouraging people to read this book. It's one of the first novels that truly shocked me in the end. I first came to know this book in highschool, and it still sits on my shelf. I re-read it often, and it's never lost on me.
There is a reason that it's a literary masterpiece, and one of the best books ever penned!

Don't wait as long as I did to read this book!.......2006-12-02

Salinger's modern-day classic about the coming of age of an adolescent boy is nothing short of a jewel! Salinger, writing in the first person, beautifully combines and balances the egocentrism of the teenager with humor and then fuses these elements together with threads of sadness and unbelievable tenderness. The character of Holden Caulfield is most certainly a complex dichotomy of immaturity and maturity. Truly a remarkable work through the very end.

An Attempt To Prevent a Beloved Sibling From Falling Off The Edge Where He Was Standing.......2006-10-16

I DO want to know Holden Caulfield's back story. And his dismissive declaration of "I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth" in his opening sentence is a dishonest declaration, whether he knows it or not. "That stuff" does not bore many caring, empathetic, or intelligent people. The first sentence is an obvious misrepresentation by the author, sarcastically suggesting he will avoid discussing uncomfortable or unpleasant realities and ideas. But then the author immediately proceeds to discuss madmen, insanity, male "prostitution", and common hypocrisies and apparent contradictions. The older I get, the less sarcasm I enjoy. Sarcasm is too often misunderstood. Too often it is an intelligent person displaying their intelligence with the added negative intent of putting someone else down. Too often it creates unintended animosity, ambiguity, and confusion. Yet the author's frank, sarcastic, contradictory, revealing, witty, and insightful candor is a primary reason we care to understand his points of view.

"It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win."

Holden is a flawed character appealing to flawed readers - and THAT is what makes his voice inviting and relevant. The author intentionally and occasionally reveals himself to be both dishonest and unable to take responsibility for his own mistakes. Holden uses humor as a weapon and a shield, to take down his enemies (personally and philosophically) and to defend his pride. Many readers can relate to his conflicting thoughts, internal conflicts, and external frustrations. And where we cannot relate from similar personal experience, we believe he is relaying his perspective, however flawed, with a high degree of believability. And for many readers, they find out they are not alone, sharing the same uncommonly discussed wonderings Holden discusses. Reading this book can be a sanity-strengthening exercise.

While Holden's perspectives are understandable, they are also implicitly suspicious of, if not negative toward, sexuality. This gives the novel puritanical auras of guilt around heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality. Holden is sadly revealing of popular mindsets and perspectives of youths growing up in an American society that too prominently and often characterizes and interprets sexuality and physicality in unnecessarily negative and incorrect ways.

Holden is an "anti" hero, which both he and his readers may take pride in. He finds some solace in being "against" and "critical" of so many things around him, thinking that his negative perceptions and conclusions somehow strengthen him. A problem is that sometimes he is right and sometimes he is wrong, and each reader will have to decide for themself where those divisions lie. For example, he criticizes an old man by saying, "I mean he was all stooped over, and he had very terrible posture, and in class, whenever he dropped a piece of chalk at the blackboard, some guy . . . had to get up and pick it up and hand it to him. That's awful, in my opinion." Holden reveals the common perceptions and misperceptions of 1950s male youths, interpreting the world with all the cultural biases and reasoning flaws of that society. "He showed us this old beat-up Navajo blanket that he and Mrs. Spencer'd bought off some Indian . . . That's what I mean. You take somebody old as hell, like old Spencer, and they can get a big bang out of buying a blanket."

The book has often been criticized for having no plot, going nowhere, and doing nothing. But that criticism misses some of the intents of the artistry. It is a book that examines internal dialogue, thought processes, and popular ways of interpreting people, actions, and ideas. The book suggests matters of "plot" are more dependent on perceptions and reasoning skills than most people understand. Some people don't carefully examine the precepts and assumptions they base their choices on. Holden questions common assumptions and reveals his internal dialogue, which alternates from independently insightful to misguided. A reason this book is given to students as they conclude adolescence is that it focuses on internal cognitive critical evaluations more than most stories that offer simpler focus on "external" choices of character. This book shows the two are not separate, but completely interdependent.

The book can be read as a means of deterring insanity, catching people before they run off too far in one neurotic pursuit, by showing them different ways of interpreting the people around them, and by showing them the consequences of Holden's perspectives. Holden mis-remembers the words of a poem. He thinks it says, "When a body CATCH a body, comin' thro' the rye," when it actually reads, "When a body MEET a body, comin' thro' the rye." (Personal sidenote: My brain made a similar memory mistake - thinking Edie Brickell's lyric was "SHOVE me in the shallow water", when the lyric was actually "CHOKE me in the shallow water" - talk amongst yourselves as to why my brain did that). He says to his younger sister, who he appears to genuinely want to love and protect, that he would like to catch children who are running around in a field of rye from falling off the edge of a "crazy cliff" WHERE HOLDEN IS ALREADY STANDING (he's writing the book while residing at a mental health recovery facility). The people the book might be able to "save" are "children", innocent or in the process of becoming encumbered by the moral definitions, narrow frameworks, and cultural boundaries that sometimes derail the smartest, most beautiful, and sensitive among us. This book may not be an effective tool if read by itself. The book is more likely to be helpful and interpreted well by readers who have read many other books.

Salinger is a genius, showing us where his brain has focused and why. I'll finish these comments for now, because there is always more to say on any work of this magnitude, with the author and protagonist's sarcastic and revealing note of perfection. "It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Average customer rating:

Salinger's Best
Crease By Crease
Carpenters a great Salinger story, Seymour not so much
Half of it's a tough undertaking...
Salinger's best work.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction
J.D. Salinger
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Nine Stories
Franny and Zooey
The Catcher in the Rye
For Esme - With Love and Squalor
Dream Catcher: A Memoir

ASIN: 0316766941

Customer Reviews:

Salinger's Best.......2007-04-10

I did not think anyone could beat Catcher in the Rye in its quirky yet real humor. But I was wrong. Salinger's Raise High is even better. The characters are so well sketched out that you feel like you are sitting with them and the madness of Catcher lingers in them. A MUST buy for Salinger lovers.

Crease By Crease.......2006-07-12

J.D. Salinger's last published work is more than 43 years old now, and still stirs many in the same absent way Seymour Glass animates his brother Buddy in this pair of stories first published in 1963. Are both cases of delusional devotion?

In the first story, "Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters," originally published in The New Yorker in 1955, we get what amounts to Salinger's first deep-dish treatment of the Glass family saga ("Zooey" saw print later, and previous stories featuring the Glasses were far less insular) as Buddy shows up for Seymour's wedding, only to find Seymour stood up his bride. In the second piece, 1959's "Seymour: An Introduction," Buddy foregoes any semblance of plot to explain who Seymour was.

Like a lot of other people, I am put off by the convoluted nature of "Seymour," as well as the explanations of those who defend it. Actually, there could be something to the idea of writing a plotless story, using characters like the Glasses people know from other works, but this is assuredly not it. Salinger too obviously indulges himself, spouting contempt at his generation and his critics, throwing up lame jokes and referencing obscure Japanese poets as a smokescreen to conceal his literary, intellectual, and metaphysical nakedness.

"What a marvelous convenience it would be if writers could let themselves describe their characters' clothes, article by article, crease by crease," Salinger writes in the role of Buddy, pretty much summing up the approach of "Seymour" as well as its underlying failure. His interest in his subject is not only all-consuming, it is not all that deep.

"Raise High" is a better story, though that's not saying much. "Franny And Zooey," the previously published Salinger book, also combined a better story with a weaker one, but there at least you got one terrific story in "Franny," a bold, empathetic tale of power and focus. "Raise High" doesn't know where it's going, and is in no hurry to get there. You get nice asides, like when Buddy sees an old chair and remembers a beloved bulldog, long dead, who slept there and left his chewmarks. There's also some arresting ambiguity, as when Buddy reads Seymour's journal and we get maybe a suggestion of unease at some apparent insanity.

But "Roof Beam" doesn't end so much as fizzle away, with Buddy snoozing in an empty apartment after the mystery of Seymour's absence has been resolved via an unseen phone call. Emptyness is a recurrent theme in Salinger's Glass writings, here as in "Franny & Zooey," where various Glasses are often seen in isolation thinking or writing about absent kin. For such a happy family, there's an overwhelming sadness about the Glasses that suggests Salinger found himself in a bit of a dead end with them, one from which he never emerged. Further evidence of this can be found in the web-available "Hapsworth 16, 1924," Salinger's last public blast, published in The New Yorker in 1965.

Salinger was one of the most important American writers of our lifetime, not to mention a seminal figure of our culture, but his greatness lies elsewhere, not here. Read this only if you are a Salinger completist, or else interested in the price genius can extract from its recipients.

Carpenters a great Salinger story, Seymour not so much.......2006-07-03

Raise High the roof beams is a standard Glass tale involving Buddy attending Seymour's wedding in 1942. It is a different look into the Glass family, depicting Buddy's interactions with non-family members, as opposed to the other stories. Seymour: An Introduction I did not enjoy as much. It is longwinded scatological and excruciating to read at times, there are far to many run-ons and poor segues, and you can see that Salinger tries to hard to showcase the narrator as a "conflicted writer". It differs from Salinger's other works as more of a philosophical statement, instead of a straight-up story with philosophical undertones, and this is where Salinger's talents are lacking. Where Vonnegut and Kerouac found the balance of story jumping, and mass dialogue, Salinger comes off as more of an annoyance. The first portion being a jumble of "Hemmingwayesque" rants, I often found myself skipping the quotations (which greatly benefits the story), and footnotes. The best portions are the physical description of Seymour as well as his athletic prowess in the 2nd half of the story. A must read for Salinger fans none the less, not his best work, but there is still some brilliance within the pages. (More so Roof beams then the latter)

Half of it's a tough undertaking..........2005-12-31

...which doesn't make the experience any less rewarding. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters is a complete joy...and like the other Glass stories, a fun part of the family puzzle. Seymour: An Introduction feels less fulfilling. While it provides much information that helps the Glass-family-follower, much of it seems unformed, rambling and rawly philosophical. Nothing wrong with that unless you'll feel more rewarded by an actual story in the second half of this collection.

Salinger's best work........2005-10-18

Commonly mislabeled the worst of the Glass family saga, and of J.D. Salinger's work in general, Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters, and Seymour, an Introduction, deserves much praise. Salinger takes a lot of care and thought in writing these two short stories. Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters features Buddy Glass attending his brother, Seymour's wedding. Seymour never physically appears in this story, but Buddy narrates so much about him that he is very much a main character. Seymour, an Introduction is a more difficult read. What at first appears incessant ramblings of a grief stricken sibling, at second glance becomes a well crafted work of genuis. Every word is carefully placed, to describle Seymour, Buddy's relationship with Seymour, and Seymour's impact on everyone he met. While getting through the second story, may be difficult it is a worthwhile challenge. You will learn everything about Seymour, from the way he wrote poetry, to the way he shot his marbles, and from Seymour you will learn an entirely new way to view the world, and everyone in it.

-PRBecki

Average customer rating:

great book for a jaded person

The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

On the Road
Julius Caesar (Oxford School Shakespeare Series)
The Great Gatsby
To Kill a Mockingbird
Catch-22

ASIN: 0241900972

Customer Reviews:

great book for a jaded person.......2007-05-21

its a great book for a person who feel they are a outcast of society and no ones understands how it feels to be so alone well this book is for you its bout a jaded young man named Holden Caulfield who's liberal w/ profanity so if ur easily afiend by profanity and portrayal of sexuality and teenage angst then this book is not for you by if you want ur mind split wide open then this is the book for you

Average customer rating:

Holden Caulfield's Voice Speaks Powerfully of the Human Condition
Who's phony now?
just one flaw

The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger
Manufacturer: Perfection Learning Prebound
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

To Kill a Mockingbird

ASIN: 0812415280

Customer Reviews:

Holden Caulfield's Voice Speaks Powerfully of the Human Condition.......2005-09-19

Holden Caulfield said things I could never say, those things I would never say if I had the chance.

How many teenagers felt that way reading "The Catcher in the Rye"? That's why teens are reading this book. That is why more often than not, they enjoy it more than writers like William Faulkner.

J. D. Salinger was not a shock artist. He did not use offensive themes and language to stir up publicity and talk about freedom of speech. He employed his freedom of speech as a tool to communicate, not to infuriate. As a result, he wrote a magnificent book looking into the psyche of youth. What makes Salinger a classic writer, and wealthy publicity hounds like Eminem and Howard Stern noisy wannabes is that within his language, there is truth.

While Holden searches for himself, and the meaning of life, he was a younger version of those in the Beat movement, or James Dean. Readers go from "Catcher" to Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," with the same easygoing, streaming thoughts kind of way.

"The Catcher in the Rye" grabs at the introspective self. Like so many of the Oprah books are for women, "Catcher" is the for teen male. (Did I offend the teens guys, or the Oprah fans?)

I fully recommend "The Catcher in the Rye." It is close to being a literary masterpiece, and will intrigue even the passive reader.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

Who's phony now?.......2005-04-04

A new generation of angry young men were inspired by J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye," a dark-edged little novel about teen disaffection. Wry, cynical and strangely touching at times, this book is a look into the confusion and turmoil of a young mind -- those who want their teens clean-cut and meek need not apply.

Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from a prep school for failing almost every subject he was studying. And he couldn't care less -- after all, it's full of phonies. Over the weekend, Holden wanders the streets of New York, thinking about the school, the teachers, the phonies, and his nebulous family -- especially his brother Allie, who committed suicide.

Fearing the repercussions of going home and telling his parents what has happened, Holden just keeps touring New York in his peculiar cap. He meets a girl he once liked, a teacher who is sympathetic to his plight, but Holden always ends up pushing others away. And when he does go home, his temptation to run away is changed irrevocably.

Remember the disaffected anti-hero of "Igby Goes Down," who flunks school over and over, and runs away to hang out in New York? Cynical oddball Igby has Holden to thank for his existance. "Catcher in the Rye" catches teen dissatisfaction and dreams of freedom, making it seem almost painfully realistic.

Most classics don't include the anti-hero sputtering four-letter words on the first page. But Salinger's style for "Catcher" is an unusual one. Through Holden's eyes, it's a bitter and very straightforward style, peppered with wry observations. The biggest flaw would be the handling of Holden's own "phoniness," since it's obvious he can be as phony as the people around him. It's subtle, but too subtle -- to less discerning readers, it seems like Holden is just a bitter hypocrite.

Holden Caulfield is a surprisingly nuanced character -- at first glance he just seems like an unusually obnoxious young boy who hates everything. But as the book unfolds, we see that he cares for genuine things, especially the innocence he no longer has. And he lacks the ability to connect with other people. None of the other characters really come to life... but they don't really need to. This is Holden's story.

Salinger's cynical tour de force "Catcher in the Rye" is a bitter pill to swallow, but it's definitely worth it. Disaffected, yearning and wry, this is a modern classic. And deserves to be, as well.

just one flaw.......2005-04-03

The narrator of this story is presented as an avid reader, yet he speaks with a weak vocabulary and weak sentence structure.
By my count, he uses the catch-all phrase "and all" 174 times.
He accuses most adults of putting on a false front, so, by my count, he uses the word "phony" 47 times. A student with above average literacy skills would likely look the word up in a thesaurus.

His little sister Phoebe, who is presented as an honor student, is likewise verbally deficient. During the conversation in the bedroom, she uses the phrase "and everything" 5 times.

This is especially unrealistic considering that Holden and Phoebe's parents are viligant about their children's verbal expression. During the bedroom conversation, we see that the word "lousy" is verboten in the Caulfield household.

Salinger probably held a stereotype that all adolescents and children speak with a weak vocabulary and weak sentence structure.

Average customer rating:

'For Esme with Love and Squalor'

For Esme - With Love and Squalor
J. D. Salinger
Manufacturer: Penguin Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Spanish | Foreign Language Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Nine Stories
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction
Franny and Zooey
Dream Catcher: A Memoir
Salinger: A Biography

ASIN: 0140237534

Customer Reviews:

'For Esme with Love and Squalor'.......2006-03-17

For 'Esme with Love and Squalor' is one of Salinger's best stories. It also appears in his first collection of stories called 'Nine Stories.'
It tells the story of an American G.I. who for one part of the story is in Devon England where he is in training. On one lonely day off he goes into a tea-room and meets an English child and her small brother. Her name is 'Esme' and she is a precocious beautiful and sensitive child with whom the G.I. has a friendly, and somewhat from his point- of- view ironic conversation. The language is pure Salingerese. The little brother acts up and is chided by his sister. He recites a riddle , : What did one wall say to another" and hilariously gives the answer "Meet you at the corner" When the soldier returns the answer at his asking another time he gets upset. But at parting the soldier asks him the question and the little boy gets his spirit back by again giving the answer. More important the soldier and the little girl in some way assauge each other's loneliness. She is lonely for her father who has been lost in the war. He is lonely, lonely.
The scene then changes to an Army headquarters in the heart of the European theatre. The same soldier is on the verge of breakdown when he receives a letter from Esme , which somehow brings him back to a sense that there is something beautiful, whole , humane in the world, something worth living for.
The story of course must be read to be felt truly. My summary is poor. It is such a beautiful story.
I truly suggest you read it. "It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. And you will never forget it."

Average customer rating:

Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Average customer rating:

The Catcher in the Rye Activty Pack
J.D. Salinger
Manufacturer: Prestwick House Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound

The Catcher in the Rye : A Unit Plan (LitPlans)
The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye (Cliffs Notes)
Max Notes J. D. Salinger's the Catcher in the Rye (Max Notes Series)
To Kill a Mockingbird Activity Pack

ASIN: 1580496148

Book Description

Fullfill state-mandated objectives and national guidelines with Prestwick House Reproducible Activity Packs.

Activities easily relate outside historical references, vital literary vocabulary, and detailed plot and themes analysis.

Activities include: • Role playing • Creating dramatization • Five modes of writing • Completing maps and charts • Creating collages • Drawing editorial cartoons • Staging sets ans scenes • Responding to photographs and pictures • Conducting surveys • Creating scenarios • And more

Authors:

Authors

Authors