The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

 

"It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road."

I think that my main problem with this book is that I'm not a young man full of angst, and nor was I when I read it. I think I could have gotten away with it if I had been full of angst when I read it...but I wasn't. As such (brave statement coming up) I was really underwhelmed by Catcher in the Rye.

I picked it up because it was on a bookshelf at home and I had hit "that kind of crazy afternoon" in a school holiday so I had nothing to do and figured that as it was a book that I kept hearing mention of, I should give it ago. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that I did. I just didn't find it as fantastic as I thought that I would (although I wonder if that's because I'd heard so many good things about it? I definitely prefer reading/listening/seeing things before I hear too much about them). Perhaps what didn't help either was that my boyfriend accidentally spoilt the ending when I was about halfway through. So then I felt extremely put-out with the rest of the book and was just waiting for the ending to happen. This, perhaps, is an unfair way to read a book, but this doesn't change the fact that this is how I read it. 

What I did like about Catcher in the Rye was the style. I have discovered over the years that I'm a massive fan of American Literature, because Americans have a vastly different writing style to the British, and I find it refreshingly honest (thank you Mr. Fergurson: my A-Level English teacher thanks to whom I got to read some fantastic stuff that I wouldn't have even heard of if not for him). I like the witticisms that festoon American literature...but as I write this I note that I'm not actually reviewing Catcher in the Rye specifically. But like I say, the actual narrative style was a feature that I really liked.

To be honest, I can't really think of anything more to say about Salinger's work. The problem is, I simply didn't "get it". I spoke to some of my lecturers about Catcher in the Rye not so long ago, and drew a lot of comfort from the fact that most of them seemed underwhelmed and unsure about it too.