catcher in the rye

What was this book about? was it just some edgelord trying to justify his actions or was there something deeper going on?

Definitely just an edgelord. And English majors are stuck up pretentious pricks

Sometimes it is a good time to be an edgelord With even lesser works sometimes is your own state of mind that makes you enjoy things, what we commonly call guilty pleasures

There's nothing going on in any literature that you guys could understand. Stick to comic books and pornography.

an edgelord or not, he gave expression to this mindless frustration that is inherent in teenagers and, in our age, almost everyone. we have some knowledge so we can see what can be achieved but then we're bitten by reality. the scope is so big that we get frustrated. but then almost none else seems to care. i think it's a good book either way. one of the best books on the frustration you feel before you understand how you to realize yourself and manage to build at least on something that makes you sleep well at night.

>>4124 I think it's more fair to say that the standard classical education (such as an english or history degree program) was specifically designed with stuck up pretentious pricks as their target market. For literally centuries prior to the end of the Second World War, post-secondary classical educations were specifically intended for children of the old-money crowd to do some old-boy-club networking. The brighter ones went on to law programs, and the less-bright ones who stopped at a straight-C BA still had some of those network contacts.

It's a coming of age story where he wants to be a grown up but he does all the things adults do without really growing as a person. It's a book about adolescence and growing without maturing but I'm not a big fan of it. I think crime and punishment addresses the archetypes better.

>>4128 Not you though, right? You're different

a manic episode

teenage kid desperately tries to find meaning at the cusp of adulthood. He can see the ways in which the world is wrong but can't articulate why they're wrong or how they could be better. It's probably the only novel I've read that accurately portrays what that feels like, at that stage of life. It didn't really hit me very hard when I read it in school though because I wasn't there yet.

holden isn't edgy. he's a sap.

I'm not sure, I really liked the writing style but I couldn't care less about the story, I ended up dropping it when I was more than halfway through.

>>4125 I basically agree with this one. What we now call "edginess" is usually immature and cringey or whatever, but there's a time and a place for everything. Also not every story has to be about good or mature or likeable people. We now use edginess as a kind of thought-terminating cliche, a way to dismiss people who haven't really learned how to navigate our current hyper-communities and modern methods of extremely persistent and powerful communication, where everyone has to develop and curate a careful persona and drape themselves in layers of subtlety and irony and aloofness and apathy to avoid embarrassment of angst, which is now how we often interpret simple sincerity. Not always, but I've seen the edgelord thing thrown at people who were really just earnest and perhaps somewhat guileless. It was not always this way. I truly believe that people's outward personalities were a lot simpler and different in general before internet culture seeped into all of our minds. Not saying it's necessarily a good or bad thing, but it's obviously a media that has had an effect on us as individuals and as a culture at large. More importantly—if you're gonna write a serious, realistic story about a teenage boy or young man, you're going to have to resign yourself to putting some edginess in there somewhere. I feel like some of us forget what it was like to be young, or if you are young you stay in some kind of denial of what it's like. You see it in others but somehow not in yourself. Or else you learn to habitually repress it. Young people, men especially, are edgy. They're fundamentally inwardly-focused, tormented and emotional and raw. Regardless of if they have any rational reason to feel this way. It's part of our development. I can't say why, I'm not some kind of behavioral psychologist. But denying it does you no favors. It's absurd to act like you were always socially graceful, always humble, that you never indulged in that kind of angst. People who do this either forgot what they were like, or even worse—they haven't moved past it, and are still in denial about it. I like Salinger. I can't say whether this novel is preternaturally profound or "important" or whatever. But stories are a big part of being human, and we need all kinds of stories. This one does reflect a lot of young men's lived experience in a powerful way. Maybe not necessarily your own. Despite what I said above, there are always exceptions to the rule. But it touched enough people to be worthwhile. If it doesn't speak to you, you can always abandon the book partway through. Never feel compelled to finish a book you don't personally like. It's just a book. And we've gotta set aside this kind of "good dog/bad dog" view of fiction and media. A view that the characters and situations depicted are always meant as an endorsement. Stories about crummy or mediocre people still have a lot of value. Arguably a lot more value than stories about weirdly perfect Mary Sues or whatever you want to call it. Stories don't have to be about virtuous or competent people to teach us something, or to merely entertain—which is perfectly fine to seek from a book as well.

>>4196 well said, lainon.

>>4122 https://postflaviana.org/a-pedophile-fantasy-in-the-rye/ it's about pedophilia and freemasonry apparently

Complete edgelord