I know people in the book business. It’s way, way devolved at this point. Anything aimed at people that actually read cannot possibly make money; it’s been written right out of the business model.
As I always say, there’s a lot of humor in it, which many people don’t see because they’ve had it crammed down their throat as something Totally Deep and Meaningful. It actually has a very IRreverent tone, but it’s too often propagandized as needing a reverential approach.
“That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddamn toilet seat.” See, I laughed for a full thirty seconds when I first read that, but I didn’t get the whole bill of goods before I started reading. I can see how that wouldn’t go over too well with someone who had.
Exactly. I don’t see how people can miss the large amounts of humor in CitR.
Is feeling kinship always necessary to enjoy a book or a movie? I’m a female with almost nothing in common with Holden, though I do hate to puke, and in fact I’d like to kick his butt for several reasons, chief among them hating movies. I always want to say, Holden you ass, movie are great! when I read the book, which is often. I loved it the first time and I love it every time. I just read it again last year.
I like the writing, I like the language, I like the sentences that are so neat and tidy. I like the characters (even when I don’t like the characters, like old Ackley kid), I like the time and place and setting. I like Holden’s hilarious bad attitude and his dickish but funny way of looking at the world. I like his sister Phoebe. I like how he likes his sister Phoebe. I like his general attitude toward girls, even the girl with the “bleedy-looking” fingernails.
Passages like this crack me up:
That’s funny to me, and I’ve never been to or known anybody who went to a place like Pencey Prep in my life.
It’s not all laughs. I like how it’ll be coasting along, and something like this jumps out:
Yeah!
RIP JD. Thanks for that book. I promise I won’t write “Fuck you” on your gravestone.
People never notice anything.
People never believe you.
Or just oversold as a Great Book. I loved that and the Glass family books, but the school hadn’t made its entry into schools and I was allowed to find them myself. I think this might be more indicative of how kids feel about it now.
In any case, so long and thanks for all the bananafish, Mr. Salinger.
I’m not sure what you mean. There’s lots of high quality stuff that also makes money. Audrey Niffeneger and Michael Chabon, for example. Susanna Clarke and Neil Gaiman, for others. I guess you could play true Scotsman with it and say they can’t be any good because they are selling lots of books, but hell. I think they’re awfully good, and I actually read.
RIP, Salinger.
I really, really like The Catcher in the Rye.
One of my life goals is still - if I ever have a daughter, I really want to name her “Hazel Weatherfield [/gamehat]”
Yes, I know Hazel should be “Hazle”, but I prefer the standard spelling.
Well, to be fair, in those days, movies were mostly very operatic and overacted. I can see why he would find them irritating. I bet Holden would have loved Napoleon Dynamite, though.
It’s my understanding - possibly flawed by talking to too many bitter editors :dubious: - that the diet-du-jour and rage-pundit segment pays for the whole rest of the book industry.
Gaiman, Chabon et al may make back their nut quite nicely, but that doesn’t mean they satisfy the volume or margin needs of the media conglomerates who control most publishing.
::falls on floor laughing:: Bravo, Onion.
Ha, that’s great!
You’re right in that he might have thought it was all just bullshit by a bunch of phonies.
Bravissimo.
They even spelled crumby his way. I actually used to pronounce the b.
You’re about as sensitive as a goddamn toilet seat. 
I wonder if Salinger saw people putting up Holden Caulfield as a hero, and maybe that is why he didn’t want to publish anymore.
The idea of Holden Caulfield as a folk hero is pretty disturbing, and yet I can go around to the hipsters in Brooklyn and spot dozens of Holden Caulfields.
I found the Onion article rather predictable and lame.
I never said it was – but it seemed to be the reason educators were pushing the book at high school kids, and it certainly wasn’t appropriate in my case.
To believe the Marxist literary theorists, the reason the establishment teaches books by Salinger (and Orwell, and Lee, and other anti-establishment authors) is to co-opt them and undermine their subversive content. I doubt teachers think of it that way, but getting handed a book in school definitely affects the way students read it. And the way teachers teach it also probably undermines the effectiveness of the book.
Can anyone answer me this, what is it with stoners and The Catcher In The Rye?
I highly recommend daughter Margaret Salinger’s book “Dream Catcher.” Apparently J.D. was an excellent father who simply desisted being famous.
It’s a good personal insight into the man.
There are probably 50,000 books published each year by mainstream publishers. The 100 or so bestsellers sell as many copies as the other 49,900 combined. And they certainly sell far more than the 200,000 books put out by non-mainstream publishers combined.
Yes, occasionally a literary book will crack the bestseller list and an occasional major work of nonfiction will as well. The rest are fluff. The vast majority of literary fiction does not make money. Audrey Niffenegger is a good example. Yes, The Time Traveler’s Wife made big money. Then she was given $5 million for the sequel. It apparently sold 5% of the first novel.
The entire business model of publishing today is to do a blockbuster book, not to produce quality. If they happen to coincide, then fine. But that happens less than 10% of the time. It’s strictly by accident, not by plan.
You can argue that this was always true. A listing of the bestselling hardcover books of 1951 would seemingly confirm that.
From 70 Years of Best Sellers, by Alice Payne Hackett
Fiction
- From Here to Eternity, James Joyce
- The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk
- Moses, Sholem Ashe
- The Cardinal, Henry Morton Robinson
- A Women Called Fancy, Frank Yerby
Nonfiction
- Look Younger, Live Longer, Gayelord Hauser
- Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book
- Washington Confidential, Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer
- Better Homes and Gardens Gardens Book
- Better Homes and Gardens Handyman’s Book
The fiction is standard middlebrow fiction, missing the genre sellers that dominate the list today. The nonfiction would mostly be put on a How-To list, except for the kind of sleazy tell-all about politics that always sells.
But the interesting story is in the numbers. Not one of these books sold as many as 300,000 copies. Today’s bestsellers have to sell more than a million, proportionally more even given the size of the population. Super blockbusters like Dan Brown or J. K. Rowling were unheard of. Any of the Harry Potter books sold individually more than the entire hardback book industry in 1951. Why care about anything else?
You’ll also notice no Catcher in the Rye. It didn’t even make the top ten. It caught on in paperback over time.