The Reading Group Reads...
The Catcher in the Rye By J D Salinger
The Book group this month chose THE CATCHER INTHE RYE by
J.D.SALINGER. Some of
us had read it before-many moons ago in my case and some not.The story,
published first in serial form in 1945/6 and asa book in1951, is a few days in
the life of an American teenager, Holden Caulfield, who when we first meet
him, has just been expelled from his third boarding school. Not for bad
behaviour, but atotally unacceptable academic performance. Just not attending
classes.
The book was banned in schools in the States for a couple of decades and subsequently became one of the most read books in the country! Holden is depressed, disaffected, self obsessed and an immature non achiever allienated to everyone and every thing and sees life in general as "phoney".He tells us that his childhood was "lousy"-he'd had a dearly beloved younger brother who'd died,an event that had left him deeply saddened and angry; an anxious chain smoking mother and a frequently abscent lawyer father; an older brother who's gone to Holywood to write film scripts and his little sister Phoebe whom he adores and still lives at home in New York.
He heads,during the few days of the story, for what one of his former teacher calls"a terrible kind of fall"-a sort of mental breakdown, brought about by extreme teenage angst,feelings of social isolation,fear of his parents anger,excessive drinking, abortive meetings with old friends, involvment with a pimp and a prostitute-all mixed up with his web of fantasies(one of which gives the book its title) -just searching for what he cannot find.
He's finally "saved" by Phoebe, because of her devotion and her refusal to let him go. So theending isn't exactly happy-more optimistic.
We meet again on the 6th January-8.00pm at Kent House, when we'll be reading Deaf Sentence by David Lodge.
Alas, the Crier continues to be late (sorry!) so half of us read David Lodge and
half of us "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" .
The problem is that the library may not have enough copies of the book
we have
chosen to read, and so what we decided to do last month was to,um, wait and
see what came through the letter box. Margaret Joyce very kindly picks up
the books and delivers them, so please ring Margaret to check first.
After a little heated debate, what we actually did was discuss both books, but not in any great detail, especially the "Potato Peel Pie Society" , and so we will be discussing this next month, along with whatever new book in the list (which we hope might finally be Dan Brown and his Lost Symbol)Margaret can get her hands on.