OT: Has anyone read Catcher in the Rye?

[Xebsball]

You know i found this camera my family been taking pictures with since a very long time.
Originally my mom had bought it, before she even met my dad. So the thing is from the late 70s, older than me and bro, it still works. I took some pictures yesterday, they gonna look cool once i reveal them.

[eulerfan]

Ahhhhhh. The coups de grace!

I'm going to check out some live bands this Saturday. It's been a while.

[KC Elbows]

Noooooo!

Evil GotQi threaders.

I won't let this die. I'll save this crumby thread. I'll be like some guy on a cliff side, saving...I dunno, saving something, but that'll be me. I'll save it from you phony gotqi threaders.

[eulerfan]

KC, you're ultimately going to come to the conclusion that you don't want to get on the merry go round. You'll just sit on that bench and watch as your sister rides it.

[KC Elbows]

You knew Mark David Chapman, didn't you?

[eulerfan]

Weren't the Beatles an influence for Manson?

[KC Elbows]

Isn't this a creepy start for tennis?

[eulerfan]

What do you mean by 'tennis'?

[KC Elbows]

Did I say 'tennis'?

[Sasha]

Oh my... This thread went places I wasn't expecting.

I might find it interesting, if it weren't for the fact that it's covering very similar ground to the essay I'm supposed to be writing (which was why I needed to quote the passage). I have two different definitions of art which is a bit confusing. My favourite one goes something like 'A rational manipulation of passion which originates from, and is driven on by passion.' Though the definition I'll probably use for the essay will be the more general sense of anything at all that was made for passion's sake.

As far as the purpose of it, I think it is only in making a positive impression on the observer.

But I really can't be bothered to kick up the settling dust, considering I'm about to try to write a 5000 word philosophy essay in one weekend saying that philosophical essays are 99.9%useless (oh, the bitter irony), and that literature is a far better medium for the conveyance of ideas.

For the record though, Catcher in the Rye is my all time favourite book ever. I've only read it once, and even skimming over it again to find quotes for my essay is playing havoc with my emotions. All I can say regarding what people have said about it here is that saying 'the point of it is so and so' is to infinitely underrate the book. It has so much to say about so many things, and Holden is the best fictional character I've ever known.

Ultimately though, I take a fairly standard post-modernist view that the only point is what you take from it. If someone can point you to something you hadn't seen in it, great, but no-one can tell you you're wrong about it.

Anyway Zim, I'd already managed to find the second reference, and I'd forgotten the first, but we've obviously got different editions. Mine has exactly 190 pages (page 1 is the first page of the story - the previous ones aren't counted), and the reference I've found is pages 155-156, finishing halfway up the page (about 4 paragraphs) from the end of chapter 22. Could you be (much) more specific about where the other reference is? Bearing in mind I probably won't know the order of events in the story, so although it's probably worth giving me the context, the chapter number/proportional location within the chapter will probably be a lot more helpful.

[ZIM]

Anyway Zim, I'd already managed to find the second reference, and I'd forgotten the first, but we've obviously got different editions. Mine has exactly 190 pages (page 1 is the first page of the story - the previous ones aren't counted), and the reference I've found is pages 155-156, finishing halfway up the page (about 4 paragraphs) from the end of chapter 22. Could you be (much) more specific about where the other reference is? Bearing in mind I probably won't know the order of events in the story, so although it's probably worth giving me the context, the chapter number/proportional location within the chapter will probably be a lot more helpful.

I'd be glad to help, but honestly I'm no expert on the editions, nor on the story....I do know that the one with the horse on the cover had different pagination. Let me look it up.

"The cars zoomed by, brakes screeched all over the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and he kept on walking next to the curb and singing 'If a body catch a body coming through the rye.' It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed any more" p.115
Page numbers refer to the Little, Brown, and Company edition (c. 1951). The previous quote was from p. 173.

Anyway, this is chapter 16. Chapter 22 contains the psychotic vision of catching the kids, when he's starting to lose it for real.

[Sasha]

Ahh, got it. Thanks a lot

(page 104, just for my own reference, cos I haven't got a pen handy )

[Sasha]

Didn't use the quote in the end

Out of curiousity, would anyone be interested in me posting the essay I *finally* finished on here (it's about 5800 words)? In all honesty, it's one of the most arduous things I've ever had to do and you'd probably have to be fairly academic to find it anything other than incredibly dull... + the written-for-assessment style means there're a lot more quotes and references than there really need to be, since the examiners always seem to respond well to that.

But it's about literature, and as people have said, it's nice to see some OT threads that aren't jokey links, or debates about Iraq. And frankly, having suffered through the experience of actually writing the **** thing, it's a bit depressing to think that the only person who's gonna read it is some dispassionate examiner who'll give it some arbitrary mark and then file it away for all eternity. And I do think it makes a few good(ish) points on the elitish nature of academia, even if I do say so myself