oLahav, I’m pretty sure this has been a disappointing debate for you so far. After all, you pick up a book you know a lot of people love, you call it overrated, and you don’t get even one response that’d make it worth your while – just a couple of mild disagreements. Everybody here agrees with you! Isn’t that a drag?
Anyway, here’s the thing: first of all, it is by no means necessary to “relate” with any of the characters in order to enjoy a book (of course, I need to add the customary IMHO here). The character is either well-developed or it is not. While the protagonist of the book may seem like clinically depressed, bordering on “special”, or as somebody put it rather imaginatively, a “loser”, the point is not to feel the same way he does. The point is, it’s not the author’s own story, yet he writes it as if it were. Despite the inexplicable despise Holden seems to be able to generate in this community, allow me to quote him:
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though”
Having a taste for depressing books doesn’t require you to find a manifestation of your own sad life in the story. I don’t identify with any of the characters in Virginia Woolfe’s “To the Lighthouse”. I don’t agree with the philosophy of objectivism which forms the bedrock of all of Ayn Rand’s works. I personally find Howard Roark a self-obsessed jerk. But I recognize a well-written book when I read one. Also, good books (fiction of course) are usually not meant to highlight any social issue. They’re just meant to tell a good story. “Catcher…” does not propound either support or cure for the clinically depressed. Which reminds me,
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written”
As I’ve also said in another discussion on the “worst book you’ve ever read”, you have to be just a tiny bit screwed up to enjoy “Catcher…”. What that means is that you should have the ability to appreciate all kinds of characters, even those you don’t agree with ideologically. Anyone read “The Curious incident of the dog in the night-time”? Anyone watch “Rain man”? Their fan communities are not made up of autistic people.
Truly screwed up people will find any reason to kill themselves or others with a book in their hands, claiming that it inspired them to do so. The Old Testament is probably the most insanely violent book in history, and I have a strong suspicion that it was not meant to be taken seriously :)
Anyway, if any of you are looking to develop a taste in stories that punch you in the gut, I strongly suggest reading more of Salinger and Kafka. You can start here:
http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/squalor.html
http://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/stories/kafka-E.htm
And please remember, it’s just a story! You don’t need to pretend to be either Esme or Mr. X to enjoy it.
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