Charlie Rose

isomorpheus  12/26/2011 01:29 AM Report

@REMant, I first read the book when I was 22. I chanced upon it in a Chinese pirated books "mobilstand"(a mini van-like bus complete with most popular novels), and finished it one night at a bar in Shanghai. I'm sure Salinger wouldn't have wanted Catcher to be a required reading, for anybody. That kind of requirement almost goes against the core sentiment of the novel.

SkyLarkJ  02/20/2010 03:29 PM Report

I loved all of Adam Gopnik's observations about writers. "They are their own obsessions,"... "they are too much of what they care about, and I never mind when a writer gives me too much"

Such an enchanting speaker.

ShalomFreedman  02/02/2010 11:06 PM Report

Adam Gopnik does a good job here of saying in twenty minutes what in one sense can be said in a minute and another cannot be said in all the years of the nights. Salinger was a great American original, the master of all dialogue -writers, the supreme artist of everyday speech. He was also the great romantic lover of the quixotic gesture. Gopnik uses the word 'high- hearted' in describing Salinger. It is a good one. For the great humor the sheer funniness of 'Catcher in the Rye' is certainly what makes it still one of the preeminently re-readable books. Gopnik did not have time to really go into the Glass stories, of which there are five long ones, not four as he said. The last was the disaster the Hapworth story after which Salinger did not publish. I think unfortunately the critics were right about it. And it is a real question of whether Salinger in his subsequent unpublished writings lost himself to his own mannerisms, or miraculously found a way to a voice and perception which again will vitally connect with a world of readers. As I understand it in some deep way what Salinger has already done is more than a whole army of writers will ever do. His accomplishment is a one- of- a kind work of genius, a true American masterpiece. God chooses very few to do the really great things of this world. Salinger was one of them.

REMant  02/02/2010 01:45 PM Report

I had to read Catcher in the Rye in high school, I think, and can't remember a thing about it. It sits in a box in the attic. The blank exists, I assume, because it said nothing of relevance. I tend to think it has remained a best seller mainly because other people think it should have. BTW, I don't know anyone who repeats things like that, except playwrights and script writers, who always do it, which I have always found annoying. Whether Salinger withdrew or not depends on your perspective. How many normal people think they should be public figures? I believe the problems of returning soldiers was a commonplace. Movies were made about it. One good point: verbose writers do tend leave nothing for the reader to add, excellent in non-fiction, but deadly in a novel, however, I think my 12th grade teacher pointed that out.