Connecting Singles^® Forums100% Free Online Dating

Do you find the guy who dreamt to catch others from falling, right there hidden in the rye fields, justified in his view of people as phonies?

I'll have to get back to you on that one

Good book.

Catcher in the Rye is in a sense a coming of age story in which the main character, Holden Caulfield, comes to terms with the realities of the adult world....that having to deal with and accept the cynicism, deceit, insincerity, etc. that are part of the reality of life....a reality from which we try to protect children, but which they all must learn to understand and accept.

So, yes, I think this view of people as phonies is justified. It is a term used by Holden to express the idea that being a grownup simply means living in a world that is full of deception, that the idealized world that we try to make for children doesn't exit. It is a theme of bitterness and sadness for the human race...why we have to be like that, who knows, but we are.

Salinger, in a sense, shows great naivete and sensitivity in dealing with this subject...and if you know much about Salinger, he pretty much decided not to join in the fray, becoming pretty much a recluse for much of his life.

Sounds very familiar.........

I read the books ages ago...and never forgot it.....similiar affect on me as "This Boy's Life"...altho different conclusions....but yes, naiveté can be a dangerous to your health....Darwinism forbids it...and the pole opposite to being naive is being cynical, I suppose....

What sounds familiar?

Well, if you want to become one of America's perennial mystery celebs, write a bestseller, then go into seclusion.....I'm just doing it the other way round....now all I have to do is write the bestseller.....

never read the book

Lacking a sense of humor?





Sorry, guess I don't get the joke....I don't see Salinger as a 'celeb' mystery or otherwise. As a literature major in University I studied and wrote papers on his work. He is (or was I don't know if he was a great artist. The fact that he chose to be reclusive had to do with his 'take' on things in respect to the large world, and the way he felt he could function or not function as a 'famous' author. He did not become a recluse to gain attention for being a recluse. He didn't need to seek any kind of notoriety to increase or inhance the reception of his work. So, I guess I don't see the joke. Sorry.

oops correction

He was a great author...

Don't be sorry, I'm not....
You didn't get the joke because it wasn't a joke. It was a comment. Interviewing Salinger became the ultimate trophy for journalists simply because he never gave any.....

But then again, I bow to your obvious superior knowledge, I haven't done any papers on the man, merely read his book...

...and actually, if I recollect..... I read it when I was sixteen, on holiday, and I lost it while chasing girls on the beach....I was only half-way thru it....was quite funny actually....

He wrote a couple of collections of stories as well as Catcher in the Rye. He was not a prolific author, but the the quality and sensitivity of the work he did produce is highly regarded, and not as any kind of popular fiction. He did not want to function in the larger world as a 'famous' author because he felt it would inhibit the work he produced...which, ironically, came to not much....but he also did not want to discuss ad infinitum the work he had produced but preferred to let it speak for itself. The fact that such a major issue was made by journalists out of this man's desire to be left alone only serves as an example of the vulger-like attitudes of modern journalists.

Sorry for not replying in time. Sort of Gilly, starting and thread and running away?
Well Holden is not an icon to me as others heroes I have seen and loved in literature, though his protest is strong and quite valid. One meets phoniness everywhere. I think that is inmensely connected to the necessitiy people feel of feeding their egos and climbing in society: a "good" personality, a "good advice", a "good gesture".
The other day I was in a posh house talking to one of my clients, and this lady who is a poorer friend of them -but with the nose always high in front of even poorer people- got into the living room where I was talking to this gentleman. The gentleman`s mother, a senile old lady was dozzing off on her wheelchair in the same room. The younger lady said hello to everybody with those smiles I know well, and without wasting time walked straight to the old lady and gave her a smacking kiss that everybody around could hear well. Given that my society and many others molded in the Western cast has deep despise for old people and oldness, then, what does it mean? this lady suddenly started lovng old people? or she has a deep respect for them, I do not know the answer, but I would like to see her in a different situation with another old person. I left the house and almost then I remembered Holden.

As for Salinger, he is a true hero. A prophet of a faith he took by heart. Dealing with the dark things of his own life and seeing many things outside as loathsome, he would have never gone lower in getting the phoniness of others.

The subject of phoniness is very delicate as it would disclose things in all of us. Have you noticed Portiea that within the few answers to the question above, almost nobody wants to talk about the degrees of phoniness in their lives and surroundings?