01
The book recommended to you today is The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, a famous American writer. When it was first published, it became the “monster of the flood” in the eyes of some mainstream stupid and serious people in the United States at that time. Some American libraries listed it as a forbidden book.
Later, this book was listed as a compulsory extra-curricular book by most American middle schools and colleges, and some public schools also used it as a textbook.
This book has sold more than 10 million copies in the United States, and now it has sold more than 60 million copies worldwide, making Salinger a literary master.
Celebrities such as Bill Gates and Woody Allen have recalled that this book had a very important impact on their reading in adolescence.
The New York Times once commented:
In the United States, reading The Catcher in the Rye is as important as getting the approval of a tutor after graduation.
Salinger told the world who is the Beat generation and who is the rebel hero.
The Catcher in the Rye American writer J.D. Salinger
02
In this book, we all like Holden’s passage:
“There are a group of children playing games in a large wheat field. There are tens of thousands of children. There is no one nearby – no adult, I mean – except me. As for me, I’m standing at the edge of that bastard’s cliff. My duty is to watch there. If any child runs to the edge of the cliff, I will catch him. I mean, the children are running wildly, and I don’t know where they are running, and I have to get out of there Come and catch them. I do such things all day. I just want to be a catcher in the wheat field. ”
In the novel, Holden is a 16-year-old high school student. His academic performance is extremely poor, he failed many courses, and he was expelled from the school. As a result, he became an exiled teenager, sitting alone on the top of the mountain, looking at the hypocritical world from afar.
During the three-day wandering, Holden met various people. Standing in the middle of adulthood and childhood, he divided the world into two parts, sincere and hypocritical, but full of contradictions.
Holden’s brother, who was innocent by nature, died of illness. He also has a sister, only 10 years old, who is also simple.
The two had a sincere conversation. Holden always imagined that there was a large group of children playing games in the wheat field, without any adults watching, and there was a cliff next to them.
“What I have to do is catch every child running to the cliff – I mean, if they run without looking at the direction, I have to come from where to catch them. I do that all day, just be a catcher in the wheat field,” Holden said.
Our Holden, the young child in the book, took his little sister Phoebe to ride a wooden horse before leaving the city.
Phoebe rode on the wooden horse, lap after lap. Holden thought: I almost cried out his mother. I’m really happy. I can tell you honestly, I don’t know why. She wears such a blue coat and keeps turning around. It looks really his mother beautiful.
Holden, who is 16 years old, is a simple child. What he wants to watch most is the pure heart of those children. The reason why he hates this hypocritical world is that those hypocritical people have polluted the pure heart of children. In Holden’s eyes, nothing is more terrible than this, so he is desperate to be a catcher in the wheat field.
In fact, the world is full of Holden. Holden, 16, 30 and 60. They saw through the mediocrity of the world, but were unable to surpass it. They cannot be “me”, but they disdain to be “him”.
03
Reading, only the collision of different views can produce more sparks of thought.
The following is my discussion with my friend about the book “Catcher in the Rye”. If you happen to have read this book, you can leave a message at the end of the article to express your views, and I will reply carefully.
Mr. PH: Have you read the book “Catcher in the Rye”?
Yan Yue (Fang Xiaba): Yes, I have. You should have read it too. How do you feel?
Mr. PH: I just finished reading yesterday. I think we all have the shadow of Holden more or less, but we don’t know how to express it or how to rebel, so we have to compromise with all the people and things around us. These are some of my views. Do you think Holden, the main character in the novel, has any practical significance?
Tyrant (Fang Xiaba): Holden not only saw the drawbacks of realism, but also saw the drawbacks of idealism. At the same time, he also understood that time limits the ideal and reality, so he placed life at the junction of reality and ideal, and did not compromise with reality, nor isolate reality, there is ideal, but also denied the eternal value of ideal. His thinking has a color of absurdism, At the same time, I want to correct the deviation between reality and ideal reality.
Mr. PH: Yes. As the end of the book said, he also missed those people he once hated.
Tyrant (Fang Xiaba): The people he once hated are also the epitome of the reality he once faced. He hated them, but still had to be with them. At the same time, he stimulated his passion to change, and then the passion dissipated little by little. Finally, this period of time became a part of his life and became a part of himself. This is somewhat similar to Camus. People can never change their lives. Anyway, what kind of life is half the same.
Mr. PH: Yes, I have finished reading Camus’s “The Outsider”.
Violation (Fang Xiaba): Taking a hostile attitude towards the part of life that does not meet your wishes will push you to another extreme.
Mr. PH: So tolerance should also be a part of life?
Violation (Fang Xiaba): There is a difference between tolerance and single-minded forgiveness.
Mr. PH: There is also a problem of tolerance, which needs to be weighed.
Illegal (Fang Xiaba): Yes. Even the laws of physics will have a universal scope. Hawking said in the brief history of time that any physical theory is temporary and you cannot prove it forever. No matter how many experiments it has met, it can never be guaranteed that it will not conflict with the next time.
Mr. PH: Yes. I think Holden’s relationship with his sister Phoebe is particularly pure. In other words, his sister Phoebe may be the whole sustenance of his real feelings, which his so-called girlfriends cannot compare with. What’s your opinion?
Fang Xiaba: Yes, the relationship between him and his sister is the purest. Holden’s childhood was also the time when he was closest to his ideal. The experience he recalled was also the process of getting away from his childhood step by step. The main reason why he didn’t give up his ideal was that his sister loved him.
Mr. PH: My sister didn’t want him to leave, so she insisted on going with him, but he refused because he knew it was just his own ideal, and no one else could participate in it.
Tyrant (Fang Xiaba): His feelings with his classmates, his teachers and all the people he knows are not as pure as his feelings with his sister. He feels that all the people he knows are tortured by ideals and reality. Everyone puts his innocence in the deepest part of his heart. Although he is fighting against this torture, he cannot avoid being eroded to some extent.
Mr. PH: Yes.
The implication of this book is that childhood is the purest stage of human beings. In the process of human growth, innocence is more or less inevitably eroded. What makes us grow up also potentially erodes our best. His teacher, several of his friends and girlfriends, and himself were all as innocent as his sister.
Mr. PH: Yes, this is a book that allows us to miss our childhood infinitely, and also a book that allows us to recognize the relationship between ideal and reality in adulthood. Salinger, the author of this book, also said in an interview that Holden is actually himself in a sense.
Mr. PH: This year is the centenary of Salinger’s birth. This book has made a sensation throughout the United States.
Yan Yue (Fang Xiaba): Well, although the author and we are not in the same era, his thoughts are really beyond time.
Mr. PH: Yes. This may also be a meaning of literature.
As George R. R. Martin said, reading can experience a thousand kinds of life. People who don’t read can only live once.
The reason why we keep reading is that through reading we can understand different lives, understand the world in a more complete way, and live our lives better.
I hope that after reading “The Catcher in the Rye”, we will live a more real and wonderful life as much as possible.
