Holden Caulfield's Implicature

Speranza

The Critics: Hitting the Nail on the Head  vs Missing the Nail Completely I am collecting what various critics have said about "The Catcher in the Rye." On the left you will find statements which really hit the nail on the head. On the right I have collected what is, from my point of view, remarkably stupid criticism that does not hit the nail on the head at all - possibly the other way round.

HITTING THE NAIL ON THE HEAD MISSING THE NAIL COMPLETELY "Holden Caulfield struck me as an urban, a transplanted Huck Finn." "The novel is a brilliant tour de force that has sufficient power and cleverness to make the reader chuckle and - rare indeed - even laugh aloud." Harvey Breit, 1951 Here is an opinion from a FICTIONAL character:   Der soll sich mal den Salinger durchlesen. Das ist echt, Leute! Ich kann euch nur raten, ihn zu lesen, wenn ihr ihn irgendwo aufreissen koennt.Reisst euch das Ding unter den Nagel, wenn ihr es bei irgendwem stehen seht, und gebt es nicht wieder her! Leiht es euch aus und gebt es nicht wieder zurück. Ihr sagt einfach, ihr habt es verloren. Das kostet 5 Mark, na und? Edgar Wibeau in DIE NEUEN LEIDEN DES JUNGEN W. by Ulrich Plenzdorf "Holden is bewildered, lonely, ludicrous and pitiful." "His troubles, his failings are not of his own making but of a world that is out of joint." "There is nothing wrong with him that a little understanding and affection, preferably from his parents, could not have set right." "Though confused and unsure of himself, like most 16-year-olds, he is observant and perceptive and willed with a certain wisdom." "His minor delinquencies seem minor indeed when contrasted with the adult delinquencies with which he is confronted." "Salinger, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere, tells a story well, in this case under the special difficulties of casting it in the form of Holden's first-person narrative." "This was a perilous undertaking, but one that has been successfully achieved." "Salinger's rendering of teen-age speech is wonderful: the unconscious humor, the repetitions, the slang and profanity, the emphasis, all are just right." "Holden's mercurial changes of mood, his stubborn refusal to admit his own sensitiveness and emotions, his cheerful disregard of what is sometimes known as reality are typically and heart-breakingly adolescent." New York Times, 1951 Another opinion from a FICTIONAL (?!) character:   "They do still ban Catcher, here in the United States and in Canada too. ..."    "I think it's quite charming," Salinger says, his eyes twinkling. "In these days, when anything goes in literature, movies, and even TV, to think there are some places so isolated, so backward, so ill-informed as to what's going on in the world that they can still get all hot and bothered about something as innocent as Catcher. I mean, if there was ever a crusader against sin, it was Holden Caulfield." from: W.P.Kinsella, Shoeless Joe "And of course the Catcher's colloquial balancing act is not just something boldly headlined on page one." "It is wonderfully sustained from first to last." "And so too, it seemed to me, was everything else in the book: its humor, its pathos, and, above all, its wisdom, the certainty of its world view." Ian Hamilton, 1988 cont     Predictable and boring. Ernest Jones 1951    The addressee cannot, finally, identify himself with Holden Caulfield, for Holden is hilariously, ridiculously sick, and the addressee lives in a world where adulthood is health. John W. Aldridge, 1956  Jerome David Salinger is an extremely skillful writer, and Holden's dead-pan narrative is quick-moving, absurd, and wholly repellent in its mingled vulgarity, naïveté, and sly perversion. Christian Science Monitor, 1951    ... formidably excessive use of amateur swearing and coarse language... Catholic World, 1951  You can like garbage. We just felt there had to be better books out there. Pam Souza, parent of a Marysville High School student who made the superintendent pull CR  from the required curriculum in 1997 cont