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stone monkey;264341 said:
Like all those people who say they totally empathised with Holden Caulfield when they were youger, I suspect. As someone who read Catcher in the Rye as an adult, I just found the character to be a complete dick.
He was a dick, but he was a somewhat observant dick who lied to rearrange things to his favor in the reader's eyes. The manner in which he lies is a mix between subtle and poke-your-eye-obvious and most people miss it for some reason. What they get out of it is that Holden says everyone's a fake and that being discontent with that "fact" is okay. So being Holden is a good thing to them.
What they miss is that some of what Holden calls fake is genuine and part of the reason he calls things fake is because he's afraid to step out of his observing shell and act. He also calls things fake, but he doesn't ever really define truth. To the careful reader, Holden Caulfield is awesome - as an example of what not to be.
I really liked the book, but I got tired of trying to show people this stuff.
