Word: rye
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that bore two Fadiman standards: lucidity and a mind at work. He found those qualities most notably in a first novel of the 1950s. Not all his colleagues agreed with him, but with his remarkable powers of persuasion, he got "concurrence" from the board on The Catcher in the Rye--"that rare miracle of fiction," Kip called it, "a human being created out of ink, paper and the imagination." Kip was also a master of self-deprecation. When a memoir written by octogenarian William Shirer came in, Kip, a fellow octogenarian, fussed: "One should never reach...
...nearly five decades, Catcher in the Rye and the character of Holden Caulfield have been the example of adolescent alienation. Holden's alienation and despair are served up to young minds without much context or perspective. Young people today need a catcher in the rye to keep them from the steep cliffs of nihilism and moral relativism that are sold to them in popular media and in the classroom. Hats off to the youth workers who are catching kids right and left every day before they go over the cliff. PAUL SAILHAMER Fullerton, Calif...
...teenager had enthusiastic, precocious relations with grownups. But oddly, he stayed a precocious boy. His entire life has been a dramatization of the grownup problem. His struggle to become an adult has played before the world in excruciating detail. The other day I took The Catcher in the Rye up to the edge of the bee yard and sat reading it for the first time in 35 years. J.D. Salinger's book, published in 1951, is one of the founding documents of American adolescence, I guess--and an early source of the baby boom's self-image of sanctified youth...
Considering his wealth of symptoms--lethargy, forgetfulness, loss of interest in friends and studies--can there be any doubt that Holden Caulfield, the dropout hero of J.D. Salinger's 1950s masterpiece The Catcher in the Rye, would be on Luvox, Prozac or a similar drug if he were a teenager today? No doubt whatsoever. A textbook teen depressive by current standards, Caulfield would be a natural candidate for pharmaceutical intervention, joining a rising number of adolescents whose moodiness, anxiety and rebelliousness are being interpreted as warning signs of chemical imbalances. Indeed, if Caulfield had been a '90s teen, his incessant...
...know from my own experience with clinical depression (contracted as an adult and treated with a combination of therapy and drugs) that such diseases are real and formidable, impossible to wish away. But for kids in the murky emotional borderlands described in books like The Catcher in the Rye, antidepressants, stimulants and sedatives aren't a substitute for books and records, heroes and antiheroes. "I get bored sometimes," Holden Caulfield says, "when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am--I really do--but people never notice it. People never notice anything...