It killed me. I got a goddam big bang out of it. I really did.

One of the greatest books ever written.

Side note: JD Salinger's son played an Alpha Beta in "Revenge of the Nerds".

And the 1990 incarnation of Captain America.

I remember I really liked it... but frankly that's pretty much all I remember about it. It's been a while.

Ok, I also remember that it was the book that Mel Gibson kept buying again and again in Conspiracy Theory, but that's not a very helpfull bit of trivia.

Thats what I remembered too. Something about Lee Harvey Oswald having the book too.

I read it after watching "Six degrees of seperation", since that movie made the book out to be immensely interesting.
Don't know if my expectations were way to high or if I was just too young (it was a very long time ago), but it didn't actually blow me away, seemed a bit rambling and kind of pointless...
Maybe I'm just an oafish illiterate brute, though, that could also be it.

I was pretty amazed that, according to some reports, some US highschools weren't allowed to include it in the curriculum? Needless to say I really didn't understand what that was about. It didn't appear to be the kind of book likely to turn adolescents into serial killers... (unlike violent video games, obviously - everyone knows those are really damaging to fickle minds ;)

Now don't go around killing anybody else, please. Reading The Catcher in the Rye is almost as dangerous as playing videogames. With you being a gamer and a fan of that book, who knows what could happen ... :/

Phonies, that's who.

I haven't read it, but is there a movie of it I could watch instead? :) I don't have much time to read fictional books due to all this gaming and GOG foruming.

Is it a book that pupils in American schools are normally supposed to read as part of their curriculum? In here were are made to read e.g. "Tuntematon Sotilas" ("Unknown Soldier", about the Finn-Russian war during WWII from the Finnish point of view) and "Seitsemän Veljestä" ("Seven Brothers", considered as some kind of old classic in Finnish literature), but that's about it, or was when I was in school.

I read the Finnish Wikipedia article for The Catcher in the Rye, and the plot sounded oddly convoluted and meh (some guy in New York who drops out of school and then just hangs around with different people?), but maybe it is then told in such a convincing way, right?

The Wikipedia article mentioned there are two Finnish translations for the book, one from 1961 and a newer one from 2004. Not sure which is supposed to be a better translation, the 1961 is said to be good in its own way but inaccurate and not fully faithful to the original. For instance apparently the original is written in some kind of American slang, so the 1961 one is translated to a Helsinki slang. I don't know how that feels in the book, people in New York talking like the young people in 1950s Helsinki?

Not sure how the 2004 translation succeeds, the Wikipedia article doesn't mention it. Maybe it is more faithful to the original then.

I am not really interested to read the English original either, especially if it is not written in proper English.

I read the earlier translation (or adaptation) over the summer and I wasn't all that impressed. Now, I have not read the english version, but I wasn't terribly impressed. It all just felt too much like something every teenager goes through and not terribly interesting. Perhaps I'll track down the original novel and see if that's any better, but I can't really recommend the book.
As far as the movie goes, I think Salinger opposed filming the book to the bitter end. Now that he's dead they might make one some day.

Oh, ok. Maybe then the 1961 translation is a poor adaptation of the original, or the book "works" only for people who can relate to the protagonist somehow... Of course I'd be interested to know why and how it works for these people, why were they blown away by it etc.? There must be some reason why the book is so famous that even I have certainly heard the title in many occassions, a bit like "Citizen Kane" or "To kill a mockinbird" or "Twilight".

I think I'll wait for the movie adaption.

Maybe that's exactly part of its appeal and popularity?

Probably both. There's no guarantee someone will like it, if they can't relate to it in some way, there's a huge chance they'll just be bored. I wouldn't recommend to read any translations though, the first German ones from the 60's were also really lame, despite a famous writer being involved, because they were filtering all the cursing and teenage slang. Apparantly they're based on a UK version instead of the American original, and the UK editors had revised it in many places. In addition to that, the German translators might have played it safe and tried not to be too vulgar or anything. (Not that the original is all that shocking from today's perspective, but back then words like "fuck" were still a big deal.)

Yes, I do believe that's correct. I just didn't think that it was that remarkable. But perhaps that's just the notoriously loose translation, as discussed.

I think it might have something do with the era; all kinds of -social/political - things were brewing in those days that the book connected with. Society had been fixed in one direction after WW2 ended; a new generation geared up and was ready to go...yet they were more or less excluded from the decision making process. They regarded this book to be something as a guideline. Hence it's reputation. I sus.

i read that book too in 2014. but like in most books you have to interpret what you read and understand that the main character is going crazy to the point of self-destruct! D=

"You thought that I would self destruct
But I'm still here
Even in my years to come
I'm still gon be here"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmc8bQoL-J0

so the lesson to be learned is that being crazy is bad ok? also if you go krazeh your friends can help you - like his sister who pulls him out of his own shit and convinces him to return home.... :'( i didn't really enjoy reading that book but at least it wasn't too long

PS: i'm eating skittles! (^_^)