Tag: failing up

The Catcher in the Rye Review

This book gets 2 fancy drinks out of 5; which is infinitesimally fewer drinks than Holden Caulfield consumes in the novel. I think the drinking is making me generous when it comes to scoring.
[The same picture is repeated in a sort of diptych; a fancy stemmed glass, covered in condensation, sits on a table. There is a tantalizing slice of orange (or is it grapefruit, who knows?) in the glass and the word “Tanqueray” scrolls across the glass. Yummy.]

  • Why did I pick this book up?

Now, unlike most people, I did not read The Catcher in the Rye in school. So why, you may ask, did I choose to read it now? Much like a high school student, I did not have much of a choice.

A few weeks ago I was in Toronto visiting my partner’s family. I had neglected to bring a book with me for some reason. My partner suggested I raid her parents’ library for a nice poolside read. This proved to be more challenging than I had anticipated. Apparently when my partner was a teen, she only liked to read depressing things. So the library consisted of the following; it is 1945, and a woman accused of taking a Nazi as a lover is humiliated and punished, she marries, and conflict continues; a collection of narratives by Nigerian child-soldiers; a memoir on eating disorders; the best-selling, but heavy and intense, Book of Negroes; and this classic, the John Lennon murdering (my favourite joke to make about this book) Catcher in the Rye.

I figured that out of all these choices, The Catcher in the Rye would be the most enjoyable and pool-side appropriate. I think I may have been wrong.

  • Would I recommend why/why not?

Well, this book killed John Lennon – I will never stop saying this – so make of that what you will. I mean, John Lennon is himself a controversial figure, so maybe for you this is a bonus? So if it is, I recommend this book because it killed him! Otherwise, I don’t recommend this book because it killed him!

No but honestly, I don’t think I would recommend this book. If you have not caught on by this review (what, #5?), the score of the book is a direct reflection of whether or not I would recommend it. It barely gets a passing grade. And this is only due to the latter half of the book, where Holden Caulfield grows a bit less insufferable, and a bit more sympathetic. Heads up: this doesn’t last very long.

  • Quick Synopsis  **SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON, DO I EVEN HAVE TO SAY IT?!**:

The Catcher in the Rye manages to be a book where almost nothing happens, and yet when you try and describe it, it sounds like a lot of stuff has gone down. The novel opens with Holden Caulfield being kicked out of yet another prep school. Because this is back when people communicated via letter, Holden knows that his parents are in the dark about his expulsion. He decides that he is too cowardly to tell them himself, so he decides to go bum around New York for a couple days until he is ready to go home.

What happens? He fights his roommate, he cries, he calls everyone a phony maybe a million times, tells us about his dead brother who is so smart, tells us he hates Hollywood, most writing, and most people. He lies a lot, compulsively it seems, about stuff that is unimportant and bizarre for someone who seems to think everyone else is a fake. Seriously: I’d be intrigued to see how many times he uses a variation of that term. One thing is for sure and it’s that Holden doesn’t seem to own a thesaurus or a metaphorical mirror for his personality.

He drinks, tries to get with various women in a bar, has bad luck, drinks some more. Eventually he hires a prostitute because he is depressed, but finds that too depressing (no shit Sherlock), so he pays her without having sex with her. Then her pimp shows up and they mug him for more money. Basically a bunch of other random stuff happens; he goes on a date with a girl he knows: it goes poorly; Holden has a weird but cute interaction with his little sister; he goes to see an old teacher in the middle of the night for somewhere to stay, the teacher gives him a stern talking to about his life and work ethic, and then proceeds to try and molest him (maybe. This is up for debate, as Holden wakes up to him caressing his hair, which is creepy but not necessarily sexual? Who knows); Holden gets really drunk and catches hypothermia wandering around Central Park wondering where the ducks have gone, and then the story ends, with him seemingly in some sort of convalescent home trying to recover from his illness (there was definitely some hints that it is not just a physical illness he is suffering from). Ya that’s about it. Also, he talks a lot about committing suicide or killing other people (mostly in jest maybe?) so I can see how it might make you a little weird and murderous.

I wanted to get a picture of this book in front of some rye, but I live in the city, so too bad. Here are some pretty flowers to make up for this book’s murderous infamy.
[A hand holds a book in front of some yellow flowers: a leaf caresses the upper right corner of the book. The bottom half of the cover is white, and the top half is reddish: the red creates an intense drawing of a horse, and the white half has a crude outline of a city skyline. “the CATCHER in the RYE” is scrawled across the top in yellow lettering.]
  • Overall brain gushings :

The book annoyed me. But then, interestingly, towards the end of the book, Holden seems less of an annoying young man, and more of a depressed lost soul worthy of sympathy. There was a moment where I thought, “Ok, Holden is annoying, but he’s just a depressed teenager who is having a hard time fitting in, and who hasn’t felt like that?”

Then Holden continues to be his annoying self, and instead of a meaningful and inspiring bildungsroman we get just a weird narrative about an immature guy who doesn’t change or grow at all in the course of the novel, or it seems in the year that follows it.

Holden also treats women like garbage, and gives me the vibes of what we might call an incel today. So that’s nice. I seriously am having a hard time understanding A) How this book came to be considered a classic and B) What kind of teachers think this is a good/interesting book for teens to read and study. I probably would not like literature as much if I’d had to read this in high school instead of 1984.

  • What does it mean?

Wikipedia tells me that this book is about teenage rebellion, superficiality, and themes of belonging and identity. I would agree, but I do not think that Catcher says anything particularly interesting or revolutionary about these things, and it also doesn’t say these things well or in a manner that I found enjoyable to read. I’m not holding my punches with this damn book. Wikipedia says that Catcher demonstrates Holden losing his innocence, and yet I find that we begin the narrative with a cynical and apathetic Holden, and I wonder at what point it is that he really lost his childlike wonder and likeability. Maybe when his younger brother dies – this is the only time where Holden’s emotional reactions seem to make any sense. And yet, it happens before the events of the novel, and does not seem as central as the banal and pedestrian events that get covered in the narrative.

To me, this book represents the ways in which white men are just allowed to write anything. Like, this book doesn’t have anything exciting happen in it. And it’s not written particularly well. And yet, it is popular and hailed a classic. Like Kafka and The Trial, I see this as an example of books that get too much credit. Besides, can anybody even name another of Salinger’s works? No! You can’t! This I firmly believe. Sure, maybe that’s because he wrote a lot of short stories and short story writers get screwed by the hierarchy of literature, but I can name a ton of famous short stories and Salinger’s is not one of them! I’m so over this book, honestly.

  • Favourite passages :

I did not have many favourite passages, but there were a few that either made me laugh, or that somehow humanized Holden and allowed me to make it to the end of the book, unlike The Trial.

The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to’ve met each other. Which always kills me. I’m always saying “Glad to’ve met you” to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though… People are always ruining things for you.

Salinger, pg 114

He was a very nice kid, and I liked him, but I could never see eye to eye with him on a lot of stuff in the Bible, especially the Disciples. He kept telling me if I didn’t like the Disciples, then I didn’t like Jesus and all. He said that because Jesus picked the Disciples, you were supposed to like them. I said I knew He picked them, but that He picked them at random. I said He didn’t have time to go around analyzing everybody. I said I wasn’t blaming Jesus or anything.

Salinger, pg 130-131

“I think that one of these days,” he said, “you’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you’ve got to start going there.”

Salinger, pg 245
  • Things that made me go “ugh” :

Most of the book made my face twist up all ugly-like. Holden is insufferable and I did not find Salinger to be a good writer. Also there is a lot of creepy misogynistic shit in the novel, and Holden is a huge hypocrite.

Also, there is a passage that addresses the title of the book. I thought maybe it would be exciting. Or insightful or something. This is where the title comes from:

“You know what I’d like to be? … I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy”.

Salinger, pg 224-225

What the hell is this?! So yeah. Not super rewarding in my opinion. I’m sure some people would analyze this passage for symbolism or whatever, arguing that Holden’s dream is about saving people when he can’t even save himself, or something like that. But I found this lame.

  • If you liked this (or my review), consider reading :

If you want to read a good and satisfying bildungsroman read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson! Didn’t think that would come up when talking about The Catcher in the Rye eh? But seriously. Wikipedia tells me that Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (which I’ve read and is damn excellent and definitely a coming of age story) is a bildungsroman and you should read that because it is written by a Canadian women! Yass!

If you want to read a classic that is actually good and from a similar era, read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Yes, I know, controversial suggestion, but it happens to be one of my favourite books because of how beautifully written it is, and how ethically challenging the narrative and unreliable narration of Humbert Humbert are. You could also read James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room which is a wonderful novel about jazz, homosexuality, and Paris in the post-WWII era.

If you want to read a book that made a splash in the 50s, read D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover which is super sexy, which Holden Caulfield decidedly is not.

Stay tuned for my next review, Wasted: A Memoir by Marya Hornbacher. *MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING* : This is a memoir about eating disorders. Because of the subject matter, the review will be notably short.

The Trial Review

This book gets 1 out of 5 culturally significant rebels. Also this photo is terrifying.
[A Guy Fawkes Mask is hidden in some foliage. It smiles at you like it knows something you don’t. It gives you the creeps.]

This book gets 1 Archibald Tuttle out of 5. (Skip to end for Brazil reference).

Yes, I know, I’m mixing my metaphors; I’ve got Brazil, I’ve got V for Vendetta, and I even considered somehow referencing 1984 right in my opening, but it just wasn’t happening. Now, without further ado, let’s talk about Kafka.

  • Why did I pick this book up? 

Nearly seven years ago (I know this because it somehow popped into my Facebook memories recently) I went on a used-book buying spree. As a 19 year old, I decided that my collection would be incomplete if it didn’t include any Franz Kafka. After all, he has a whole word to himself, and I knew “Metamorphosis” was hailed as a great classic. Luckily for me, the bookstore had both a collection of his short works, and The Trial. 

These books have sat on my shelf, daring me to open them ever since. I even once brought the short works on holiday, and never made it to them. So, on my latest holiday, I decided I would read The Trial. I figured it would be as good a time as any to read about bureaucracy, especially since I was in the process of applying for government jobs. You can never have too much bureaucracy, right? Intrepid reader that I was, I carried this book to the beach all summer. I managed to make it 167 pages in. That is approximately ⅔ of the way in. I thought I could push through and finish it, but it turns out the real trial is the act of reading this goddamn book.

  • Would I recommend why/why not?

As you can perhaps tell by the fact that I didn’t finish this book, I personally would not recommend it. I would not recommend it because reading it seems to be as tedious an experience as being the protagonist of this book. Of course, the book is great at demonstrating the folly and sheer annoyance of bureaucracy, but there are so many better ways to satirize judicial and administrative insanity. 

The foreword of my copy of The Trial had an introduction that contextualized Kafka’s writing. This is where I learned that during his life, Kafka did not publish the majority of his work. By the time of his death, he only had a few stories (Metamorphosis being one of them) published, and had apparently instructed his friend Max to destroy all his unpublished works. This guy Max, an idiot in my opinion, obviously decided that even though Kafka wasn’t a good writer he was a white man with ideas, and those ideas had to see the light of day. Max is the reason that most of Kafka’s work is published, and all I can say is that Max should’ve listened to Kafka. But I suppose a white man must always fail up, and heaven forbid he not be hailed as a genius. 

This is not my copy of The Trial as my copy got left on the Sunshine Coast. This copy looks more interesting than mine.
[A thumb fake-holds a book; really it is just held in front of an image on a computer screen. It is a copy of The Trial. The cover is orange and covered with cartoon eyes looking at you. Above the book, my computer webcam also peers at you.]
  • Quick Synopsis  **SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON, DO I EVEN HAVE TO SAY IT?!**:

The Trial tells the story of Mr K (K, like KAFKA, GET IT?! Wowie wow), who one morning is informed that he is under arrest, and that a trial will be underway shortly. Now, I made it to page 167 and had yet to figure out why K was under arrest/or what he stood accused of. Instead, K is given the run around, forced to talk to all sorts of low-level judges and administrators, all of which do not know any details about his case, yet always have a very logical explanation as to why no one has the authority to clarify the matter. 

Apparently (I garnered this yet again from the dustjacket and introduction to the book) Mr. K is eventually told that he must prove his own existence. Unfortunately, I did not make it to this point, and from the dustjacket expected this existential conundrum to be more central to the story and to the intellectual exercises that the bureaucratic Catch-22s make your brain do. 

  • Overall brain gushings :

This book was bad. Just a great wall of text – often a character would speak for pages on end – that had a tendency to repeat the same argument and thought experiment. It was tedious. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that all Kafka is translated, and that maybe it would sound less tedious in German? I feel doubtful. Also the main character has a super weird habit of grabbing and kissing random women, so there’s also that going on. Who knew that Kafka would be so good at predicting President Trump and his near-totalitarian regime?

  • What does it mean?

Well, I think The Trial is a meditation on state control and state surveillance. An interesting precursor to Fascism and the surveillance state of today, The Trial is noteworthy for its ability to predict the increase in collection of data (or knowledge in this case) and the difficulty that the everyday citizen has navigating a technological and bureaucratic society. 

However, in the introduction to the text, I learned that Kafka was briefly engaged to a woman. Apparently, Kafka managed to cast doubts as to her desire for marriage, and made himself look like an unsuitable partner (he said he was boring and that life with him would be too sad. Based on his writing, I agree. Also, if a man tells you he isn’t good enough for you, can you blame the woman for believing it?). This led to an intervention of sorts, where the woman’s family ‘interrogated’ and ‘humiliated’ him. The engagement was broken off, and Kafka apparently set to writing The Trial right away. This came as no surprise to me, as the book seems very concerned with reputation, and the idea of a verbal altercation, or a battle of words. Kafka seems concerned with what makes a person’s reputation, and how to change someone’s mind once it is made up. All in all, The Trial seems like a bitter meditation on a failed love story, an attempt to justify his own role in the relationship’s end. Kafka sees himself as persecuted and powerless to stop the interrogation.  Also, it definitely seemed like the rantings of a spurned lover who has decided all women are manipulative and dishonest. 

*MAJOR SPOILER*

Lest you think that by not finishing the book I have robbed myself from truly experiencing and understanding The Trial, well guess what?! I committed the cardinal sin of not only not finishing a book – I also skipped to the end and read the last page, praying that maybe it would have a great and insightful ending that would convince me to keep reading. BUT NO!

The book ends with K being stabbed/executed quote ‘like a dog’. Nice. I basically scoffed when I read this. However, Wikipedia lets me know that apparently Kafka thought this book was funny. So either everyone is reading The Trial wrong, or Kafka had a fucked up sense of humour. Or actually maybe both?

  • Favourite passages : 

Hard to pick a favourite passage in a book that made me want to stab my eyes out, but there were a couple standouts from the muck. Also full disclosure: since I no longer have my copy of The Trial on my person, I totally raided GoodReads for whatever those readers have thought are the most memorable passages. Ya. That’s bad. But so is this book.

 “I had to arrange things as well as I could. That’s obviously a very bad place for the bed, in front of the door. For instance when the judge I’m painting at present comes he always comes through the door by the bed, and I’ve even given him a key to this door so that he can wait for me here in the studio when I’m not home. Although nowadays he usually comes early in the morning when I’m still asleep. And of course, it always wakes me up when I hear the door opened beside the bed, however fast asleep I am. If you could hear the way I curse him as he climbs over my bed in the morning you’d lose all respect for judges. I suppose I could take the key away from him but that’d only make things worse. It only takes a tiny effort to break any of the doors here off their hinges.” 

Franz Kafka, The Trial

“They’re talking about things of which they don’t have the slightest understanding, anyway. It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves.” 

Kafka, The Trial

“it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.’ ‘A melancholy conclusion,’ said K. ‘It turns lying into a universal principle.”

Kafka, The Trial.

So yeah. That is basically it. Only a few noteworthy quotes, as most of the text is full of variations of the above contradictions which while at first seem interesting and insightful, quickly turn tedious and boring.

  • Things that made me go “ugh” :

Everything. Every thing in this book made me want to cry. So many times I wanted to throw this book into the garbage (which is a big deal because I love books almost as much as food). Eventually my partner recommended I stop torturing myself, and that was the moment when my brain stopped turning to mush, and when every cell in my body stopped going “ugh Kafka sucks”.

  • If you liked this (or my review), consider reading :

No matter what you think of The Trial, if you want to see this concept done properly, I can’t suggest watching Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil enough. A disturbing and funny satire, Brazil does all the things that The Trial fails at: it is engaging, it accurately portrays the feeling of entrapment and heaviness tied to bureaucracy and surveillance, and it is a serious mind-fuck. So if you liked The Trial, you will love Brazil, and if you hated The Trial you will love Brazil! So do it, treat yourself to a weird movie that makes the novel version pale in comparison, something I don’t say often about literature/film pairings!

Now, as for books that I thought of when reading The Trial, a few came to mind; I would say read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller for a great satire, 1984 for ruminations on the surveillance state, and The Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittall for a good read on what it means to be accused, and what the judicial system does to victims, families, and the accused. 

Also, don’t let my review dissuade you from reading this book! Maybe you will enjoy it! Kafka apparently loved Russian lit and I hate it, so if you like that stuff Kafka is for you! Also, if you read the Wikipedia page for it, it does give some other possible insights into the text (although it also says that critics often try to fit the text into insightful frameworks more than the text itself indicates, so HAH) so maybe you will get more out of it than I did!

Stay tuned for my next review, There, There by Tommy Orange.