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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
severino sometimes you focus on the oddest stuff. i mean that because this is a total tangent and not the point i was trying to make.
i don't know about you but i read demian and steppenwolf plus other things when i was 17/18/19. it was formative--or deformative (in a good way). it blew my mind of course at the time, but then he was derivative wasn't he? "illustrated jung". a lot of people don't take him seriously, criticize his way of writing, whatever. and yet-- he was great for me at that age. couldn't read him again at this point though.
also i could never get into the glass bead stuff. got too ponderous, i lost patience. but he had done his work already. many years later i read siddharta and it was "okay."
as for catcher in the rye-- it's very significant to a lot of people. i don't think it's a great book but it's a good one, and it's aimed at teenagers, no? i mean the original target audience were grownups, but the ones who took it to heart were the kids. and rightfully so. were there even teenagers before that book?
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Wait a minutia ... are you calling
me a high school intellectual? That's it!!
Nah, just fucking round. Sorry.
I do focus on the oddest stuff, and I'm really into tangents, but I still think what I said was relevant to at least some parts of the discussion. Think. I'm not sure.
I read Steppenwolf and Siddartha at about 19. Thought they were both tremendous at the time. Haven't thought about either much. Unlike Carcher, which was really one of my first experiences reading something "good" for pleasure. It sticks with me, and I think about it fairly regularly -- have done so for almost 25 years now, so it's a special one for me, as it is for many many people. Not as special as Franny and Zooey or Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, or "A Perfect Day for Bananfish," but still ... I'm a sucker for some Holden.
but when I mentioned Salinger, I meant ... Salinger. Not just Catcher. I was curious about whether or not my personal feelings, and the influence of my English professor mother, have made me biased. Was wondering if anyone else thought he belonged in a discussion of best 20th century literature.
But yeah I'm an odd duck man. I'm all over the place.
I genuinely think 100 Years of Solitude is in the running for best novel of the 20th century, though. Not that I've read a fraction of tjof 20th century's novels, but I've read a lot of those that are deemed classics, and it's a contender, for sure.
Ok at this point I'm just saying stuff as it pops into my head. Things are weird in my life right now. I need to blah a little.