Monday, December 26, 2016

Holden Caulfield’s Christmas Prequel to ‘Catcher in the Rye’

The Daily Beast: Before J.D. Salinger’s iconic teenaged character ever appeared in the author’s most famous novel, he was the protagonist of a Christmas short story in The New Yorker.

4 comments:

Rick said...

I know the failure is mine but Holden has always rubbed me the wrong way. Even when I first read RYE when I was in junior high (middle school) I thought Holden was the biggest phony in the book. I loved the Glass family chronicles though....
(Rick Libott)

Rick said...

The Glass Family stories are the largest inspiration for director Wes Anderson's THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS of course.
(Rick Libott)

Lawrence Person said...

Hated Holden when I read Catcher in the Rye. After reading Nine Stories some years later, I concluded Salinger hated Holden far more than I ever could...

Don Coffin said...

I didn't *like* HC, but I *understood* him. When I read "Catcher," in 1961 or 1962, I was a kid growing up in Indianapolis, a place which seemed to me to be a wasteland populated by hypocrites. So I understood the basis for HC's words and actions, even when he seemed to me to be as hypocritical as some of the people he was condemning.