12 Classics: The Catcher in the Rye

I managed to squeeze another "classic" in this month besides everything else I've been reading!  The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger makes all of the "Top books of the last century" lists I see and was on my AP reading list back in high school. I remember my peers recommending it, but I never got around to it until now.

The story is about 16 year old Holden Caulfield (what a great name!) who, at the beginning of the book, is expelled from yet another fancy all-boys boarding school. Over the next few days he leaves school but instead of going home, wanders around New York City. He has a series of meetings and conversations with various people, but nothing much really happens.

Honestly, I can't say that I enjoyed it at all. The book is narrated in the first person from Holden's point of view, and includes all of his speech patterns, which I found annoying and immature. The plot is rambling at best, lagging at worst. Holden is aimless and depressing, and I wanted to smack him more than once during the book.

I'm a little bit sad that I didn't read this back in high school, because I think I might have actually enjoyed it--or at least appreciated it more. Not that I was ever anything like Holden, but I knew people who were. I can understand why many of my whiny, angsty, smart guy-friends in high school cited it as their favorite book of all time, and I can see the merits of the book as a story about trying to find oneself and failing at every corner. However, between the narration, the aimlessness, and the lack of connection I felt with Holden, I didn't enjoy it and I probably won't reread it if I can help it.

12 Classics: Brave New World

So despite being sadly behind on my 12 Classics challenge for the year, I'm still chugging ahead. I optimistically checked out several classics from the library last week, and still hope to go back to the few classics that I put down halfway through, including Persuasion and The Three Musketeers, but probably not Dune. My husband has also convinced me that I can add True Grit to my list of finished classics as it is a "modern classic" according to people who like westerns (?).

But that's not what this post is about! From my pile of books I got from the library, I read Brave New World in under a week, making it my 4th classic of the year, if you count True Grit.

Brave New World is a famous dystopia novel published in 1931 about a society heavily influenced by industrialization and a strictly controlled caste system. The reader is taken on a detailed tour of how this society works, and gets to see the reactions and observations from a happy insider (Lenina), an unhappy insider (Bernard), a savvy insider (A World Controller), and an outsider (John the Savage).

I've read quite a few dystopian novels so I knew a bit about what to expect, and I was excited to find several parallels with my favorite dystopia novel of all time; Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee. The infantile nature of the citizens, with every need catered to an every pleasure highly encouraged was almost identical in both books--from drug usage to sexual attitudes. Citizens in both worlds are also young-appearing and healthy for their entire lives, and the characters who are unhappy are generally unhappy for almost the same reasons. There are substantial differences of course, but I'm fairly certain that Tanith Lee would list Brave New World among her inspirations for the society depicted in Biting the Sun.

Brave New World is also often categorized or compared with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, but I personally greatly preferred Brave New World.  I felt like Orwell didn't give us a good enough description of how the society in Nineteen Eighty-Four came about, how it worked, or where it was going. It was too Clockwork Orange in it's ending and not rewarding enough in the journey for me. Though Brave New World had a sad ending too, I felt that it was justified and made sense for the character. John the Savage ended things on his terms and the society, unaffected, continued on in it's factory-like efficiency.

Overall I really enjoyed this classic, and I'll probably read it again in a few years to get a broader impression of it. It's probably not appropriate for anyone less than a mature high schooler, but I think that paired with a few other dystopian novels, it can really give people something to think about regarding our future as a civilized society--it certainly gave me things to think about!