martes, 24 de febrero de 2009

About J. D. Salinger a review


I just finished reading Catcher in the Rye.
It is not that an easy book to read at first, then it really gets hold of you.
As the reader goes by the pages, the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, a young teenager who has problems at school, tells you what his whereabouts were when he got fed up with his environment.
A talented writer, does not want to try, so he skips some subjects and remains with the point.
From the very first pages you feel just as if a today’s 16 years old boy would talk to you. So the story is stil valid, even now after more than 50 years have passed.
The places might have changed, but the reader will enjoy every mile along the way from school to the many streets and places Holden visits.
All the troubles tell us about the author himself?
Yes, as it is unavoidable for a painter to leave all through the canvases surface, the trace of his own thoughts and emotional states.
Though the mastery and style prevale.
You will maybe understand the young man’s points of view, perhaps not.
I really loved his closest ones, family, friends. Some of his tastes.
You will try to get inside to lend him an ear, make him understand, like anyone of us would do with any young hearted one.
The questions remain the same, the characters can be any of today’s kids.
So take the chance to know this romantic hearted idealist boy, who is so close to nihilism.
It made me remember of my own youth times, when I used to walk streets and blocks just for the hell of it.
The language is amazingly familiar, a little bit hard to understand at first, but adults in the book speak like I would, as I’m long already grown up. It is a book you end up loving, the theme’s so humane, the troubles so next to us, anything he wants or does do not escape from our own personal story.
Lastly, I can no less be impressed about the clear style Salinger writes it with I felt like he was directly telling this novel, as if I attended a monologue play with Salinger on the role of this young man.
So I strongly recommend this novel, not a long but an entertaining one, that you will read with pleasure.
I also recommend the short story "The laughing man".

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