I have often chosen to teach “Catcher in the Rye” to my Year 12 students, but I have always made sure to choose the class carefully. A book published in 1951 by an American author whom most of them will not have heard of is not guaranteed to immediately appeal to the 21st Century New Zealand teenager.
There will predictably be two groups amongst the readers – those who utterly love it, and those who utterly loathe it – but you need to pick a class where you know the former group will be larger than the latter.
Of course, I love it; I never teach a literary text, visual or verbal, which I don’t love. But I can always accept the reasons that kids give for not liking it. You have to be able to identify in some way with Holden Caulfield, or it is simply too easy to label him as a nerdy, unhealthily introspective, foul-mouthed hypocrite. And a spoilt little rich boy. Those students who “get” the novel, always do well with writing examination papers about it; let’s face it, there is a wealth of very very meaty stuff to write about.
Sadly, I will no longer be able to finish my biography about the reclusive Salinger with the words, “and he’s still alive and living in New Hampshire”.
More than “Catcher” however, I love the books about the Glass family – “Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters”; “Franny and Zooey”; “Seymour, an Introduction”. I read and re-read them often, and have done ever snce I discovered them at around 17 years of age.
There is a full and interesting biography of Salinger here.
No comments:
Post a Comment