I was going to write about that dystopian novel 1984, since I had just read it, but to be honest I didn’t find it overly interesting so instead I’ll discuss The Catcher in the Rye, which I found more enjoyable. It’s about a depressed guy stumbling around New York drunk, sneaking into bars and being robbed by prostitutes. That’s pretty much what happens. There’s not much plot, nor is there really much character development save for the end. Really there’s no recurring characters except for the main character’s family. Everybody else are just people the protagonist meets along the way. They never show up again, which is a shame, because some of them are pretty entertaining.

The novel centers around Holden Caulfield after getting expelled from his boarding school. While he’s waiting for Wednesday to be sent home he gets in a fight with his roommate and then runs away. The rest of the book is spent, as I’ve already stated, sneaking into bars, getting robbed by prostitutes—things like that. Anything else I say will only sound like a minor detail, but that’s because the entire book is made up off minor details. It feels more real that way. The book is written in the way you’d expect an edgy sixteen year old to write it, with no long and eloquent prose, just entire pages dedicated to slandering people. I thought it was pretty funny. My favorite joke is probably too obscene for my younger fan base. My second favorite joke is near the beginning. Holden is asking his classmate Ackley if he wants to go see the movies with a friend and Ackley asks who’s going. And then in his head Holden says that Ackley is always asking who’s going. If Ackley were stranded on an island and a boat was coming to rescue him he’d ask who was rowing before he got on. I realize it’s probably not that funny to you. You’d have to read the book to find it funny. Anyway there’s not much else to say since the plot is pretty barebones. The voice of the book is nice. Like a real person’s. Usually the narrator is talking like Shakespeare even though they’re supposed to be a pretty stupid character. Holden says at the beginning his vocabulary is awful and it shows in the writing, repeated words and phrases everywhere. This book was written and takes place in the sixties so I was pretty surprised how relevant Holden’s thoughts were. He calls everyone phonies because they’re all fake as hell and aren’t genuine at all. I didn’t know people were getting upset with the fakeness of the world in the sixties. I thought they were dying in the war. The Catcher in the Rye is supposed to be a relatable book for teenagers. I didn’t find it very relatable. But I found a lot of the points agreeable, mainly on the part about fakers and phonies. All in all, pretty cool book.