Holding out for Holden (a post not about JD Salinger, but about F. Scott Fitzgerald)
I think I’ve read JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye about four or five times. I like to tell people it’s my favorite book only I’m not too sure I believe in that kind of superlative. It’s a damn good book anyway.
Throughout the book the leading character (Holden) mentions he’s a big fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and to be frank with you, it was the next book I read upon finishing Catcher for the first time and I thought I was gonna love it, only I didn’t.
I think I’ve told you for like a hundred times how I couldn’t even finish the book the first time around and so on, but bottom line is, I’m not really a fan of Gatsby. And this coming from a guy who kind of likes Hemingway. Like, do I think Farewell to Arms is cooler than The Great Gatsby?
Yes, I do.
But I’m giving in to common sense here and second-guessing my personal opinion:
Somehow, and for gut feeling alone, last paragraph’s assertion just doesn’t ring right in my ear and therefore I’m planning on adding more F. Scott Fitzgerald books to my reading list. I mean not Gatsby: been there, done that, sorry if it was not my thing, etc- but the writer.
Let’s see how the to-be-read queue fares: There’s that Gaiman book for kids (Coraline) which M**** also lent me, and then there’s that new Dave Eggers novel (the one about the African refugee or something)… and there’s also some Vietnam war book, and Brave New World, too, because I was like 11 when I first read it. And there’s Eisner’s Comics & Sequential Art, which is a sheer miracle my giving in to reading that kind of stuff (was never into Eisner, you know? Yeah, shame on me and etc). But of course, all of them providing I actually make it through this very odd collection of ghost stories (?) by Edith Wharton. And apropos of nothing at all I have just realized I have never read Frankenstein. And then…
And then…
And then…
…Look, to be perfectly honest with you I swear I was planning on going somewhere with this post when I started but damn if I haven’t totally lost direction…
Throughout the book the leading character (Holden) mentions he’s a big fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and to be frank with you, it was the next book I read upon finishing Catcher for the first time and I thought I was gonna love it, only I didn’t.
I think I’ve told you for like a hundred times how I couldn’t even finish the book the first time around and so on, but bottom line is, I’m not really a fan of Gatsby. And this coming from a guy who kind of likes Hemingway. Like, do I think Farewell to Arms is cooler than The Great Gatsby?
Yes, I do.
But I’m giving in to common sense here and second-guessing my personal opinion:
Somehow, and for gut feeling alone, last paragraph’s assertion just doesn’t ring right in my ear and therefore I’m planning on adding more F. Scott Fitzgerald books to my reading list. I mean not Gatsby: been there, done that, sorry if it was not my thing, etc- but the writer.
Let’s see how the to-be-read queue fares: There’s that Gaiman book for kids (Coraline) which M**** also lent me, and then there’s that new Dave Eggers novel (the one about the African refugee or something)… and there’s also some Vietnam war book, and Brave New World, too, because I was like 11 when I first read it. And there’s Eisner’s Comics & Sequential Art, which is a sheer miracle my giving in to reading that kind of stuff (was never into Eisner, you know? Yeah, shame on me and etc). But of course, all of them providing I actually make it through this very odd collection of ghost stories (?) by Edith Wharton. And apropos of nothing at all I have just realized I have never read Frankenstein. And then…
And then…
And then…
…Look, to be perfectly honest with you I swear I was planning on going somewhere with this post when I started but damn if I haven’t totally lost direction…
posted by 186282mps at 8:06 AM
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