Korean Job Discussion Forums

Tiberious aka Sparkles · Joined: 23 Jan 2003 Location: I'm one cool cat!

Because it's only a matter of time...

Xerxes · Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 3:09 am Post subject:

Unless he's gone in a new direction from the short stories and Catcher, who'd wanna read that. It's harder to reinvent yourself than one may think, especially if you'd had all the reinventing to revise and mull over in your isolation. The thing is, he may be so evolved away from what we originally liked (I suppose that only those that liked him would post or give a f*** about this all) that we may not even recognize the change as really him anymore, and if he's so changed, not that many people may actually want to read him, just like many people don't read a lot of the "new" (serious) writers.

He may have been a one-hit wonder like Joseph Heller. Heller wrote more too, but does anybody find his other writing very significant? I know I was really disappointed. I really liked Raymond Carver and Solzhenitsyn (mother, what a name!). I have to admit that I didn't read too much in the last 5 years.

merlot · Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 3:25 am Post subject:

It'll be a perfect day for banana fish if Salinger ever publishes anything again. He is such a master of character-driven stories that I think I'd have to read whatever he put out just to try and see where his mind may have been all these years.

Tiger Beer · Joined: 07 Feb 2003

Tiberious aka Sparkles · Joined: 23 Jan 2003 Location: I'm one cool cat!

Tiger Beer · Joined: 07 Feb 2003

Xerxes · Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 3:15 pm Post subject:

Tiger Beer · Joined: 07 Feb 2003

I guess it being so dated is what is so great about it. Even the humor of that time is captured.

Funny.. the time I posted that is nearly 6am, which is about the time I came home last night after a long binge drink.

I should put a breathalizer on my computer.

Xerxes · Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 5:31 pm Post subject:

If you can reference ole Tom after a night of sausing, that's not all bad. What you said was valid: Heller may very well be forgotten in just about one more generation, and that will be too bad for the major major major major and his crab-apple cheeky ilk.

I have a college buddy that owns like 10 copies of Catcher and swears by it for his daily communion to

ella · Joined: 17 Apr 2006

Hear, hear, merlot.

"Catcher in the Rye" is shallow and trite, once through it was enough. The rest, however, especially the legacy of the Glass family, is nothing short of pure brilliance.

skinhead · Joined: 11 Jun 2004

merlot · Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 2:52 am Post subject:

coolsage · Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 10:10 am Post subject:

Don't know if Salinger has another book in him (and I have the same concern about Kurt Vonnegut), but I hope that his illegitmate son, Tom Robbins, will write something soon.

Woland · Joined: 10 May 2006 Location: Seoul

I didn't vote because there wasn't a category for 'Yeah, he has written some and someday we'll see it'. I don't think he has been writing like mad all these years. And as for what we'll see, maybe we'll like it and maybe we won't. I suspect it will be a mixed bag, like his earlier work. I never got into Catcher in the Rye, but really liked Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters.

As for Heller, I did like Catch-22, but Good as Gold was crap. Something Happened, though, was a disturbing book. I struggled with it, stopping reading and picking it up again over a period of years. It was such a tough read, a novel about the banality of the life of the narrator, but something kept bringing me back to it. When I did finally get through it, I appreciated how Heller had written it so flatly in order to increase the effect of the single moment of powerful emotion in the novel. But it's not a book I'll go back to again.

Ya-ta Boy · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994

I read Catcher when it was still banned. The copy I had had had the cover torn off. I remember walking down the hall at school and wondering if my foot was going to touch the floor. Read it again years later and couldn't recapture the feeling. But I guess once is enough.

I think Catch 22 is brilliant. It spoke to a lot of people during Vietnam. It might be dated like some say, but I don't see it. I suspect it will continue to speak to those who find themselves in a similar situation. It might have helped that Major Major Major Major seems to have become a school guidance counselor in a small Iowa high school after the war--we could only get in to see him when he wasn't there. We had to get a pass for a specific time and leave a note telling what info we wanted. The books would be on his desk and he would be gone. Something Happened is one of the books at the top of my favorite books list. Try reading it when you are past 40 and your life isn't where you expected it to be.