Catcher in the Rye

 

Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger:

 

 

I’ve heard about this book about a hundred different ways and I imagined a hundred different scenarios this book could introduce. Therefore I was tremendously unprepared for what I ended up with. The book is about a guy named Holden and his three day journey in New York after he gets kicked out of his prep school. That’s it. Seriously that’s all this “Amazing” novel was all about. A piece of ass rich kid named Holden (what kind of name is that?) who kind of haunts New York.

Bitch Please!

I had so many problems with this book, starting with the premise, the whole idea. This little bitch kid that has some issues and who’s always had some issue applying himself in school, if his retelling of history is to be trusted, gets kicked out and decides to go to New York. Wait, I’m skimping on the details, first he decides to hang out with the guy next door whom he hates and then he hangs out with his roommate whom he thinks is underneath him and shallow. Later he gets jealous and starts a fight. He is jealous this guy is dating a girl he has the hots for but is too big of a pansy to ask out. Then he decides to leave and he heads to New York, signs in to a seedy motel and gets in trouble with a pimp and then he has to pick up the tab for some ugly out of town chicks. Afterwards he decides to call this girl he was seeing for a date the next day but he calls her at midnight. However the girl decides to go out with him and he takes her to a movie, which he purportedly hates to the max but goes about once a week anyway, and then gets mad when she makes friends with a guy. He is a ball of contradictions always saying he hates “phonies” that he really hates “ phonies”. He is probably the biggest fucking phony of them all, he is an expert liar and lets you know this his own opinion of himself and he also hates when people say things twice. Yet he does this particular annoying trait almost the whole fucking book. He is really crazy and if you ask me has way to much money and time on his hands. What he needs is a good fucking scare, a beating or to be put into a fucking public school where he can’t waste any more money. He is always talking about his brother and his sister Phoebe. Why is this book such a big fucking deal, I think its because the kid under all his bullshit wants to be a helpful guy. He wants to be the guy who helps people in short he wants to be a hero but he is all sorts of fucked up. I honestly don’t get the appeal and maybe its one of those books I’d like better if I had read in high school. I doubt it because the whole time I read it I waited for something to happen and nothing happened. Absofuckingloutley nothing super anticlimactic and stupid I didn’t understand what people make all the fuss about. Maybe I’m not as sophisticated or appreciative enough for this kind of work, or maybe I’m right and its fucking stupid. Either way I don’t recommend.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo:

I read this because I felt I had to read something by Hugo and Les Miserabvle is so epically large I am reading it in installments. That being said I decided to read teh Hunchback as it is smaller and I thought more parody than Les Miserable. You know what I found out? Hey it wasn't. But more on that later. The hunchback of Notre Dame really follows the lives of just two characters, Dom Claude Frollo an apathetic character, Pierre Gringoire a character who opens the story by being the philospher who knows all sides of the story more or less. Esmeralda of course the young beautiful VIRGINAL maiden, her love Captain Phoebeus the #1 asshole, (maybe more so than Claude Frollo, and of course the perpetual ghost, Quasimodo. The story begins with the commnecement of the king of fools, Pierre Gringoire the narrator if you will, displays his play and from there we begin to see Paris thru the eyes of the author Hugo, with his sweeping grand vision of his home city. The book is a veritable map of the Paris he knew and the Paris which he is describing in 1560. He then continues to describe the backgrounds of each character into which he weaves a splendid web of interconnectedness. There are times, when Hugo goes on tangents about the architecture and rants about why they tore it down. It almost seems like he wanted to write a history of Parisian architecture and decided to throw in a sort of love story.
Bitch Please!
As far as love stories go, this one kind of maybe really sucked. The whole story revolved around the insanely zealot priest Frollo,who's obsession with Esmeralda takes everyone on a whirlwind ride into despair and death. This was seriously depressing not even the beautiful language could bring me out of the continually growing abyss of "God why is this so sad." considering his next grand novel was titled "Les Miserable" and considering I have only read about half, this is me saying the title of this novel should have been "Les Miserable."
                                                  *SPOILER ALERT*
First of, fuck Dom Claude Frollo, how could he go up and kill Esmeralda, yeah I said it, he fucking hangs her just because she will not love him. And don't get me wrong she is dumb too, she falls in love with the most disgusting display of manliness Hugo could offer. Phoebeus is a douche and a coward. Frollo kills Esmeralda but Phoebus pretty much sentences her to death. Then theres Quasimodo who really can't help being ugly and I know, I get it he's too ugly to be loved, but thats wrong. Everyone deserves to be loved and if there is one thing that continues in every love story it is that love is redemming. As a realist Hugo understood that if Esmeralda kissed him he wouldn't become a prince, and that is the problem with this story. In condemming the love for the ugly he destroys Esmeralda. Quasimodo has been tormented for so long he is bitter and hateful but you can tell that with her love he could change. But she is shallow and falls in love with Phoebues a self deluded idiot who's main goal is just to get in her knickers and he will say just about anything to aachieve that goal. Meanwhile Frollo is in despair trying to fight his inner demons because he has lost his faith in everything. Which calls into account Hugo's atheism. First of God loves all his children, even or especially Quasimodo. Secondly a man without faith (even if it isn't God) will always fall into despair and become cruel for the disbelief in love leads into obsession and corruption. Then theres Hugo's manly display of women. Esmeralda is DUMB! She pretty much leads herself to the gallows at the end by calling out to Phoebeus and outing her hiding place where her mother had just hidden her. The asshole doesnt even turn as he wants nothing to do with her. Her mother dies in her vain attempt to save her and this after she has just discovered that the daughter she mourned for so long.  I mean fuck then you got quasimodo who kills Frollo's beloved brother (although I can't say I didn't see that coming the boy was just too spoiled) then he kills his master, who definietly deserved it. Quasimodo alone now decides he too shall die and we;re not sure how that happens but in the end he does end up with Esmeralda in death. What of Phoebeus you ask, that ass gets married and supposedly thats his great "misery" but how can it be when he is swimming in gold, and has a beautiful wife and a position in the army guaranteed for life. No he needed to be punished for his cowardice but alas Hugo took pity on the rich. In the end the story was good and beautifully written but honestly just too unjustified. I wouldnt mind if they had all died, but if I had had just a semblance of justice for the mother of Esmeralda and for Quasimodo had Phoebeus been made to pay his cowardice it would have been better. This being said I expected to hate Frollo more but I kind of felt sorry for him, he really has no idea what its like to be an imperfect human being. In the end I liked it but felt unjustified. Read it if your into literature or if you want to know France otherwise...don't bother, read "Les Miserables" at least that one has a better ending.

Literature is my poison of choice.

Quickie fix:
This is the third book I can knock of my reading list I posted last time. I've decided that I will read the DeLillo and the other Wallace later because it is too long for the last two weeks of my vacation. Hell was not as good as i feel it could have been and the corrections felt like a dirtier version of  Empire Falls. I'm thinking of reading The Devil wears Prada next or Cold Mountain. Either way I have two weeks to finish some books because my vacations are almost up. For reference, i have as of now not gone too crazy with the literary overload, but did cut it some down. Wish me luck ...