Time Magazine put together the Top 100 English language novel since 1923. Sadly I have only read seven of them and after reviewing the list I can’t foresee adding more three or four novel to my list. Most of my reading habits focus on David Sedaris, Chuck Klosterman, Bill Simmons, ESPN.com and as a result I am not really in tune with the modern classics of literature but I have read a few.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
As the E Double said, “Yes (she’s overrated). She’s  sobby, pretentious, rich but she’s a hell of a writer.” I don’t know if I agree with her. I read Mrs. Dalloway when I was in London during my study abroad fiasco. I had two classes at London Metropolitan University, Literary London and Art History. The literature class was taught by a very devout Woolf fan and whilst we were reading Dalloway he took us on a trek to London to where the character went in the story and then he also took us to her neighborhood, Bloomsbury.

It was an upper middle class neighborhood that also housed E.M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes. Since I fancy myself as a wannabe economist I thought it was sweet to by the former home of the man that gave us Keynesian Economics. But alas I don’t actually remember reading Mrs. Dalloway because I was on 35-day bender and I had the unfortunate tendency of reading and studying while loaded. I know the gist of the story and I wrote a top essay about it and received a B.

“A good essay must have this permanent quality about it,” Woolf said. “It must draw its curtains round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in, not out.”

My essays for that English Lit class were top and considering that I was rarely sober it is the greater achievement that I got a B+ for my efforts.  I had a breakneck style in my younger days and I was fueled by Red Bull, cheap beer and Camel Light cigarettes throughout my London fiasco. I had no visions of DPC being a father and a husband so I lived in the now and with blatant disregard for tomorrow, though I did dread the inevitable hangover the next morning.  Apparently Keynes had the same ideology when he intoned, “In the long run we’re all dead.”

White Noise by Don Delillo
I was assigned to read this book during one of my many English Literature classes at Nevada.  Quite frankly I can’t remember if I read it or not. This was during the academic year where I had a 2.18 GPA and found myself on academic probation. I think I read it or maybe because we had so many discussions about it I may have picked up bits about because I remember one of the character’s name.  For reasons that are beyond me I received a B in the class

Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
I was assigned this book but I don’t think I ever finished it.  Because our teacher, either at Santa Rosa High School or Rincon Valley Junior High, had us read it and then watch the movie I have a fair grasp of the overall plot even though I probably read 10%. I have used references to Tom Joad when trying to sound learned.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I read this at Rincon Valley Junior High and it remains one of the best adaptations to the silver screen that I have come across. It’s up there with Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas for staying close to the book when making a movie out of it. I think I am the only writer that has compared Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas with To Kill A Mockingbird.

Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
It’s been 20-years since I read the Great Gatsby while attending RVJH, so I don’t remember much of it. To sound smart I have invoked references to the Hatfields and McCoys.

On The Road by Jack Kerouac
I read it in high school but it wasn’t assigned reading. 17-years later it still remains one of my favorite books. Poetic, sincere and timeless. The greatest travel book ever written and that includes the Odyssey, which I didn’t read in college even though it was assigned.

Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
It wasn’t assigned reading in high school either but I read it and loved it. I think any teenager can relate to the often alienated and disenfranchised Holden Caufield. I will refrain from too much insight because I have a  prior post about it.

T.R.O.Y. J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger, author of the classic novel The Catcher In The Rye, has passed away at the age of 91.

Recently I wrote a somewhat scathing review of his classic novel and it’s antagonist Holden Caufield. The main point I was trying to convey is that art is more meaningful at a certain age or place in one’s life.

The Catcher In The Rye was huge for me during my younger days but now I almost 32-years old, with a wife and a son, and Caulfield comes across as whiny and ungrateful.

When I was teenager, and a somewhat angry young man myself, Salinger and by extension Caufield spoke to me and I could truly relate to admonishments of phonies. But alas Salinger is gone and we haven’t heard from him in three-decades so we may never really what his motivation and perspective was on his timeless tale of a young dude bouncing around New York.

I recently began rereading the Catcher In The Rye for the first time since Life In the DPC was in the Santa Rosa High School chapters and quite frankly I can no longer stand the protagonist Holden Caufield.

When I first read the Catcher In The Rye I was a young, somewhat rebellious DPC that listened to The Doors, read the poetry of Jim Morrison and rarely attended class and from that lifestyle Caufield angst against phonies and other plastic people really spoke to me. But now I am a married father with a 40-hour week hustle and Caufield just comes across as a “whiny, rich kid,” to quote a good friend.

The book itself is still great literature and will always rank as one of the best books I ever read and if I was still a teenager it would likely be at the top of the list. I have aged and my perceptions have altered and accordingly to listen to a teenager piss and moan after getting kicked out of private school doesn’t ring the same as it once was.

I still love The Doors but I haven’t listened to the Soft Parade in few years. J.D. Salinger, like Jim Morrison, has produced timeless works which ring truer at different ages or in particular segments in one’s life. There will come a time in my life when my son may read the Catcher In The Rye and I will need to remind myself how that book once spoke to me as it may to him. The book is a classic and the elements within it transcend era but I have unfortunately have forgotten what it is like to be an angry young man that loathes any and all before him.