Quote:
Originally Posted by punkmusicfan21
Sorry, my argument isn't that the message is harmless, it's that the message is more important then the taboo placed on it. I was obviously not born into Salinger's time, but I think the novel was meant as a reflection of the unspoken lives that young men were living at that age. When you were growing up, you had sexual thoughts, yes? Was it because you read about it, or was it natural? Salinger gave voice to a sexually repressed and emotionally sheltered generation who couldn't express it themselves; that's all. By calling it perverted is missing the point I think. Although, maybe I misunderstood.
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Yeah, i think there is some misunderstanding here. I'm saying that if you are what Holden called a phony, "Catcher in the rye" was/is a dangerous book because it legitimates a certain kind of dissent. Whether you call it "dissent" or "Pre-vertin' 'murican yout", the book does have a concrete social and political impact.
I think part of the problem is that we read it against different contexts. I'm thinking fifties-sixties-seventies and you seem to have something like Columbine in mind.