Thursday, May 16, 2024

Book Note: The Catcher in the Rye

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Back Bay Books, 2001.

Like all of you, I'm interested in Holden Caulfield's opinions on Shakespeare. Re-reading the novel recently, I discovered that he actually had some (I had missed it before).

There are two sequences in Catcher in the Rye where Mr. Caulfield talks about Shakespeare.

In the first, he finds himself in the company of a couple of nuns, and he strikes up a conversation with them that eventually leads to a discussion of Romeo and Juliet.

Content Advisory: Holden Caulfield's language isn't always devoid of unsavory language.


In the next Shakespeare-related sequence, Mr. Caulfield offers us some film criticism. Specifically, he's critical of Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (the only film of a Shakespeare play to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, no less).


I wonder what Holden Caulfield would think about Branagh's version . . . .

Click below to purchase the book from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

No comments:

Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest