http://mrquale.com/2007/08/29/if-you-really-want-to-hear-about-it-some-catcher-ideas/ a resource for students and teachers Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:47:29 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 http://mrquale.com/2007/08/29/if-you-really-want-to-hear-about-it-some-catcher-ideas/comment-page-1/#comment-21 Kamran Thu, 30 Aug 2007 02:56:51 +0000 http://mrquale.com/?p=72#comment-21 I actually agree with that (Lodge's) statement; I think Lodge got it right because he goes on to say that the book is comprised of mostly trivial events, and (to me at least), if it weren't written in such an interesting style, I wouldn't have bothered to read much more of the book; Salinger's (Holden's?) style of writing is what kept me going, because if you take those few days apart and translate the events literally, they become incredibly boring on their own. A lot of Holden's own narration also adds to the other dimensions of the book, especially in his use of skaz. I saw this same sort of thing happen again in another book, from 2004, called "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time." The narrator has Asperger's Syndrome, and so the entire style is incredibly literal and patterned upon [the author's perception of] the effects of autism. It's almost as if the narrator is too reliable, because there are a lot of points where you as the reader know much more than the narrator in a given situation because of his condition and how he perceives the world around him (hence dramatic irony). Either way, the book tracks the narrator's few days solving a mystery as to who killed his neighbor's dog, and goes so far as to describe his daily schedule by the minute; again, if it weren't for the style, it would be really easy to shelve the book halfway through, but not quite so much as The Catcher in the Rye, seeing as The Curious Incident has a definitive plot/storyline. I actually agree with that (Lodge’s) statement; I think Lodge got it right because he goes on to say that the book is comprised of mostly trivial events, and (to me at least), if it weren’t written in such an interesting style, I wouldn’t have bothered to read much more of the book; Salinger’s (Holden’s?) style of writing is what kept me going, because if you take those few days apart and translate the events literally, they become incredibly boring on their own. A lot of Holden’s own narration also adds to the other dimensions of the book, especially in his use of skaz.
I saw this same sort of thing happen again in another book, from 2004, called “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.” The narrator has Asperger’s Syndrome, and so the entire style is incredibly literal and patterned upon [the author's perception of] the effects of autism. It’s almost as if the narrator is too reliable, because there are a lot of points where you as the reader know much more than the narrator in a given situation because of his condition and how he perceives the world around him (hence dramatic irony). Either way, the book tracks the narrator’s few days solving a mystery as to who killed his neighbor’s dog, and goes so far as to describe his daily schedule by the minute; again, if it weren’t for the style, it would be really easy to shelve the book halfway through, but not quite so much as The Catcher in the Rye, seeing as The Curious Incident has a definitive plot/storyline.

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