Good Reads 好书推介

    The Catcher in the Rye 

    在1951年首次出版时被许多学校和图书馆列为禁书的《麦田守望者》，是一部描述年轻人疏离感的内省小说，半个多世纪以来不断引发争议，而现在已成为英美国家中学英文课程中最常使用的教材之一。该书作者塞林格于上周病逝，享年91 岁。

    By Brian Banks

    Around  250,000 copies of The Catcher in the Rye were sold last year, with total sales of more than 65 million. This book was steeped in controversy since it was banned in America upon its initial publication. John Lennon’s assassin, Mark Chapman, asked the former Beatle to sign a copy of the book earlier in the morning of the day on which he murdered Mr. Lennon. Police found the book in his possession upon apprehending the psychologically-disturbed assailant. Media speculated widely about the possible connection, which gave the book even more notoriety.

    Superficially, the novel is the story of a young man’s expulsion from yet another school. On a deeper level, it is also a perceptive study of one individual’s understanding of his human condition.

    Holden Caulfield, a teenager growing up in 1950s New York, has been expelled from school for poor achievement once again. He leaves school a few days prior to the end of the semester and goes to New York to “take a vacation” before returning to face his parents’ inevitable wrath. Written as a monologue, the book describes Holden’s thoughts and activities over these few days, during which he describes a developing nervous breakdown, symptomized by bouts of depression, impulsive spending and generally odd, erratic behavior, prior to his eventual nervous collapse.

    During his psychological battle, life continues around Holden as it always had, with the majority of people ignoring the “madman stuff” happening to him -- until it begins to encroach on their well-defined social codes. The novel progressively challenges the reader to reflect upon society’s attitude to the human condition -- does society have an “ostrich in the sand” mentality, a deliberate ignorance of the emptiness that can characterize human existence? If so, when Caulfield begins to probe and investigate his own sense of emptiness and isolation before finally declaring that the world is full of “phonies,” is Holden actually the one going insane, or is it society that has lost its mind?

    The famously reclusive author J.D. Salinger passed away last week of natural causes in his home at the age of 91.