Friday, March 07, 2008

The Catcher in the Rye : a sequel

One of the texts we study with our Transition Year is Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Hye-Seung Jeon wrote a piece imagining the aftermath of the story :

I mean, the thing about Christmas trees is that they never get to enjoy goddam Christmas. They get chopped off from the peaceful forests and brought up to a ridiculous pot with dry, fake dirt. Then they are brought into stinking rooms in every house, decorated with all kinds of red, green, sliver, gold, shiny plastic which makes their branches hang downwards and sometimes even break. People put a big fat golden star at the top of the trees.

Read the full piece here.

Suzanne Morine has a site here which includes some useful visual material from New York relating to the novel, including photos and maps of such locations as the Central Park Zoo, the fabulous Grand Central Station, and the Museum of Natural History (one of the crucial locations in the story), with a tour of Holden Caulfield's meanderings through Manhattan.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, just read the 'sequel'... don't know what to think of it exactly... i never did imagine Caulfield commiting suicide, I always imagined him finding satisfaction in his acceptance of the world. The writer did capture much of the spirit of Caulfield though!