{"id":3611,"date":"2005-09-13T15:06:01","date_gmt":"2005-09-13T19:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3611"},"modified":"2024-10-27T19:07:27","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T23:07:27","slug":"in-praise-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3611","title":{"rendered":"In praise of Catcher In the Rye<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

A really cool post about the plain maroon cover of The Catcher in the Rye<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. <\/a> An excerpt here – but definitely go read the whole post:<\/p>\n

The dustjacket on the original 1951 edition, designed by Michael Mitchell, had a Ben Shahn-style drawing of a carousel horse dwarfing the skyline of uptown Manhattan, an image clearly inspired by the book?s ?so damn nice<\/i>? final scene. Early in its paperback life, I recall it had an incarnation I hated: a drawing of protagonist Holden Caulfield wearing the Sherlock Holmes-style hat described in the book (but looking much dorkier, somehow, than I had pictured him in my mind).<\/p>\n

Then somewhere along the way (Was it the mid-sixties? My attempts to find a chronology have been unavailing), Catcher acquired the cover it bore when I checked it out for the first time. I?ve heard rumors, but have not yet found any proof, that Salinger so hated the earlier illustrations that he insisted that the covers of all his books be type-only. Certainly this was borne out by the U.S. paperback editions of his other three books then in circulation. Nine Stories had its grid of colored squares (courtesy of Pushpin); the two Zen-themed books about the Glass family, Franny and Zooey<\/a>\"\"<\/i>and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters<\/a>\"\"<\/i>both bore someone?s idea of Asian-flavored lettering.<\/p>\n

But for me, the maroon cover of Catcher <\/i>has a special place. Blank, enigmatic, vaguely dangerous, it was the perfect tabula rasa upon which I could project all my adolescent loneliness, insecurity, anger and sentimentality. It was as if possessing it provided a password into an exclusive club, even if that club existed only in your own mind. I wonder if a different cover, a more ?designed? cover, could have been able to contain quite so much emotion and meaning. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m glad I still have my battered old maroon-covered paperback. It’s the same one I’ve had since I first read it in high school. The spine is now taped back together, and pages have dislodged themselves from the glue completely. But … I don’t know. I’m sentimental. Not about most copies of books … but about this one, I am.<\/p>\n

It’s a great post <\/a>… and the last paragraph is terrific and true. I couldn’t agree more.<\/p>\n

(via Dr. Frank<\/a>)<\/p>\n