Hated Books
There has been a recent discussion on rec.arts.sf.written about The Catcher in the Rye by J D Sallinger. This is widely used as a set text in American high schools and as such is forced on many who would never voluntarily have finished it. Not surprisingly it is widely hated, however it does also have it's fans. I'm Welsh and didn't have it taught to me, I read it following its appearance in the BBC Big Read top 100. Holden Caulfield's clearly having a nervous breakdown following the death of his brother and while I thought he could do with a slap I did care about him. He was legitimately having a bad time and was trying to do something about it, nothing very productive but at least he was trying. In Britain it seems the novel that gets set for 14-16 year old the way The Catcher in the Rye is in America is A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines; I would far rather have had The Catcher in the Rye. Billy Casper is incredibly easy to dislike. Passive and stupid, I hated the moron. When he had an opportunity to tell his career advisor what he is interested in and what hobbies he has he doesn't. So he ends up being directed into coal mining, which he doesn't want to do, when he would be far happier working outdoors even if the pay was much worse. He is illiterate and it is fairly clear that he's basically squandered the ten years of schooling he has had, managing to avoid learning anything. Mr Farthing, his teacher, who is clearly a decent and humane man and a good teacher tries to get Billy to think about what he wants and to have some aspirations, without much success. Billy's violent bullying brother kills the kestrel at the end of the book in one more example of Hines attempting to manipulate the reader into feeling sympathy for Casper by having the one thing he actually tries to do end in tragic failure. In the entire book the only bit that is any good is the football game with the PE teacher Mr Sugden, who is a big cheating bully it was genuinely funny, I had a PE teacher who was rather like him. The novel seems to have moral of "don't try to rise above your station" which is rather ironic as Hines had done exactly that.