The Catcher in the Rye vs. The Bell Jar

catcher also much funnier when read as an adult. last i read it (~15yrs ago) i also remember more distance, more irony, less sense of identification between author and protagonist than how it's generally considered, i think.

Catcher hit me hard as a teenager. The Bell Jar I read later, in my mid-20s, and I loved it. In my 40s, I re-read Catcher with trepidation, expecting to hate it. But I thought it held up extremely well, despite a certain sentimentalism I hadn't particularly noticed as a teenager. I've yet to re-read The Bell Jar, so I can't say.

On another note, it's over six years since Salinger died, and not a peep about the six or seven novels he supposedly had locked up in his vault in his Cornish hideaway, I wonder what the story is there. Surely his executors have had a look by now. Strange nothing has leaked out.

http://www.blogto.com/listings/cafes/upload/2010/04/2010417-belljar-menu.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Wxvz8O9.jpg

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