/lit/ - Literature

first time in /lit/
I instantly thought of you faggots, specifically /pol/ and /r9k/

Does Holden reach a kind of Enlightenment in the end? Or is he doomed to a life of alienation in a superficial world?

Why is this book so praised and recommended when its basically about nothing deep and profound? Is it because it helps zoomers who are unable to find their own way to actually find it ?
Like come on, everyone with some brain and ration can do this on his own.

THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL... SIMPLE AS!

Both the people saying, "This book sucks because Catcher is a whiny brat!" and the people saying, "Well, he's supposed to be a whiny brat," are wrong.

>“Let me repeat. I have not read all the work of this present generation of writing. I have not had time yet. So I must speak only of the ones I do know. I am thinking now of what I rate the best one, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, perhaps because this one expresses so completely what I have tried to say. A youth, father to what will—must—someday be a man, more intelligent than some and more sensitive than most, who—he would not even have called it by instinct because he did not know he possessed it because God perhaps had put it there, loved man and wished to be a part of mankind, humanity, who tried to join the human race and failed. To me, his tragedy was not that he was, as he perhaps thought, not tough enough or brave enough or deserving enough to be accepted into humanity. His tragedy was that when he attempted to enter the human race, there was no human race there. There was nothing for him to do save buzz, frantic and inviolate, inside the glass wall of his tumbler, until he either gave up or was himself, by himself, by his own frantic buzzing, destroyed.”
>― William Faulkner

ITT: American books that're average at best but made it to the canon because America has very few good literature to be proud of and is too insecure to leave their side of contribution appearing less.

What are some works that have intentionally vague and elusive themes by the author?

name one person who legitimately enjoyed this book

holden caulfield is an insufferable, whiny, pretentious little shit. half the book is him whining about his horrible terrible life. i hate this book so fucking much. god damn i hate holden caulfield.

Holden never raped Phoebe. Prove me wrong.

>spitting water in each other's faces
Was this really a fetish for boomers? What did they mean by this?

>1951
>1st edition cover of a literary book is aesthetically pleasing and has actual thought put into it
>1996
>1st edition cover of a literary book is just clouds lmao
What went wrong?

ITT: American books that're actually average at best but made into the canon because America have very few good literature to be proud of and is too insecure to leave their contribution appearing short-handed