I think all of Salinger's works are fantastic. I've read Catcher quite a few times, the last time was 3 yrs ago, and I found it as funny as I did back in the day.
I have to say that if there is one book I don't like people saying they hate it's 'Catcher', especially if they say it's worthless, or not really about anything. I wonder what kind of judgements they are bringing to the book, or if they even understood it, you don't have to like a character personally in a book(although I do) to enjoy it, and it is very funny, especially if you enjoy sarcastic humour. And y'know, it's a very good tale about a smart young kid's disillusionment at how a lot of people, as they get older, end up compromising their integrity, or don't care for integrity at all, and despairing that there is no escape from having to live in this kind of world.
Now, you may say that's a childish and stupid attitude to have, but is it really? That's what's so good about it, getting an insight into a young person who feels they are totally alone in these insights, who is afraid the world will inevitably destroy most people's integrity and appreciation for the simple pleasures in life, afraid that people are just swallowing the apple of logic and forgetting what the beauty of the Garden of Eden is about in the first place(which is what his short story Teddy is about to an extent as well). How anyone can call that book worthless is beyond me.
I just don't see how any movie adaptation could be as good as the book though, it's appeal being mostly based on the constant interior monolgues. Salinger blocked all movie adaptations of his work as he felt they messed up an adaptation of one of his short stories. That's why Catcher opens up with all that slagging off of Hollywood and Holden's disapointment that his older bro went off to HW to squander his writing talent.
Everyone in our 6th year class was doing it for the chosen text for their higher English exam, so it was analysed and dissected over and over again. As much as i loved the book I chose not to do it, as i had absorbed so much of the teacher's pov's that i felt my essay could end up sounding much like everyone elses, even if I tried to make it different.
So, I did Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, only one other person in the class was doing that book i found out. I haven't read it since, can't really recall it well tbh.
What about poems? I couldn't stand most of the poems we got assigned, we got a few Ted Hughes poems, the one I ended up doing for the exam was 'The Jaguar', I didn't really like the poem, thought it was a bit overdone, but I got into it just in time for the exam, and ended up writing a lot about it, scribbling away like crazy at the last minute when we were told it was time up.
edit: another thing we had to do for the exam was either write a personal experience or a piece of creative writing. I had just been stabbed the year before and the teacher was really pushing me to write about it, she even brought it up at the Parent/Teacher night to try and get my mum onside for me to do it, but there was no way I was gonna do it, just did not feel like it at all. so, what i did was just wrote a short story about a guy who is buzzing on the fact he just bought a new pair of shoes, and doesn't want to hear this guy's conversation cause he is just wanting to sit there thinking about his shoes.
Now, you might say, that is just a lot of crap, that story is not about anything, and it's true it isn't, nothing major anyway, just an amusing insight into how folk can be preoccupied by the daftest of things, but, y'know, i got an A for that exam, so they must've liked it. Not every story has to be some heavy indepth look into the human soul, or some historical document, I thought Seinfeld taught us all that. I never saw Seinfeld until years later, i just thought what the hell, write about anything as long as you make it entertaining.
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