Comments on: The Literary Lacunae Meme

By: Zoey

Zoey — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 16:09:22 +0000

Everyone should read Catcher in the Rye, assigned or not.

By: arty Heath

arty Heath — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 17:27:28 +0000

Regarding “The Cather in the Rye” What Rubbish about being too old to read it. I read it before I was 16, not because I had to because I wanted to and now 20 years later I have read it again. I think it’s good to read books at differnt stages of your life, reading it twice has brought back so many memories of visiting the states when i was16 and my thoughts and feeings about growing up and my inner struggle to grow up and be a responsible adult. At the same time not forgetting the little things I spend pondering for hours. Not exactly where do ducks go in the winter but that kind of stuff.

By: yo

yo — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 02:23:45 +0000

Catcher in the Rye was amazing..i really did love it. High school is the perfect time to read it thoguh. otherwise if too old or old or too young you dont undersatnd what the book tells us. Holden is 16 in the book, and deep down has a sensitive loving side, even though on the outside he appears to be tough and brave. You should really read this book if you have a chance.

By: Tim W

Tim W — Sun, 29 May 2005 18:03:05 +0000

Which Third of TJ?

By: Nick Beaudrot

Nick Beaudrot — Thu, 26 May 2005 01:50:23 +0000

I went to k-12 junior high school where Catcher in the Rye is read in the 9th grade.

Then, starting in 9th grade I transferred to a different k-12 high school where it’s red in the 8th grade.

So you are not the only one.

By: Geoff Robinson

Geoff Robinson — Tue, 24 May 2005 01:01:11 +0000

Key’s Southern Politics is the best defence of political parties I have read.

By: Jacob T. Levy

Jacob T. Levy — Mon, 23 May 2005 16:24:05 +0000

I like the domain restriction: “vaguely embarrassed.” It differentiates this from the “Humiliation” game in _Changing Places_, which didn’t turn out so well for the schmuck who
played it the week before going up for tenure. (My folder’s due next week. I’m a little obsessed at the moment.) A sense that one really ought to have read, rather than a sense that one’s an utter intelllectual fraud if one has not read.
At the same time, I don’t think anyone needs to feel embarrassed about never having read Remembrance of Times Past, no matter how much one wishes one had. It’s like playing “I Never” with “I’ve never run a four-minute mile;” it’d be nice, but no one should think less of you for not having done so.

I’m pleased to realize how much progress I’ve made on my list the past few years; but there are always more books to read. So I can easily do five books three times over, like so:

Literature: Brothers Karamazov. Don Quixote. Augie March (Bellow’s been on my mind, too.). The Divine Comedy. And– and now we move from “vaguely embarrassed” to “pretty seriously embarrassed”– the Iliad.

Fantasy/ SF: The Mote in God’s Eye. A Canticle for Leibowitz. 2001. Planet of Exile. The Difference Engine.

Law/ political science/ philosophy/ etc:
Here’s where the difference between “vaguely embarrassed” and “Humiliation” kicks in. Had I never read Theory of Justice or Leviathan, I’d be more than vaguely embarrassed by that fact.

On the other hand, I’m only vaguely embarrassed by lacunae in subfields outside my own: continental theory, international relations, American politics. So:

Waltz, Man, the State, and War.
VO Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation.
Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action. (Read chunks, but not remotely the whole thing.)
Heidegger, Being and Time.
Kant, Critique of Judgment.

And every year, a little father behind. Sigh.

One fun thing about being a professor, though, is the ability to put a book onto a syllabus as a way of precommitting to reading it oneself– even the ability to choose or design a course around the desire to read a particular book. That can chip away at the list. I’ve done that with, inter alia, Between Facts and Norms; The Pure Theory of Law; Sources of the Self; Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

By: rick

rick — Mon, 23 May 2005 05:23:13 +0000

catcher is the move overrated book perhaps of all time; good lord, even the extrapolated notions that explain some of the plots are fairly innocuous and done to death;

By: dennis nyback

dennis nyback — Mon, 23 May 2005 02:37:14 +0000

Speaking of Julian saying it to late to read The Catcher in the Rye if you are over 16, I agree. I’ll comment on that later. When I was 16 I regretted that I had not read A Wrinkle In Time. Right now I regret I haven’t read Proust, George Gissing, and more Turgenev. I also read a couple of hundred pages of Ulysses and should read the rest. Getting back to Salinger, I read The Catcher in the Rye when I was 16, but not because it was assigned. I had to go to detention at the end of a school day. I arrived in the library just in time to randomly pull a book from the shelf and sit down. The rule was when detention started you couldn’t get back up till it was over. I was lucky it was The Catcher in the Rye. I loved it. A few years ago I picked it up again and couldn’t get into it at all. Oh, I regret I haven’t read Don Quixote. I really should read it.

By: matt

matt — Sun, 22 May 2005 23:43:53 +0000

Almost no one reads the last part of Theory of Justice, even among professional philosophers. This is the part Rawls said he was most proud of (I’m told, by people who should know) but is also the part that is most changed in Political Liberalism. Unless you have some special interest in it, or a particular reason for wanting to read it, don’t bother w/ Philosophical Investigations. I say that as someone who’s read all if it, and much of it several times, and is quite sympathetic to Wittgenstein. But, it take a lot of work to get it, and for most people it’s probably not worth the work. Cather in the Rye is primarily a book for kids. If you read it now it’s probably too late and you’ll wonder why people cared. You would have cared if you’d read it when you were 16 or something, but now it will seem silly.