Breaking The Code To The Catcher In The Rye discussion

The Catcher in the RyeJ.D. SalingerI Hate The Movies
Holden says that he hates movies, on page four; and yet he takes Phoebe to see The 39 Steps by Alfred Hitchcock, ten times. This makes this movie an important movie to watch.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3YIwEy1-FG4

It is an important movie to watch in order to Break The Code of why he hates movies and why he would never allow his books to be made into a movie.
Here is a review of the film by wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_39_S...

Here is quote from page 67:
"Her favorite is The 39 Steps, though, with Robert Donat. She knows the whole goddam movie by heart, because I've taken her to see it about ten times. When old Donat comes up to this Scotch farmhouse, for instance, when he's running away from the cops and all, Phoebe'll say right out loud in the movie--right when the Scotch guy in the picture says it--"Can you eat the herring?" She knows all the talk by heart. And when this professor in the picture, that's really a German spy, sticks up his little finger with part of the middle joint missing, to show Robert Donat, old Phoebe beats him to it--she holds up her little finger at me in the dark, right in front of my face."

There are two places that the question "Can you eat herring?"

The first place is when the lady agent named Annabel Smith asks Mr. Hannay if he had heard of the 39 Steps. He laughs and answers, "What, the book?" "Never mind, but what you are laughing at is true".

These two met at the "MUSIC HALL", which you can read as the movie opens and pans across the screen. It is not Radio Music Hall that is referred to in The Catcher In The Rye, but we will be coming back to this in a future discussion.

I would really like to give people a chance to watch this movie for themselves before I divulge any more clues.

So watch it and feel free to add comments.

I have been reading Page 107 about Holden's father being a corporate lawyer. It also says that he invest in Hollywood a lot and loses a lot. But basically he is quite wealthy.

So I was looking us some things about Holden getting the ax, because this is also mentioned at the end of the paragraph. See my discussion

So I found this interesting article on how Warner brothers was creating a new kind of male character.

http://www.academia.edu/961460/Warner...

I became interested in this for two reasons. One is that I had been reading Fathers and Sons and he talks about the country being infected with nihilism.

Another was Edward wrote a post about Dale Carnegie.

The one I had most difficulty with was not on the list. Some robber baron did; "How to Win Friends and Influence People." The suggestion of "winning friends" and "influencing" seems German in the former and worthy of disinterest in the latter.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Comment 4055
I looked up his book and found that it was written in 1936, I believe close or within a couple of years of Little Shirley Temple movie Stand Up And Cheer.

Now these ideas were promoting fascism. In Stand Up And Cheer you have the little children singing "We will fight for the Emperor for we are the Roman Soldiers" and you have adults singing about being optimistic despite having a mortgage or working too hard or suffering.

LOL.

I just read The 39 Steps, partly because of my continuing interest with all this, Cosmic.

And then, after coming back to this thread and reading the movie synopsis, I had to go back and check to make sure I had read the right book. :D

Other than the title, I don't see a whole lot of similarity between what I read and what the movie's plot....

Now I suppose I'll have to go watch the movie.

Sheila wrote: "LOL.

I just read The 39 Steps, partly because of my continuing interest with all this, Cosmic.

And then, after coming back to this thread and reading the movie synopsis, I had to go back and ..."

You are right. The movie is different. He (Alfred Hitchcock) refers to the book The Thirty-Nine Steps. Greenmantle in the opening scene with the girl in the kitchen.


See how both the book and the movie are related to The Catcher In The Rye as a book about "War conspiracy". In the movie it reminds me of school and how some schools set certain individuals up to be crooks ("the wealthier the school the more crooks it has. I'm not kidding.") And other schools are filled with war fodder for the crooks to use to steal with. Of course they need a little religion thrown in* to seal the conditioning. How will they know who the enemy is?

I personally believe that having faith in God is different from having faith in a religion. I think that even science has been used in a religious way so that people are confused by "facts" that have no foundation only endorsements. Religion comes in all flavours. Atheism is a religion.




*(chapter 3 of the Catcher...or they may need to be educated on how important retirement is and how they need to play the stock market...making their wealth more accessible to the crooks, but basically filling children with "the facts and nothing but the facts" [The first line in [book:Hard Times|5344] and the first line in Kraft Und Stoff orForce and Matter Or, Principles of the Natural Order of the Universe. This is the book mentioned in Fathers and Sons and where I believe the name Ackley is derived from....that main character and a scene in Romeo and Juliet that has to do with the priest poison.)

I found another movie that Holden mentions. It is on page 120. Holden talks about Miss Aigletinger taking them to the Natural History Museum. "Usually we went to see some movie in the big auditorium. Columbus."

Why do you think he mentions him?