{"id":74271,"date":"2026-04-14T01:00:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T05:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=74271"},"modified":"2026-04-13T09:48:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T13:48:07","slug":"qotd-holden-caulfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/04\/14\/qotd-holden-caulfield\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Holden Caulfield"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>To repurpose a joke from Archer<\/em>: Kid, even your balls are made of pussy. After I get done typing this, I’m going to have to go kill a deer with nothing but my bare hands and teeth just to get my testosterone level back to “dangerously low”.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the point is, you name your kid “Holden” and what can you expect? The Catcher in the Rye<\/em> is the greatest dickhead-identification device known to man. Even pretentious little snots in desperate need of a beating \u2014 I speak from experience here \u2014 think Holden Caulfield was a pretentious little snot in desperate need of a beating. It’s a 100% true scientific fact that the only people who liked The Catcher in the Rye<\/em> are so repulsive to ordinary humans that they have no choice but to become high school English teachers, or go to work for the Washington Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I even once got linked on a site called “Kiwi Farms”, that seems to consist of nothing but Internet People making fun of other Internet People, and they all agreed with me (also with my interpretation of MTV’s Daria<\/em> as “the female Holden Caulfield”, although that show took the piss out of itself more than once, and had actual human affection for its characters, and thus was actually pretty good (although of course serving the Catcher<\/em>-esque function of mate sorting \u2014 if you met a girl who identified with it, run far far far away). I know, I know … MTV. And late-90s MTV, too, the guys who gave us both The Real World<\/em> and Road Rules<\/em>. Yeah, I’m scared too).<\/p>\n

Anyway, though I think The Catcher in the Rye<\/em> is the worst book ever written, and anyone who liked it should be beaten with the entire Jack Reacher<\/em> series until their serum testosterone raises at least 300 points or whatever, I’m willing to hear other opinions: Is there in fact a worse book? Not in terms of writing etc. \u2014 even I have to admit that it’s not technically<\/em> bad \u2014 but in terms of influence?<\/p>\n

Severian, “Alt Thread: Worst Books Ever”, Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2022-06-10.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To repurpose a joke from Archer: Kid, even your balls are made of pussy. After I get done typing this, I’m going to have to go kill a deer with nothing but my bare hands and teeth just to get my testosterone level back to “dangerously low”. Anyway, the point is, you name your kid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,57,41,13],"tags":[1403,1462,101],"class_list":["post-74271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-humour","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-1990s","tag-severian","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-jjV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74271"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101870,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74271\/revisions\/101870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}