reading – Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher

The Value of Discussing Catcher in the Rye Beyond the Classroom

I believe it [Catcher in the Rye] should be taught in high school because these are the issues teens face or will face once they go to college, just as Holden did. Once in college, students will learn how phony the world is, if they haven’t already.

[The following is a comment I made today to a post on Catcher in the Rye made by Colorless Wonderland published four years ago.]

Excellent presentation and discussion! I am going to play the age card here and say that I recently turned 68 (born in 1957, 6 years after Catcher in the Rye was first published). The culture I grew up in was only a few years after the culture shown in Catcher, ergo, not much difference. I disagree with your opinion that Catcher should not be taught in high school. It definitely should be taught in high school, but not for the usual reasons that communities have for banning this book or for the reasons you state.

I believe it [Catcher in the Rye] should be taught in high school because these are the issues teens face or will face once they go to college, just as Holden did. Once in college, students will learn how phony the world is, if they haven’t already.

This is a coming-of-age novel, at a point in which many teens START discovering the phoniness of the world. However (somewhat in agreement with you), high school teachers should not be the ones discussing Catcher with students. Teachers will only teach what the local school board says they should teach or they put their jobs on the line, and a lot of communities still, even in 2025, want to teach the idealized American Dream, which is a textbook example of phoniness.

The people with which students should be discussing Catcher are a) other students or b) their parents (ideally). High school students need to prepare themselves for encountering the phoniness that lies ahead for them and which they will be encountering for the rest of their lives, as I have for 68 years. Of course, many parents will just try to teach the ideal American Dream or sugar-coat the future, but the honest ones, the good parents (or friends) will honestly prepare their children for what lies ahead. So, while the “teachers” may present the local school board’s view of what teens should learn, the student’s friends and family will teach the down-to-earth, worthwhile lessons.

The great thing about literature which is most valuable for the reader is not reading something and then discussing it with the teacher the community hired to teach its values, but discussing the material with classmates, family, and others, i.e. getting a lot of opinions and then having to decide, based on experience, which are the opinions worth considering, which are the most valuable, which are the most truthful and accurate, and deciding what one should take from them to help oneself prepare for the coming future.

Update: November 21, 2025

I have been feeling the need to resurrect Rural Fiction Magazine. I have been thinking about this a lot and there is something I love about publishing, particularly publishing something that is intended to help people, and RFM is intended to help people relax and avoid stress during these trying times for not only the US but also for nations around the globe.

Publishing RFM is something I really love to do.

I will need to find a way to make money from it, and that is not easy for a literary magazine whether just in print or online. But, as I have learned so often in life, I will just have to (as Clint Eastwood said in one of his movies – I forget the name – in it he was a Marine gunnery sergeant invading Grenada in the 80’s. “…Improvise, adapt, and overcome”, which actually is sort of an unspoken principle of the Navy, where I spent my time in the Service. It is a very good principle and is actually reflected back throughout military history as far back as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in the fifth century B.C.E.

So, I may not resurrect RFM soon; this will require substantial planning, but I think in the long run it will be worthwhile, if not financially, then perhaps spiritually, because it is something my subconscious demands of me.

If my writing seems erratic, itis because I am on my third White Lady (equal parts gin (in this instance Tanqueray), orange liquor (in this instance Cointreau), and freshly squeezed lemon juice.

In any case, please follow the leader’s guidance (unclorius) , and subscribe to our channel and like our videos. When Friend look we are peformane

Stay tuned as this story develops…

I have some ideas to oldearmacy

as to how to bath.

[Addendum: the first few paragraphs above are honest opinion, the ones after the word “gin” — well, what can I say other than White Ladies are really good? Updated December 3, 2025 at 1:20 am (CST) after a couple of gin and tonics.]

Update: October 4, 2019, 1:26 a.m. CST, Miscellaneous Notes

Working late at night in an IHOP in Midland, Texas, May 2019 (photo by Francene Kilgore-Slattery)

I felt tired all day, although I did get about five hours sleep last night, which is normal for me.

I didn’t get any writing done on the novel today. I was too tired all day and most of the evening, and didn’t wake up or have any energy until I started updating my Amazon’s author’s page around 10:00 p.m. Earlier, I updated my ads for Nocturne and Click and A Tale of Hell and scheduled the posting of one of two for various times during this month.

I just finished reading the short story “Kansas City Ganges” by Henri Colt on FictionontheWeb.co.uk.

It’s a really neat little story. I recommend it.

Reading “Kansas City Ganges” felt really good to me. I guess I just needed to read something good. I have been watching movies and surfing YouTube of late. Sometimes I just need to hear/read a good story. Some of the most fun I have had recently has been listening to audio books and classical music on a German classical music station that I can get via the Internet. I was listening to Derek Jacobi read The Odyssey earlier. That is a really beautiful telling and a wonderful story. I can understand why it’s remembered after…what? 2,500 years? Hearing a master speaker like Derek Jacobi read it is a wonderful experience.

I have been listening to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle in my car. It’s a struggle to get through it, not because of the narration or writing though. Both are great. But the story is so da—- depressing. I don’t recommend reading this if you are depressed or feeling down. It definitely won’t lighten your day any and it may nudge you closer to the brink. Still, it is a good story, expertly, if not beautifully written. I checked out Sinclair’s bio on the Internet recently and found out that his primary writing background was as a journalist. That explains a lot about his writing voice.

There are several audio-books that I need to just sit down and focus on and finish in one sitting. One is Stephen King’s Christine (if I can find disc 2). Another is The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I also have Methuselah’s Children by Robert Heinlein, though it’s not as intriguing to me as the first two.

In hardcover, I need to finish Kerouac’s Desolation Angels, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. I just find it hard to sit down for very long and focus on one book. Follow me on Goodreads, if you want to see all the other books I should be finishing.

It’s almost 2:00 a.m. and I have to rise at 7:00. I must go to bed.

Good night.

Depth

Depth

https://moonlightingscrivener.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/depth/
— Read on moonlightingscrivener.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/depth/

Mosques and Libraries Deserve Equal Patronage

Mosques and Libraries Deserve Equal Patronage

http://cafedissensusblog.com/2019/04/06/mosques-and-libraries-deserve-equal-patronage/
— Read on cafedissensusblog.com/2019/04/06/mosques-and-libraries-deserve-equal-patronage/

I wish someone would say the same for Christianity. We all need to read more.

Phil Slattery Will Be Reading from His Upcoming Novel at the Farmington Writers Circle on September 13.

Phil Slattery will read the beginning of his upcoming novel The Spy Who Escaped from Hell at the Farmington Writers Circle, 5:30 p.m. Thursday, September 13, 2018, at the Cosmic Café, 220 West Main St, Farmington (next to Tales of Tomorrow Comics). The Public is invited.

Phil Slattery has been writing short fiction for over twenty years. He is currently working on two novels, one science fiction and the other The Spy Who Escaped from Hell, a deeply philosophical combination of horror, espionage, madness, and betrayal with an overlying story of a man’s undying love for a woman.

For more information, e-mail philslattery87410@gmail.com or contact us via this website.

To see all of Phil’s works, visit amazon.com/author/philslattery.

Phil Slattery Will Be Reading from His Upcoming Novel at the Farmington Writers Circle on September 13.

For more information, e-mail philslattery87410@gmail.com or contact us via this website.

To see all of Phil’s works, visit amazon.com/author/philslattery.

Phil Slattery Will Be Reading from His Upcoming Novel at the Farmington Writers Circle on September 13.

For more information, e-mail philslattery87410@gmail.com or contact us via this website.

To see all of Phil’s works, visit amazon.com/author/philslattery.

Phil Slattery Will Be Reading from His Upcoming Novel at the Farmington Writers Circle on September 13.

For more information, e-mail philslattery87410@gmail.com or contact us via this website.

To see all of Phil’s works, visit amazon.com/author/philslattery.

Phil Slattery Will Be Reading from His Upcoming Novel at the Farmington Writers Circle on September 13.

For more information, e-mail philslattery87410@gmail.com or contact us via this website.

To see all of Phil’s works, visit amazon.com/author/philslattery.

The Farmington Writers Circle Meets Again on July 13

The Farmington Writers Circle will meet on July 13 at 6:30 p.m. at Entertainmart’s Hardback Café, 3020 East 20th Street, Farmington, NM. The topic of discussion will center around lessons learned from the Meet and Greet on June 9, initiating planning for the Winter Meet and Greet (circa November 25). and small projects we can undertake in the meantime to publicize our works.

The night’s reader will be Kevin T. Boekhoff. Kevin is the author of I Forgot That I Remembered, a humorous look at his life with Parkinson’s disease, Just Me: Humorous, Helpful and Odd, which consists of stories from throughout his life, and his gospel ventriloquism book, I Know What You Know, Adventures in Gospel Ventriloquism, featuring Youtube links to the scripts in the book. He also writes a daily devotion called “Tugs & Nudges” and a series of ventriloquism “pictoons.”

He has won several awards at Humorpress.com and one at the Storyteller.

He currently challenges himself with ventriloquism. This includes the making of characters, writing of skits and performing them. He says this helps him fight Parkinson’s by doing things he enjoys.

Kevin’s website is: http://kevintboekhoff.wordpress.com. You can also find him on Youtube and at http://www.facebook.com/KevinTBoekhoffAuthor.

Please feel free to join us. There are no membership requirements other than to have an interest in reading or writing.

Shareworthy Reading and Writing Links Mar 6

Don’t Lose Your Writing Groove This week I’ve been restarting my work-related writing engines. After a temporary slow down of client projects, the machine of my copywriting and marketin…

Source: Shareworthy Reading and Writing Links Mar 6