Other than that, you might be right — though I generally draw enjoyment from comedies or genre fiction of some sort, so a guy wandering around talking about stuff isn’t really pertinent to my interests, so to speak. ^_^

I’m guessing you’d react to CitR the same way you reacted to Eva: good, not necessarily fantastic, but fun…for a book.

@lelangir: If you must know, I’m from the mesozoic supercontinent Pangea. But these days I live in America.

And huzzah. It’s weird, isn’t it (Nogizaka)? I’m still surprised how entertained I am by it.

(1) Cultural allure of the unread, something about how I’ve never seen that happen with Catcher because it was so steeped in my high school youth as a required text, so everyone in the school had basically read it. Not having read Catcher was something sort of “unthinkable”. However, I can attest to that case with Eva since, what with the gigantic pool of digital networking, there will always be people that turn up saying “I’ve never seen Eva.” Baka-raptor’s recent love affair with the show attests to this, and it’s always interesting to see new takes on old things.

(2) This cultural allure also, well, has to taken into consideration the very cultures that are reading it in this pentagonal-jerk-polygon. I’m an American, maybe you are? BK’s from somewhere, IK Britain and Mike Philippines. I think that can constitute a “somewhat” diverse readership, so I can’t say for sure that their experiences with this novel are the same as ours, educational systems differing throughout the globe.

(3) I think how generations rediscover works. There’s different interpretations, different agendas, different mindsets, different ideologies, different extractions of meaning that make our parents roll their eyes and vice versa. Dr. Seuss may have been riddled with Cold War references, but to the child I was, Seuss was just a children’s book author, although I guess that’s changed. However, given how popular Catcher seems to be, doesn’t that indicate somewhat how it may have this sheen and gloss that shines to all generations? Maybe the typical, emo teenager (Hamlet?) is a universal Constant that extends throughout generations and cultures. I don’t know…

Nice post anyway.

(4) Oh yeah, I started watching something-or-other Haruka no Himitsu and it’s pretty damn “good” I’d say, or really fun, and very tongue-in-cheek with the casual otaku viewer.

I guess Catcher is more famous for the picture it paints, wheras Evangelion is so important to anime because of how it delivered its message. Though I’m not sure how much of a difference that makes to the myths thmselves. But then, Evangelion is in a fairly unique place within anime and Catcher is but one of many venerated novels.