My first read of this classic was about 30 years ago and inspired by Mark David Chapman. I was stymied, and I did not understand this story. I picked this book up again Sunday night and immediately had an epiphany. I didn't enjoy the book much more per se, but it made so much more sense to me now.
Holden Caulfield is a disillusioned teenager, depressed and mentally disfigured. He has stopped applying himself, not only at school, but at life. The only thing that seems to mean anything to him is family, which he consistently disappoints. He finds no joy in anything he does and he has no willpower to follow through on ideas.
If this child lived today he'd be clinical. The whole time I read this book I couldn't help but focus on his mental breakdown. He was a walking poster child for emotional disease.
Although Salinger 's style of writing is a bit choppy and repetitive, he does an excellent job of expressing adolescent angst. His tangential pattern reflects Holden's thought process, which, when a person is depressed, can never stay on task or complete a notion. So many in this age group feel this way even today maybe even more so ; they just have more activities they're forced to participate in to hide the sadness and feed the anxiety.
As for my three star rating it simply reflects my desire to never read this again. It was good; I'm glad I read it. I'm ready to move on.

“Catcher in the rye” is one of most debatable, argumentative, complex novels of the century.

Some people think it’s a masterpiece: great approach of corruption, phoniness of people’s characteristics which is reflected by the perspective of Holden Caulfield who feels and sees so much for his young age.

And some of the other reviewers think this book is incredibly boring and Holden is such a sassy, arrogant, pretentious little bastard who has no idea about real life, its challenges, struggles without any proper experiences you may only have when you get aged and connect with people without thinking their phony, fake or artificial.

In my opinion, if you read this book at several different time lines of your lives, you get different impressions, taste and your undeniably hate to the character may turn into empathy or understanding because I can honestly say every person in his/ her own life has a Holden phase: you start criticizing the people who lost their innocence long time ago by building mandatory, insincere relationships.

You feel like you’re alone in the crowd, walking alone in the dark, keep screaming but no sound comes out. This book is not only about a teenage, know it all, irritating boy’s silent scream, it’s our own challenge to face how to be grown up, how to wear our new aged characteristics like wearing a two sized bigger human coat.

As soon as you catch your inner Holden during your read, his words will start to talk directly to your soul and heart at the same time.

I personally read this book four times. At first time it was for my school work and as you may imagine I hate the guts of the character but second reading of mine was completely different. I felt like I was the one talking through character’s mouth.

I read it for third time for few years back for my book club ( they threw me out because I started to read 6 books instead of 1 weekly and gave so much spoiler!) and today I chose it as my flashback Saturday read for fourth time reading!

It’s still quite remarkable coming of age novel about teenage angst, innocence, loneliness, growing pains. It always awaken different feelings you have no idea they exist. But as I say before, don’t read this book only one time. Just give it a chance, try several times at different phases of your life. And don’t you dare to kill your inner Holden! Sometimes being rebellious is better than being obedient without questioning anything further.

Here are my favorite quotes of the book:
“I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.”

“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”

“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole… Nobody’d be different… The only thing that would be different would be you.”

“People always clap for the wrong reasons.”

“I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.”

so sorry, guess im a phony

Well, this was a pain to get through.

First of all, this is a shitty way to start a novel no matter how you want to introduce your main character.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.


That is easily one of the saddest, most pathetic introductions to a book. As I started this book, I wondered... if the introduction is like this, how will the rest of the book be?

This is what the rest of the book looked like:

"He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair. I'll tell you what kind of red hair he had."

"I sort of used to go to Allie's baseball matches."

"It was around ten-thirty, I guess, when I finished it."

I can imagine Holden as this very insipid, boring little kid with no life in him whatsoever.

Also, Holden thinks everyone besides him is a phony and a moron. And he makes it very clear because he mentions it, like, every two pages. Literally... every damn time.

I read some of the comments regarding how I didn't understand this book because I didn't relate to it. That may be true. Very, very true. Regardless, I still think to this day that this book is a drag and has an unlikable main character and a dry, boring writing style. Perhaps I will read it again when I am older and maybe I'll enjoy it.

اوّلش خیلی مهیّج بود. ولی راستشو بخواین، از یه‌جایی به‌بعد خیلی حوصله سر بر می‌شد. خصوصاً خاطره تعریف کردناش. بعد می‌دیدی هولدن تغییر خاصّی نمی‌کنه و هی بدبخت و بدبخت‌ترم می‌شه. ولی نویسنده خیلـــی دیر این‌تغییرو نشونمون می‌ده؛ جایی‌که دیگه حرفای هولدن جذّابیّت سابقـو ندارن. دیگه لحنش صادقانه نمی‌آد و خصوصاً کنایه‌هاش، دیگه فک می‌کنی کلّ داستان کنایه‌س. حاشیه‌پردازی خیلـــی زیاد بود و واقعاً آدمو کلافه می‌کرد. دیگه هر چیز قشنگی زیادیش خراب می‌شه. امّا رویکرد انتقادی‌شو به‌شدّت دوس داشتم و همچنین پایانشو. اومدم سه بدم. ولی دیدم نه، چار بدم. گرچه من ترجمه‌ای رو خوندم که خیلی سعی می‌کرد لحن هولدنـو حفظ کنه و درین امر هم موفّق بود. امّا معادل‌هایی که برای حرفای نه‌چندان قشنگ و باادبانه‌ش به‌کار برده بودن، واقعاً بد بودن. ینی من چن‌تاشونو به‌فرهنگ لغت هم مراجعه می‌کردم، نمی‌فهمیدم. :| و بعضیا رَم سعی کرده بود با کنایه، منظورو برسونه.

All of you (no doubt) know the story of Holden Caulfield. This boy was kicked out of a well-to-do boarding school. Sure, he is bright enough, he passed English for heaven’s sake – but the other four subjects, he just did not bother.

He needs to leave and return home to New York. His high-flying lawyer father will be furious when he finds out. However, Holden has some time to ‘enjoy’ himself in The Big Apple, before confronting the inevitable.

I was a bit annoyed with Holden for the first half of this book. He was so negative; he hated everything and everyone. I initially thought this was a bit excessive, but on reflection – there was a bit for him to be negative about. His roommate, Stradlater loved himself and the boy down the hall, Ackley, was a serial pest. There were others – teachers, other kids, that annoyed Holden.

But, hey – he had just been expelled.

He spent a few days in New York City, prior to returning home. He tried to catch up with old mates, and old girlfriends – but these interactions did not really fulfill him. He either annoyed them, or they annoyed him. I found this part a bit sad. We have all had moments in our life (it does not need to be a coming-of-age time), where we are alone, and try to catch up with erstwhile friends, even lovers – but it does not really work out. In fact – I really felt for Holden here.

Then he caught up with his younger sister Phoebe. The only person he truly connects with. We see a different Holden here. It made my heart warm; he loved her, she loved him.

The interesting thing about this book was, I did not like Holden initially but eventually I got to understand this annoying young man. Aren’t we all annoyed, even just a little bit, at that age?

I can understand why this is a classic, and it is. There are little stories within stories here where one could pick this book up and re-read, the feelings and meanings do not just apply to ‘coming of age’ people. They apply to anyone.

I loved it.

5 Stars

[ review updated after reading some of the 1*s ]

Dear gods, people. This isn't a book that's trying to give you a hero to follow on an adventure, or a moody bad boy who will change for the girl that understands him. It's not that kind of book and I'm sorry you were made to read it in school when you didn't want to.

If you grew up knowing exactly who you were and fitting in neatly with all your classmates, if you never had a dark thought, a moment of confusion, a doubt about the 9-to-5 waiting for you, well ... even then this book could help you understand the vast swathes of us who were not so 'blessed'.

And if you were less perfectly shaped for the world you found yourself in then this book might help you feel seen. Not in its specifics perhaps - people are broken in a vast number of ways - but in the idea that broken is normal.

Our point of view character here is awkward, an idiot, up his own backside, hurting, over-cocky, full of doubt, absolutely certain, convinced he's better than us, drowning in low-self esteem ... in short he's a mass of contradictions.

He's wrestling with fresh ideas (at least they're fresh to every child/teen as they coin them for themselves). Ideas that adults push aside, not because they know the answers but because time has taught them the futility of bashing their heads against them. Holden is in the head-bashing phase.

We're all going to die. That's a mind-fuck. But we get over the fact because ... what else can we do? There's only so long you can spend staring into the abyss, and maybe you're going to dress in black and listen to moody music while you do that ... or perhaps just play football. But dammit, a lot of us are going to angst over it for at least a little bit.

Among other things, this book is about growing up. It's about adolescence. We agonise about how to turn children into stable adults. About how to stop them being radicalised, keep them out of gangs, keep knives (or guns) out of their hands, help them form healthy relationships etc ... well ... this is a long hard look into the kind of mind that you're dealing with there.

It's literary fiction - it's not trying to tell you an adventure story, it's asking questions, it's concerned with the human condition. It does a marvellous job at that. This is why we're still talking about it ~75 years after it was written. This is why nearly 4 million people have expressed their views on it here (if only by a rating).

The number of angry readers lining up to express their contempt for it is ... well ... Holden Caulfield would approve. He'd have 1*ed it too and called it trash :D


[original review]

I gave this book its rating in 2010. I read it in 2000, rather later in life than most of its modern readers who appear to have been forced between the covers (so's to speak) by their English teacher at school. I'm reviewing it from memory in 2021.

Although the book is about a schoolboy, I feel it's probably best read by someone later in life who has the perspective on those events that distance brings, and is better able to appreciate the bitter-sweet, awkward, spiky, rebellion-against-nothing-and-everything that adolescence can be for many, especially those who are intelligent but not comfortable in their skins.

A common objection to the text is that our narrator is insufferable. He's self-absorbed, bitter, sarcastic, arrogant, clever, and not as clever as he thinks he is, all at once. He's exactly what a significant portion of the school kids forced to read the book are (most without appreciating it), and exactly what a portion of those who like the book in later life were.

We're catapulted into adolescence and a lot of us don't deal with it very well. Add in some tragedy, some adversity, some attitude "problems" and you get a Holden Caulfield. You don't have to want to spend time in his company in order to find reading about him interact with the world fascinating.

It's a messy book, erratic in places, it lies to you, and that helps it tell some difficult truths. It's easy to dismiss it as over-rated nonsense that intellectuals have read far too much into. And that's entirely possible. But it's also easy to miss its depth, and undoubtedly that's there too.

I read the book on a trip to America from the UK for a job interview (I got the job but didn't take it - got another interview in a different state, another offer which I took). I feel it's a book that you'll read very differently depending on where you are in your life, which is something that depends on both your age and on how experience has shaped your thinking.

I read it when I was 34, father of 3, on the edge of a big move, and when it spoke I felt it. Five stars.


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..

How GREAT to FINALLY know where that title comes from!

“.....I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye.”

Widely considered to be "one of the books you should read before you die," this story follows Holden Caulfield, an emotionally troubled 16-year-old boy, as he narrates his life story from the mental institution in which he's currently receiving treatment during the 1950s.

At the beginning of this journey, Holden is failing most of his classes and has been kicked out of every boarding school he's ever attended. He just can't seem to fit in anywhere. Pretty much everyone he meets deeply annoys him for one reason or another. He's basically just unhappy with the entire world. Holden rambles when he talks and can't stay on the same topic for very long, getting sidetracked and distracted easily.

Prior to treatment, Holden had left yet another boarding school and run off, making a series of extremely impulsive decisions, displaying unpredictable behaviors and wild emotions. He swings between excited mania and deep depression, seeming to exhibit what we now know as bipolar disorder, the medical term which would not be established until 30 years after this book was first published.

This is a pretty sad book, truthfully, especially given Holden's young age. Thankfully, there are some really funny lines sprinkled throughout for comic relief. For instance, Holden is a huge exaggerator, and he made me laugh out loud several times with sentences like, “His name was Commander 'Blop' or something. He was one of those guys that think they're being a pansy if they don't break around FORTY of your fingers when they shake hands with you.”

With Holden, everything that ever happened to him was 'a hundred and fifty years ago' or 'a million times worse.' His exaggerations were hilarious, but at the same time, his manic speech and behavior made me feel anxious and sad. His mental illness is palpable.

Holden Caulfield is one of the most enduring characters of the 20th-century. He's so young and he's suffering. We want to scoop him up and protect him, get him the help he needs and take care of him. One of the primary themes of this novel is protecting the innocent. ("What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff.") In fact, this novel inspired the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP)'s Catchers in the Rye Humanitarian Award, established in 1990 to honor an individual who has made sustained and significant contributions to the field of children's mental health.

I'm so very, very thankful I finally met Holden and experienced this classic piece of American literature.

The great C.S. Lewis had opined - "A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest" - and who, indeed, would dare contradict him?
I had kept myself away from the The Chronicles of Narnia for a long time, believing I had already outgrown that phase of my life that would've endeared me to this famed set of fantasy tales written for children.
Eventually, when I did read The Magician's Nephew, I realized how hopelessly wrong I was.
With The Catcher in the Rye, I'm faced with the same realization all over again.

Some books are written so well, so masterfully that you are bound to get the message the writer had slipped in, skilfully, somewhere between its pages for the perceptive reader to find and cherish like treasure, only if you care to lay off the preordained feelings and biases.

Sure, I agree, nothing ever happens in this book. The prose, in Holden's own overused words, can be described as 'boring' and insipid in my own. But that is what Salinger had wanted it to be.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have liked Holden had I read this as a teen. I would've considered him a whiny, nitpicking pain in the rear. A kid trying to sound and behave like an adult and, of course, failing at it miserably.
But now that I'm a full-fledged adult, capable of knowing what I want and what I don't, I can understand Holden much better. And I can't help but feel a sort of grudging respect for Holden's daring act of breaking away even if for a little while, from the compulsions and responsibilities that life threw his way, the expectations of peers and adults surrounding him.
His voice is so full of recalcitrance, loneliness, resentment and all the amorphous emotions of that age, that it's near impossible not to relate to it.
A sense of pure isolation, a feeling of being adrift in the big, bad world, sometimes with barely anything or anyone acting as an anchor. Faced with problems you previously did not even know existed, an ever-widening gap with the members of the opposite sex. A mass of confusing, blurry thoughts swirling inside your head that you would rather prefer to push away than disentangle one by one and analyze. Sometimes not being sure of what you want to do and what you are supposed to do. Stuck somewhere in a time-warp, on the brink of adulthood yet not quite so. Demanding to be treated with respect and dignity like an adult, yet to be loved as a child.
I'm sure we have all gone through the same motions at some point of time in our lives.
Holden reminds us of that period even if we may not see in him the teenager each one of us had been, individually. He is simply a personification of those confusing, bitter, hazy years that precede the surer, firmer, more secure years.
And if we maybe honest enough with ourselves we'll find a Holden, all holed up somewhere in the darkest recesses of our psyche, eternally disdainful and critical of the people and things around him. It's just that we've gotten better at keeping 'him' hidden and swallowing urges to lash out at the 'phoniness' of it all.
Holden's appeal is timeless. And I'm quite sure, I'll like this book when I read it again, years down the line.
And for this reason alone, The Catcher in the Rye rightly deserves a place in the halls of classic American literature.
This is THE YA novel. And, perhaps, will always be.

P.S:- My love for this book is not to be interpreted as an endorsement of teenage delinquency or rebellious/anti-social behavior.

Dear Holden,

A lot of GR friends whose erudition and intelligence I respect appear to think that you are saying something profound. Therefore I am giving you two stars on the assumption that you really are.

To me, it just sounds like you are whining.

Yours truly,
Nandakishore.

PS: It's a good thing that you are only a fictional character. Otherwise I most probably would have tracked you down and gave you a stinging slap on the face that you most definitely require.

Reading this book was one of the biggest wastes of my time in the past twenty years. Holden Caulfield's problem is that he is the biggest phony he knows. Count the number of times he lies or behaves like someone he's not and then try to convince me otherwise. This is not a book about teenage alienation. It's about a smart-ass who can't deal with who he really is and spends almost 300 pages ranting about it - most likely to a doctor in a psych ward.

نکات مثبت:قطعا ناتوردشت بهترین اثر سلینجره,متن و سبک روایت روان..و مهم ترین نکته:اخرین اثری که از سلینجر می خونم:)

هولدن شخصیت محبوب خیلی هاست ظاهرا..برای من نه,اون خشم و سرکشی و دور از قانون زندگی کردن هولدن,بیشتر سطحی و بچه گانه ست..در حقیقت واقعا دلیلی وجود نداره برای هولدن که اینطور باشه,صرفا اینطور هست,و این برای من کسل کننده اس,در واقع شنیدن نق زدن های یه spoiled bratچندان ارزشی نداره که خاص یا جذاب باشه یا هر چیز دیگه..ضعف کل آثاری از سلینجر خوندم بنظر من همینه,همیشه یه نارضایتی و نا فرمانی توش هست که هیچ لایه عمقی تری نداره,از هیچ چیزی نمیاد,یک سری بحران های خود محور و فرد گرایانه,انگار جهان شخصیت های سلینجر فقط و فقط محدود به دیدگاه خودشونه,اغلب شخصیت های تهوع اور و مزخرفن که تمام طول داستان هاش با self pitty راجب زندگی های احمقانه شون روده درازی می کنند..((و سیگاری می گیرانند:) )) حالا هولدن شاید کمی کمتر واقعا..(به همین علت سه ستاره گرفته)
محبوبیت سلینجر چیزیه که انسان امروز رو شکل میده,چیزیه که همه حداقل در یک دوره میخوان باشن,افراد مثلا خاص که غم های عمیق دارن و از زمین و زمان ناراضی ان...
در حالیکه خودشون بی نهایت سطحی,معمولی اند..
ناتوان از درک چیزی فراتر از خودشون,از هنر یا حتی از زندگی واقعی چیز زیادی در آثار سلینجر نیست..
صرفا یک مویه بی انتهاست در یک صحنه معمولی و زشت زندگی...

و در انتها تا وقتی که سلین هست,به "سلین-جر"نیازی نیست...


پ.ن:و این سیگار گیراندن های سلینجر:)