I read this book for the first time in the 8th grade. I had to get my mom to sign a permission slip because of the cursing. Before I began reading, I had so many expectations. Back then, I read Seventeen Magazine, and back then, Seventeen Magazine ran brainy features about books and poetry. There was one feature where they asked people what book changed their lives, and something like more than half said Catcher in the Rye. I think there might have been some celebrity comments in there, too. At any rate, it was a ringing endorsement.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I hated it. Not only did I hate Holden, but I hated everything about the novel. There was nothing I enjoyed. I did my book report where I confessed my hatred (which led my teacher to confess that she did, too), but I couldn't let it go. I honestly felt that my loathing of a novel that so many others found "life-changing" indicated some deep and horrible flaw. I felt like hating Catcher in the Rye was my dirty little secret.

Time passed, and my self-loathing mellowed. I began to think that perhaps I'd come at it too young, so after my first year of college, I decided to re-read it, go at it with fresh eyes, and see if my opinion had changed.

Here's the thing: it hasn't. I get it. I get that Holden is supposed to be loathsome. I get that he is the hypocrite he hates. I get that almost all teenagers go through the kind of thinking he experiences. I get it. I do. I just don't like it.

Oh, and I'm not ashamed anymore.

"Scoprirai di non essere il primo che il comportamento degli uomini abbia sconcertato, impaurito e perfino nauseato. Non sei affatto solo a questo traguardo, e saperlo ti servirà d'incitamento e da stimolante".

What can I say?

that hasn’t already been said?

As I write this review, there are almost 2 million ratings on Goodreads and over 36,000 reviews. My friend mark monday’s review is better than many original works.

What can I say?

I wish now that I read this sooner. I’d like to know what my perspective would be from a younger self. I did not love this book. Holden got on my nerves, and I was more than half way through before I thought I’d like it at all. I was getting apprehensive, was I going to be one of the one’s who did not get this, or like it, or be left out of this literary landmark?

I read this wondering how Mark David Chapman gained inspiration from Holden when he murdered John Lennon in 1980. What did he read that led him to the act? Or was his declaration a pretense for something else?

Why is Holden so cynical and at the same time respectful and thoughtful of others?

How does Salinger reconcile teenage angst with a worldview that is offended by the phrase “Fuck you”? With a revulsion of even touching the words written on a wall?

Is Holden gay?

Ultimately I am left with more questions than answers. And, ultimately, that’s a good thing. This is a book I want to think about.

Well, whatever, this was underwhelming as hell.
I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.

Being (and especially having) a teenage narrator sucks
What the hell’s the matter with you?
The narration by Holden Caulfied in the The Catcher in the Rye made me think a bit of the Russian English dialect in A Clockwork Orange.
Except that I in that book in the end found the way of speaking to be a good way to set an atmosphere and a proper functional device and here I found it terribly annoying and leading nowhere, like the whole novel in a sense.

I expected a lot upfront of J.D. Salinger his most famous work. I mean, Normal People is called a millennial version of this and I loved that novel.
Holden Caulfield is a real teenager, his speech is full of hyperboles (I told him fifty/a thousand times) and “whatevers”, “and all’s”, “as hells”, "It really is", "I swear" and “goddamns” while he is being kicked from school.
He admits already in chapter two that he sometimes speaks as a twelve year old and in chapter three he terms himself an excellent liar, putting his tale of his expulsion in an unreliable narrator light that however does not have any pay off. In a sense you can say that on almost everything Holden tries or wants at some point during the "story" no follow up is given. Most of the time because he doesn't feel like it.
He was in my view infuriating and rather a hypocrite, like why does he hang out with people he first says he doesn’t like, and then calls them phony? Sure, thats something teenager do, but people also pick there nose and don’t write a story about that kind of bad habbits.

For someone for whom English is the only subject he does not fluke, Holden his vocabulary is very limited, constantly repeating itself.
Sometimes his narration feels almost Trump like.
Some exhibits:
He hated it when you called him a moron. All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

When she can’t think of anything to say, she doesn’t say a goddamn word.

I mean he was very intelligent and all, but you could tell he didn’t have too much brains.

Wuddaya mean “philosophy”? Ya mean sex and all? That what you mean?

He even admits the following when someone confronts him on this matter:
Your mind is immature.
It is. It really is. I know it.
There is even something that a character calls a typical Caulfield conversation later in the book, all sex and hormones while he is being a virgin as well.

To top this off, everything is crumby or he is, or wants to, horse around and we have some gross nail clipping, broken nails and pimple popping.

Allright, there are some themes that are kind of interesting
I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I’d care too much.
The only real heart in the first chapters is the death of his older brother to leukemia and the selfmutilation following from that.
And an offhand comment about a gift of his mum: Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad shows some real emotion, as does his touching depiction of his kid sister.

At times this made the book feel like a less impactful and tight version of The Bell Jar. Psychological trauma and a sense of purposelessness, while being in one of the most exciting place on earth (Broadway here and New York in general in Sylvia Plath her novel) comes back prominently. The lack of an overarching tale in a postwar and post-religious world, and angst about that, is also visible.

To spice it up, we have some suicides by bullying on his class obsessed school and Holden seems to spend money as a kind of therapy, as a kind of early late-capitalism critique.
And it is interesting how he treats New York as a kind of village, even asking someone in Central Park if she’d seen his sister (and getting a response that the person knew her even).

Finally everyone can relate to the escapist fantasies of starting a simple live and travel the world he has. And there is some wit between all the repetitive thoughts Holden has:
That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddamn toilet seat.

Mothers are all slightly insane.

Still this is not nearly enough in my opinion to warrant the excruciating reading experience of following Holden during a frankly completely wasted week
People are always ruining things for you.
The above quote is not just immature teenager hate against the world but also an accurate depiction how I feel about Holden, throwing in his own windows during this book in a consistent manner.
There is basically no plot, it is all character, and he as main character is a conceited, jaded, nothing brings him joy type of person. Everything he perceives has a mocking voice-over in his head and he tired me out despite this being only a short work.

He is super fickle, one moment he loves something, two sentences later it kills him, one moment he has an urge to marry a girl, two pages further he hates her guts.
Also the amount of times he goes to somewhere or wants something and then he arrives there and he’s “just not in the mood” and nothing ends up happening just kills me. Multiple times this is the case, really, it is a wonder he goes ice skating somewhere halfway the book and actually does that.
He constantly repeats and speaks against himself, making the whole book feel both frantic and inert, maybe a bit manic depressed even.

In the end the depiction of Holden his struggle with life just feels overdone, and hardly warranted given all the privileges he has as a white, upper class male with a rich father in the 50's. Combined with a lack of a redemptive finale or any development in his character, I can't rate this higher than 1 star.

the catcher in the rye is arguably one of the most well-known examples of a bildungsroman - a coming of age novel in which the protagonist balances on the ledge between childhood and adulthood. the book follows 16-year old holden caulfield as he spends 2 days roaming around new york after being expelled from his prep school - which is pretty much all that happens in terms of plot.

the novel is somewhat a bible for disgruntled teenagers who are in that stage of disillusionment towards the world, realising that you want no part in the corruption of adulthood and its power imbalances. it’s a phase that we all experienced, and also one which still resonates today (when you’re feeling particularly angsty). though oftentimes annoying and whiny, holden’s voice still captures the anger you feel as a teenager just on the precipice of adulthood, and all the destabilising confusion that comes with it. however, it is worth noting that all the discourse around this book as a ‘red flag’ does ring true if you relate TOO much to holden, because he’s clearly very troubled and not in the healthiest mindset (and basically a 1950s version of an incel lol).

in my opinion, this is a book that you can’t really take at face value, particularly because it’s laced with so many subtleties. the reading experience was, for me, fairly average, and it wasn’t until i did some research on the book that i began to appreciate it more. this book has been interpreted in a myriad of different ways: as a comment on grief, a desperate cling to childhood innocence, a battle cry against adulthood and conformity, an exploration of mental illness, maybe even repressed sexual trauma. it’s a book that different people will pluck different meanings out of, which may contribute to why it’s so controversial. it definitely leaves you with more questions than answers, but strangely enough that’s what i ended up enjoying most about it.

I know there are people who thought this book changed their lives and helped them find their unique way in the world, but coming from a non-white, non-middleclass background, as a kid, I really resented having to read about this spoiled, screwed up, white, rich kid who kept getting chance after chance and just kept blowing it because he was so self-absorbed and self-pitying. I felt at the time there was no redeeming value in it for me. I was born on the outside trying my best to get in. I felt no sympathy for him at all. I didn't even find him funny. It just made me angry. I guess it still does.

“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.”

My brother is four years older than I am, he's mechanically inclined, and ladies have always found him to be charming. My parents told me I was the smart one, but I knew better.

Back in 1962 when my brother was in his Junior year in high school he read The Catcher in the Rye. He was quite open about it. My parents heard from their church friends that although the book was about a teenager the book was inappropriate for teenagers. So one day at the dinner table my parents verbally attacked my brother for reading a "smutty" book. My parents expected an apology, instead my brother eloquently defended the book's literary worth. He didn't convince my parents that they were wrong, but he did convince them he was smarter than they could ever have imagined, and he left them speechless.

Later that night I snuck into my brother's room and I stole his copy of the book, then I secretly read it. For a while after that I was a huge J.D. Salinger fan and I saved up my lunch money to purchase every available Salinger book.

*2.5 stars(This is overall rating .I will rate the book in parts at the end of this review )

Let me start by saying that I TOTALLY understand why people either HATE or LOVE this book
I really thought at the beginning of the book that I was gonna love this book
Which I did...to a certain extent

One of my new favorites! I had absolutely no idea what this book is about when I started started reading it, so I am more than pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed and loved it. However, it is also one of those books where I totally understand when someone hates everything about it.

I found the writing unexpectedly contemporary. If I wouldn't have known when the story was written, I would have guessed it only came out in the past couple of decades. So if the reason you haven't picked up this book is that you're afraid of having trouble with the obsolete words that are generally used in classics - don't worry, you'll be fine!

There are many repetitive phrases, and I can totally understand why someone might find this annoying, but I personally really like things like that in books. I actually made it my mission to highlight every single line where the main character Holden mentions that "something killed him", he's feeling depressed/nervous/etc, something/someone is mad/a madman, something is (according to him) only "sort of" happening, something is relating to death in some way, and a couple of other little things...Boy, was I busy! There is something marked on every.single.page!
So if you're someone that doesn't like repetition...yeah, it's save to say this book probably isn't for you.

Now, while we're on the topic of Holden: I'm sure he is one of the most hated characters of all time, because I see and hear countless of people talking about how pretentious and irritating he is. I also understand those opinions, but I just absolutely fell in love with him!
The reason for that is easy to find: I relate to him. I understand this anger and frustration at everything and everyone. I understand feeling like no matter what good happens to you, it just isn't enough and you still end up feeling lost and alone.
If I had read this book a couple of years ago, I would have thought that Holden is pretty much a male version of me, and I would have thrown it in the faces of everybody who was helplessly trying to understand me. Thankfully, I have now moved passed this stage, and I can look at him and his (or more so: our previously shared) view of the world a bit more critically. But reading the book at the stage of my life were I am now, it also showed me that it's still far to easy for me to relate to and sympathize with characters like Holden. It made me realize that I've still got a long way to go. My ambition is to reread this book in ten years or so and only feel connected to Holden in a distant and long-passed way.

Lastly, I'd like to mention that is a 100% character-driven book. There is only a very small amount of plot (and that small amount is rather generic). This is more of a character study, so if you're looking for a exciting tale filled with action and adventure - this is not the book for you.

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رواية عبارة عن سرد طويل ميت بدون احداث و لا عقدة يحكي فيه صبي مراهق
نظرته الوجودية الغريبة و عن فلسفته الصبية التي ترى في العالم زيفا وتصنعا كبيرين يمنعانه من التأقلم الصحيح في مدرسته أو في المجتمع ..ربما هي نظرة ناقدة للكاتب للمجتمع الامريكي بعد الحرب و للحلم لامريكي الذي اصبح يعتمد على الصورة أكثر من الحقيقة فعمد الى نقده عن طريق صبي مراهق.هولدن كوفيلد لا يرى في الحياة شيء يستحق الحياة فيبقى سؤاله المصيري اين يذهب البط بعد تجمد البحيرة ,اين يذهب الانسان بعد تجمد الانسانية و تقمصها الزيف و التصنع,ربما لو فمنا باحصائية للكلمات المستعملة في السرد لتفوقت كلمة زيف عن جدارة و تتبعها كلمة يقتلني, كل شيء في المجتمع الامريكي اصبح جافا بدون حياة آلة تسكر و تزني و تصنع و تستهلك و تصعد السلم و تنزل في مصعد و لا يبقى للمراهق سوى الطفولة التي يحبها بصدق فهي غير زائفة ..ليس بعد لكن حتى الطفولة تموت فالأخ الصغير مات و ماتت معه بعض من أحلام هولدن و امة بكاملهاو هولدن لم يسعفه الحظ أن يحتفظ بهذه البراءة و هذه الطفولة فسرعان ما استسلم لهذا الزيف و تجاوز خططه لتغلق الدائرةمن جديد..ما حصل مع هولدن ربما يحصل مع أي مراهق ربما حصل معي و معك و مع غيرنا من البشر دورة حياتية تبدأ ببراءة و تستسمر بالتساؤلات و المتاهات و البحث لننتهي بالرضوخ لما هو حتمي و مقرر..لا اعرف ان كنت فهمت هولدن جيدا ام لا..لا اعرف ان كانت تلك الذبابة فيَ مستمرة في لعبة الاسقاطات التي لا تنتهي لكن الحارس في حقل لشوفان بالنسبة لي نظرة الكاتب ذاته للمجتمع الامريكي فهو يعريه من زيفه ليظهر للجميع بمظهره الكاذبة و الأدهى من هذا كله يعري كل انسان من قناعه و يجبره ان يقف امام المرآة ليسال السؤال هل هذا ما أردته فعلا؟هل هذا أنا أم انا مجرد بيدق في لعبة شطرنج؟ أعتقد جازمة أن اجابة البعض لن تروق لهم و هو الأمر الذي دفعهم الى ارتكاب حماقات كثيرة.

The story of this madman stuff that happened to the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life just before he came out to this crumby place not too far from Hollywood where his brother—author of of the terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish—prostitutes himself in the film industry. Just don’t expect his whole goddamn autobiography—none of that David Copperfield where was he born and what was his lousy childhood like kind of crap—or anything. He’s quite illiterate, but he reads a lot. He’s quite a heavy smoker, but he’s pretty healthy though. That is until he practically got t.b. and came out here for all these checkups and stuff, having been kicked out of Pencey Prep, which was full of a bunch of goddamn phony bastards anyway. (I thought I was over this book, having been briefly obsessed with it in high school, but as it turns out, I'm not. Thank God.)