As a child, we are protected from life. There really aren’t many choices available, and we are certainly sheltered from a lot of the harder parts of life. It seems like children don’t feel the need for meaning quite like adults do- maybe because they aren’t forced to face the daily grind. There’s boredom, but that is not what I am talking about. Kids don’t really have to compromise like adults do. As you enter adulthood you could start to see things and people as phony or fake. Maybe not people, but certain tasks or events certainly are. There’s a constant struggle in all of us between the meaningful and the mundane; the temporary and the eternal. There is a conflict, simply of time and energy. We desire the intentional and struggle towards spirituality; all while trying to earn a paycheck, wash our dishes, and sleep each night. It kind of reminds me of what I picture an AA meeting to look like. I think, rarely could someone find a place where people are more vulnerable, open, and honest with each other. Even if they win over addiction… how could life ever feel as full after that brief moment shared with others who completely understand? At the same time, the point of those meetings is to help people live- not just free from drugs, but maybe free to live in the mundane? Free to enjoy the dance of life, the needs of the soul balanced with the chores too. This doesn’t have to be depressing, but it does require compromise- or a sense of a time and place for everything- including the day-to-day.


Catcher in the rye touches on some of these questions. Holden struggles with growing up. He sees everything as meaningless and adults as predictable and fake. I think he is mourning the loss of his innocence… maybe not just right from wrong, but the loss of dreams growing up seems to require. Holden, while at the museum that is exactly the same as it was when he was a kid says he likes it, because each time you visit "the only thing that would be different would be you…" and goes on to say "certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but it’s too bad anyway." One thing I thought of to help explain Holden's struggle with growing up is this: Coffee. When I was a kid, I used to smell my dad's coffee- that strong sugary-sweet smell of roasted beans. You wait for your chance to be let in on this excellent secret. Thinking it is just the caffeine that is preventing your parents from giving you a taste. Finally, they do and then all your dreams of that sweet flavor come crashing down! It's wrecked! Coffee isn't at all what you thought it was! That is, until the day you give it another chance, you start to be able to smell and taste the different tones coffee has. You can appreciate it for its varied, and almost living flavors. You see… Coffee isn't bad- it just wasn't what you always thought. The key is in finding the hidden flavors and getting over the fact that it will never taste as sweet as it smells. I think Holden struggled with the initial shock, that although life is more bitter than it "smells", or than you think it will be, there are the hidden joys and sweet flavors that make it almost better!

This book doesn’t really set out to answer any of the questions it raises. Holden experiences the extremes of entering into adulthood and relates it in a way everyone, maybe especially, teenagers can understand. He is a flawed character who is desperate and depressed. As the reader, you can see why he feels the way he does, as he explains it so well you almost feel it with him. However, you can also see the flaws in his thinking. The author doesn't romanticize Holden's life, you don't read it thinking he has some special key to life that we all need. You simply feel his struggle to fit in and hope eventually he can learn to play the game and see the beauty that is there, hidden a little.

I could tell you about how Holden Caulfield is a hypocrite. I could tell you about how Holden Caulfield is a privileged, spoiled rich boy. I could tell you about how he is a pretentious, angsty teen. All these are true, but instead I am going to talk about something barely anyone talks about when it comes to this book, and something I don't think a lot of people realise: Holden Caulfield is a victim of childhood sexual abuse.

It is the climactic scene with Mr Antolini that really made all the pieces click together for me. When Mr Antolini makes a pass at him, Holden says "That kind of stuff's happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid." You can't brush this kind of comment off, especially when it comes from somebody so obviously troubled as Holden. Then I remembered about how angry Holden got when he thought about how Stradlater date-rapes girls. I remembered how uncomfortable Holden became when the prostitute made sexual advances towards him. I remembered how Holden talked about being terrified he was going to turn gay overnight. I remembered about Carl Luce, about how Holden tells us Luce 'taught' him all about 'perversity' and strange sexual encounters. The pieces fit together.

Because everybody knows this book is about protecting the innocence of childhood. Holden wants to be the 'catcher in the rye'; he wants to save children from 'falling over the cliff'. He views innocence as the ultimate form of purity - because Holden's own innocence was robbed from him, by people who gained his trust and took advantage of him. This explains Holden's almost irrational hatred towards all adults. He no longer trusts them because they betrayed that trust.

This book was written in the 1950s, and yet it contains such astronomically important lessons about consent and sexuality. Because for Holden Caulfield, no means no, and it will always mean no. Whenever he's with a girl and she says no, he tells us always that he immediately stops. "They tell me to stop, so I stop." Because nobody stopped when Holden said stop. It's why he hated Stradlater so much - Stradlater is the epitome of a jock who thinks he is entitled to a girl because she agreed to go out with him, he is the proverbial 'locker room talk', and Holden hates everything that he stands for.

This abuse most likely began when Holden was in school. "You can't trust anybody in a goddamn school," he tells us. He becomes markedly upset when he sees obscene language written on the walls of his little sister's school. Holden cannot reconcile the fact that he is becoming an adult, because he is still stuck in limbo - he hasn't yet confronted his trauma.

Holden is the ultimate unreliable narrator. He lies through his teeth to everybody around him, trying to act older than he is while simultaneously coming across so childlike. It's why a lot of people probably won't realise he is an abuse victim upon first reading: because he hasn't even been able to admit it to himself, so of course he isn't going to tell anybody around him. This is why he is in a mental hospital at the end of the novel: because he hasn't yet faced his trauma, and hasn't developed healthy coping mechanisms. I find myself hoping that somewhere along the line, he managed to get himself out of his place of limbo. I'm hoping he realised that he doesn't have to remain a child in order to be a good person.

Holden sees himself as the 'catcher in the rye': the great defender of children. Because nobody defended him when he was a child.

"Anyway, 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 nowhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd like to be."

If Holden weren't a teenager but a middle-aged man instead, he'd be incredibly annoying. The protagonist of this book The Catcher in the Rye finds everything annoying. He hates school, his classmates, his parents. He even hates people who say "Good luck" or "Nice to meet you," and those who clap at piano performances. He despises all subjects except writing. A person who can't even find joy in learning can be quite tiresome.

The key is that his suffering doesn't have any "social roots." Living in his era and country, he can't complain about a "despotic society that distorts human nature" or "stupid exam-oriented education." He just nitpicks at trivial things in a trivial manner.

But all this whining can be excused and even celebrated under the banner of an "innocent youth rebelling against oppressive social order." It's said that many American teenagers later deliberately imitated Holden - because he's a teenager. Under the cover of youth, decadence becomes courage, laziness becomes rebellion, and emptiness becomes sexy. There was even a term for this kind of literary work for a while, called "brutal youth." There’s nothing more shameless than that term: what is brutal youth? Is old age not brutal? Brutal enough that people don't even care about its brutality. Is childhood not brutal? Brutal enough that children can't express its brutality. Not to mention the unlucky middle age, brutal enough that everyone's brutality is blamed on it. So when it comes to brutality, youth is far from being the most tragic, it can hardly be compared.

But maybe this book is more than just a novel about youth. It's about a person who, after seeing through the inevitable failure of life, tries to convince himself to patiently complete this failure. In the novel, Holden, a high school student, thinks: Why study hard? To become smart. Why become smart? To get a good job. Why get a good job? To buy a Cadillac. Why buy a Cadillac? Who knows.

Of course, he could pursue other things: knowledge, literature, music, talking to someone he loves while sitting by the bed, and thinking about "where the ducks in Central Park go in winter." But pursuing these would take him away from anger, and anger - only anger - is the quickest way to perceive oneself.

In fact, if you think about it, the "society" Holden faces isn't that awful. Whether it's his roommate, girlfriend, or teachers, they don't seem to be dark forces, just a bunch of "not good, not bad" people. If JD Salinger wrote them in the first person, it might be the same story. But perhaps the worst thing about this society is that it isn't even that bad - these not good, not bad people, with their mediocrity, ruthlessly strip Holden of his right to be angry, and anger - at least anger - is the quickest way for a person to perceive themselves.

The world is full of Holdens. Holden at 16, Holden at 30, Holden at 60. They see through the mediocrity of the world but can't surpass it. They can't become "me" but disdain becoming "them." They feel pain, but even that pain is mediocre - how many people see through the emptiness of life and feel anger, yet this anger is no longer enough to be unique or comforting. In fact, ever since anger became fashionable, it has become somewhat despicable.

So the biggest paradox of this novel is escape. On one hand, Holden wants to escape to the West, pretend to be deaf-mute, and live out his life; on the other hand, he wants to be a "catcher in the rye," stopping children from falling into the void. The most moving part in the novel isn't the classic conversation about the "catcher in the rye," but this, I feel: After 2 days of wandering, Holden is exhausted, and every step he takes while crossing the street feels like sinking infinitely. Then he thinks of his deceased brother Allie. He says in his heart: Dear Allie, don't let me disappear, don't let me disappear, please don't let me disappear.

I think Holden might not really be angry; he's just afraid. He's just afraid of his empty life, and out of pride, we always express fear as arrogance. He still loves novels, he still loves music, he still loves the smile on his little sister Phoebe's face. In the end, he doesn't go to the West, perhaps not out of weakness, but because even in the West, he'd still need to find a job, go to the supermarket to buy cheap potatoes, and be surrounded by countless people saying "Nice to meet you" and "Good luck." Instead of seeking freedom that doesn't exist far away, it's better to find something to look forward to in life - novels, music, and his sister's smile. Cherish the time that accidentally falls into your hands, and when that destined failure comes from down the tracks, close your eyes, and disappear cleanly and decisively.

5 / 5 stars

Sometimes truth isn't just stranger than fiction, it's also more interesting and better plotted. Salinger helped to pioneer a genre where fiction was deliberately less remarkable than reality. His protagonist says little, does little, and thinks little, and yet Salinger doesn't string Holden up as a satire of deluded self-obsessives, he is rather the epic archetype of the boring, yet self-important depressive.

I've taken the subway and had prolonged conversations on the street with prostitutes (not concerning business matters), and I can attest that Salinger's depiction is often accurate to what it feels like to go through an average, unremarkable day. However, reading about an average day is no more interesting than living one.

Beyond that, Salinger doesn't have the imagination to paint people as strangely as they really are. Chekhov's 'normal' little people seem more real and alive than Salinger's because Chekhov injects a little oddness, a little madness into each one. Real people are almost never quite as boring as modernist depictions, because everyone has at least some ability to surprise you.

Salinger's world is desaturated. Emotions and moments seep into one another, indistinct as the memories of a drunken party. Little importance is granted to events or thoughts, but simply pass by, each duly tallied by an author in the role of court reporter.

What is interesting about this book is not that it is realistically bland, but that it is artificially bland. Yet, as ridiculous a concept as that is, it still takes itself entirely in earnest, never acknowledging the humor of its own blase hyperbole.

This allows the book to draw legions of fans from all of the ridiculously dull people who take themselves as seriously as Holden takes himself. They read it not as a parody of bland egotism but a celebration, poised to inspire all the bland egotists who have resulted from the New Egalitarianism in Art, Poetry, Music, and Academia.

Those same folks who treat rationality and intellectual fervor like a fashion to be followed, imagining that the only thing required to be brilliant is to mimic the appearance and mannerisms of the brilliant; as if black berets were the cause of poetic inspiration and not merely a symptom.

One benefit of this is that one can generally sniff out pompous faux intellectuals by the sign that they hold up Holden as a sort of messianic figure. Anyone who marks out Holden as a role-model is either a deluded teen with an inflated sense of entitlement, or is trying to relive the days when they were.

But what is more interesting is that those who idolize Holden tend to be those who most misunderstand him. Upon close inspection, he's not depressive, not consumed with ennui or an existential crisis, he's actually suffering from 'Shell Shock'--now known as 'Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder'.

The way he thinks about his brother's and classmate's deaths--going over the details again and again in his mind, but with no emotional connection--it's not symptomatic of depression, but of psychological trauma. He is stuck in a cycle, unable to process events, going over them again and again, but never able to return to normalcy.

It takes a certain kind of self-centered prick to look at someone's inability to cope with the reality of death and think "Hey, that's just like my mild depression over how my parents won't buy me a newer ipod!" It's not an unusual stance in American literature--there's an arrogant detachment in American thought which has become less and less pertinent as the world grows and changes. As recently as The Road we have American authors comparing a difficult father-son relationship to the pain and turmoil of an African civil war survivor--and winning awards for displaying their insensitive arrogance.

Perhaps it's time we woke up and realized that the well-fed despondence of the white man should not be equated with a lifetime of death, starvation, war, and traumas both physical and emotional. And as for Salinger--a real sufferer of Post-Traumatic Stress who was one of the first soldiers to see a concentration camp, who described how you can never forget the smell of burning flesh--I can only imagine how he felt when people read his story of a man, crippled by the thought of death, and thought to themselves "Yes, that's just what it's like to be a trustafarian with uncool parents". No wonder he became a recluse and stopped publishing.

[ 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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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.

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.

In a book that many deem a literary classic, J.D. Salinger takes the reader on a ride through a few days of an adolescent’s life at the age of sixteen. Holden Caulfield has just been told that he’s flunked out of another preparatory school and must make the journey home to relay this to his parents. However, as this is not the first time, he is in no hurry to do so, and thus begins the meandering trip back to admit failure. In a narrative told from Caulfield’s perspective, the reader learns much about this boy as he wanders aimlessly around campus and eventually makes his way back to New York City. With a mixture of present-day happenings and tangential flashbacks, the reader sees Caulfield as a man who has seen much, but also knows very little. Salinger allows the slowly-developing narrative to continue, while Caulfield discovers just how much of the world is still unknown, all while he worries about how to tell his family the news that he is academically useless. By the time he reaches home, Caulfield has one last chance to shape his story, but even then, his younger sister steals the spotlight and recounts some of her own drama. Surely, this family loves being vapid and speaking in tangential styles that drown out any hope of understanding a topic at hand. Salinger must have a message here and literary critics found it, sipping from the proverbial Kool-Aid in droves. For me, it sets the bar quite low for what might be called classical literature. This may best be read with a glass of rye, for only then will you catch its meaning.

I have long debated with people about what makes a novel “a classic”. Interestingly enough, no one can really tell me enough to sway my opinion. I am left to wonder if Salinger simply wrote at a time when it was ‘en vogue’ to be tangential and superficial, thus making this the cornerstone of something stellar. My father, who was an English teacher, would surely have some answers for me, though I am at a loss to think about how even he might help remove me from the paper bag in which I found myself. His passing years ago does little to help me now (and I am beginning to write tangentially, which is solely the fault of this book!). Holden Caulfield comes across as a typical teenage boy of the time (post-war), who is trying to make his mark on the world. He struggles with defining himself and those around him, wanting to fit in and yet differentiate himself significantly. While he accomplishes little on his meandering journey from school to the family home, Caulfield is able to show the reader that he has grit and determination, even if it comes across as less than important. Many of the others who cross paths with Caulfield serve as signposts in his narrative, wallflowers when he needs them to be and actively helping to formulate the story when necessary. I had little connection to any of them and found Salinger wanted it that way. The story was nothing worth noting and I am sure I will be scorned for missing many of the nuggets embedded into the tale. That said, when I hear classic, I expect much more than I got and while i cannot take away from J.D. Salinger, I am left to wonder if I was too sober and too grounded to accept this for what it should have been. It may not have been drivel, but the only classic aspect of it was that I was not forced to spend hours of my time for nothing.

Kudos, Mr. Salinger, for being able to bask in the limelight. I missed the mark and I am sure others will educate me. Thank goodness book club does not meet for a while, as I may have my literary epiphany by then and forget the train wreck I currently feel this to have been.

This novel fulfils the March 2019 requirements of Mind the Bookshelf Gap Reading Group. https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/

A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

This is probably the only book out of my favorites that I would not immediately jump to defend when somebody criticized it. I totally get why some people dislike it as much as they do. It's not for everyone. Holden Caulfield can be a pain in the ass and the writing style is very different, so I get why it just didn't work for some people.
But for me it just clicked. I have a lot of memories and "first experiences" attached to this book, it was the first book I read in English for example (while constantly looking up words in my Dad's old German edition :D). It was also the first book that showed me how fun classic literature can be, and how much fun it can be to take apart and analyze literature. Back when I was 14, I also identified with Holden Caulfield on so many levels. I found it absolutely fascinating how a teenager who grew up in such a different time and under completely different circumstances could have so many of the same thoughts that I had. That's still one of my favorite aspects of literature to this day by the way - the ability to make us feel connected to people we would never expect to connect with.
So, yes. This book means a huge deal to me, even though it's not something I would ever actually recommend. :D Does anybody else have this slightly weird relationship with a book? Let me know!

There’s been so much goddam bullshit written about this book, you can’t cut through it with a chainsaw. I’m not kidding. I expected not to like this book and all, because I’d heard so many phonies go on and on about it. It made me feel like jumping through a window on the 81st floor, if you want to know the truth. But it killed me. It really did.
tt
Well, that’s enough of that.
tt
Really, after putting down The Catcher in the Rye, I can’t help but think there has been some sort of terrible misunderstanding. The level of discussion surrounding this book (apart from conspiracy theories) too often amounts to a petty popularity contest for Holden Caulfield, where people argue about whether he was or wasn’t a swell guy.
tt
But here’s what we’re missing. When a character is so lifelike, so round, and so memorable that the question of your liking him is so pressing, the author has already succeeded. Salinger has performed that minor miracle that so often passes under our noses, unnoticed. A miracle that only the greatest fiction writers are able to accomplish: creating a fully fledged human being from pen, ink, and paper.
tt
Like him or not, Holden sticks with you. He has a definite personality, a unique perspective. Are we to be so narrow-minded that we will put down a book just because we wouldn’t want to be friends with the main character? I hope not. In fact, you know who judges books by that very standard? Holden Caulfield:

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

I think it's great that this has become one of the book's most popular quotes. The irony is delicious. So, if you don’t like The Catcher in the Rye because you don’t like Holden, you should take a good hard look at yourself. But on the other hand, if you think Holden totally ‘gets’ you, that you aspire to his intellectual depth and philosophy of life, stay the hell away from me. I mean it.
tt
Both sides completely miss the point of this book. Holden is a deeply flawed person, whose search for authenticity makes him more of a phony than any of the people he criticizes. Although he constantly voices his strong opinions about the world, he is incurably ignorant. More than that, he is completely unable to please himself. He misses the people who piss him off, and when he calls up the people he misses, they piss him off. It’s an endless cycle. All of his criticisms of the outside world are bitter and thoughtless, and all of his criticisms of himself are superficial.
tt
And, boy, is this book American. This book is more American than getting drone-striked with a giant, flaming apple pie. It almost felt like I was bleeding red, white, and blue blood from my eyeballs.

By way of illustration, allow me go through some American literature, just so you can hear the echoes of our accent through the ages. I’ll start with the great leviathan at the beginning, Moby Dick:

Call me Ismael. Some years ago—never mind how long—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

And now for Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my head ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had."

Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises:

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn.

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn:

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he strectched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing.

And finally Salinger’s book:

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.

First of all, I find it interesting that so many of our classic books are first-person narratives. But let us explore the themes.
tt
I think that The Catcher in the Rye is the direct descendent of Huckleberry Finn. Huck and Holden are about the same age. Both are disaffected youths that go on an adventure. Both are, like Ismael, orphans, adrift on a piece of rubbish. But in terms of personality, the two couldn’t be more different. Though Huck is poor and lowly, he is constitutionally jolly, incapable of being depressed or angry. Holden, of course, is the reverse, even though Holden is from a wealthy family. Huck does not judge. Even when he sees the most transparent, despicable swindlers, he does not condemn. Holden will damn you to hell just for clipping your nails.
tt
That’s where the second ingredient comes in, Hemmingway’s Jake Barnes. Although the two books are in many ways different, The Catcher in the Rye and The Sun also Rises explore almost identical thematic territory: disaffection, identity crisis, self-conciousness, alienation, impotence, hopelessness. Jake Barnes got his bits blown off in the war; Holden invites a prostitute to his room and chickens out. Both characters drift from person to person, getting sick of one, and then substituting another, just to repeat the process. Both idealize the pure and genuine. For Barnes (and Hemmingway) it was nature; for Holden it was childhood. But the impulse is the same—something opposed to the bullshit of normal life.
tt
So, there you have it. Marry the naiveté of Huck Finn with the despair of Jake Burnes, and you get Holden Caulfield—the adolescent in all of us. The juvenile impulse that allows us to take ourselves seriously enough to identify with war veterans in Hemmingway’s novels when we're little boys. The melodramatic sense that we are the protagonists in the world’s story, and everyone else is just an extra. The unshakable conviction that, deep down, we know what’s wrong with the world, and are above it. I hope we grow out of it.
tt
That’s why I don’t think this book should be assigned to high school students. At Holden’s age, you can’t understand it. You’re in it. If you like or dislike Holden, it’s for all the wrong reasons, and you end up with the palaver that currently surrounds this book.
tt
My opinion? It’s a marvelous novel, and Salinger is a master of the craft. It is a piece of art, not a religious text. So treat it like one. Read, and enjoy. And perhaps even reflect. But maybe the best thing we can do is to internalize the advice in the beginning of The Great Gatsby, and hold off on our judgments—either of Holden or anyone else. Or else you might end up as miserable as he is.

A spell in the army would do that young man a power of good! Or maybe a couple of bags of heroin. Anything to stop that whining voice....

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.