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• The Catcher in the Rye
J. D Salinger

Little, Brown and Company, 1951 - 256 pages

average customer review:based on 5 reviews
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   highly recommended  highly recommended




Scott R. Cooley's Review of The Catcher In The Rye

I suspect that I'm not the only member of Generation X who should've read this book while young, but didn't, and have now rediscovered it as a middle-aged adult. I have a vague recollection this book was assigned reading when I was in college. I probably skimmed it, wrote a paper about it, got my passing C grade, and moved on, as I did with many a reading assignment in the `80s.

I'm afraid I would've enjoyed it more, had I not been influenced by all the hype. There's only one thing worse than assigned reading by a professor, and that is recommended reading from family or friends. The childish rebel in us all wants to do the opposite of what we're told we should do. This is also one of those books that people my age are always being asked whether they've read or not, particularly male English majors like myself, and then worse being told they should read it, usually by some phony uncle who got way more out of it back in his day because of what was considered in its time to be rebellious, controversial language. The funny thing is, phony (to use the main character Holden Caufield's favorite adjective) uncles like these seem to have missed the book's main message, which was perhaps hidden by their excitement over the blunt teen colloquialisms of that era.

To me, this book should teach a lesson to the reader that one shouldn't try to ship their kids off to schools to rid themselves of the hassles of parenthood when those kids are unwilling or uncertain about it. Such action puts parents at risk, after becoming empty-nesters, of wishing they'd spent more time with their kids and had developed better relationships with them. This book is filled with conversational language and stream-of-consciousness writing style that, while entertaining, masks the overall message of the importance of family.

While at first glance, one might think the protagonist's cynicism is hilarious, but upon further discovery one realizes it is incredibly sad. Likewise, on the surface it appears to be a simple story of a child struggling with becoming an adult, when in fact it is a deeper tale of neglect, and of a depressed child being "pushed out of the nest" before ready. When Holden hears the little kid singing the "catcher in the rye" song, and it makes him feel better, it's because the scene symbolizes his yearning to be a happy child with the comfort of his family nearby. Holden's parents continually want to ship him off to any boarding school who will take him, which not only shows they don't care much for him, but aren't willing to put in the effort to prepare him for the challenges of adulthood. One would think his parents would want to maximize their time with him, having lost another child previously, but the opposite has occurred.

At age 16, Holden wants what he's never been able to get -the love of his parents. Although they've provided for him well, it is apparent that he does not value being sent to the finest schools, having the finest clothing, etc., and instead contemplates moving to Colorado for a more modest life devoid of such superficial things and people. He decides to stay home for one reason only, and that is to be able to spend time with the one family member who returns his unconditional love, his little sister Phoebe.

Maybe the moral lesson to be learned is that one should consider himself lucky if he can count on his hand one relative with whom it is important for him to maintain a meaningful relationship with, one that includes unconditional love; and that to be a wealthy person one needs much more than material things or the "advantages" of a prep school education.



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great book for a jaded person

its a great book for a person who feel they are a outcast of society and no ones understands how it feels to be so alone well this book is for you its bout a jaded young man named Holden Caulfield who's liberal w/ profanity so if ur easily afiend by profanity and portrayal of sexuality and teenage angst then this book is not for you by if you want ur mind split wide open then this is the book for you









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I'm in Love with Holden Caulfield (and J.D. Salinger)

To give "The Catcher in the Rye" 5 stars is like giving "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare" 5 stars. I'm not kidding.

I read "The Catcher in the Rye" in the 8th grade. And, okay, I was a little bit more than entranced by the (shocking!) use of profanity. This was, after all, 1968.

But even more, I was mesmerized and enthralled, I was even swept off my little flat feet, by Holden's sensitivity, his absolute purity of heart. Okay, he does wrong things, he engages a prostitute, he flunks out of a very expensive private school when he knows his poor parents have already been put through absolute hell (his younger brother Allie dies of leukemia at the age of 13 and this has already happened at the time the book is being narrated). But at the same time, he is an innocent. He is caught up in place and time that he can't make sense of, simply because he is who he is. He cares, and he tries to take care of others who are lost and floundering. It is so obvious that he is a diamond among rhinestones.

So he doesn't fit in anywhere, and neither do most of us. We're just trying to find our way. This is one of the most brilliant studies of adolesence ever written. Holden feels, he lives and breathes, he is, for all his flaws, or maybe even because of them, almost a Christlike figure.

J.D. Salinger wrote a book about an adolescent who was, in his way, much like an archetype of innocence. For this he is should be lauded as a literary genius. This book should be taught everywhere as a sort of guidebook to values clarification for the youth of America.

Totally aside from that, it is very funny and compulsively readable. No one can possibly be bored with this book, despite its seeming lack of plot.

"The Catcher in the Rye" is a life-changing book. Read it. You will never be the same.




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Each Decade It Fades

Since its original publication in 1951, and its selection, I think, as a Book of the Month offering, I have read this novel at least five times in various decades. At each reading the book falls lower in my estimation, and I wonder more about the big stir it has made in schools. It's told by self-indulgent, rebellious, whiny, privileged, spoiled brat who may very well be a certifiable nut case. He says, "I swear to God I'm a madman."
Holden has very little in common with the average middle class American high school student, and even less today because the book has become dated. (Who today drives La Salle cars or calls gays flits?) As a former English teacher, I cannot understand how and why it became a must-read for most high school students. The irony is that for teachers and the adult world the book is subversive and anarchistic.
The book's message is certainly not life-affirming, nor is it a representative portrait of an American teenager. The novel's thematic structure is poor; it is very repetitive, and Holden begins to grate on me.
It is very prep school, very Manhattan-oriented, although I dearly love Manhattan. What happens to Holden in this picaresque novel is not pleasant reading nor pertinent to people in general. He undergoes a lot of disagreeable experiences; some turn nasty because of his own tendency to bug other people He detests phonies; they make him puke, and yet he is a phony of the first order. He dislikes everyone except his brother and his little sister Phoebe. Sister Phoebe, age ten says, "You don't like anything that's happening." Salvation by the child is cliché Salinger resorts to with Phoebe and elsewhere in his work.
There's too much about his private school classmates and their oddities--why he dislikes them so. The book is a downer; it makes the reader depressed because he's always depressed. People he doesn't like: "They don't just stay a rat while they're a kid. They stay a rat their whole life."
If you know something of Salinger's reclusive life and reaction to the public over all these years, you can't help thinking he hasn't rid himself of Holden's adolescence angst. His naiveté regarding the intuitive wisdom of the precocious child shows up often in his tiny lifetime output of work.
Nine Lives Too Many
The Daemon in Our Dreams
The Rice Queen Spy
Clawed Back from the Dead


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