a book

The Catcher in the Rye

Name: The Catcher in the Rye
Rating: 5 (24 reviews)
Author: J. D. Salinger
ISBN: 9781613839560

J. D. Salinger · 2001 · 277 pages

Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger's New Yorker stories ? particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme ? With Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is fully of children. The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.

recommended by 24 people

sourced from public statements

Tom Hanks
“That’s a big thing to go through.”↗
Jennifer Lawrence
“I'm so drawn to Salinger's view of society back then, and to his sarcasm.”↗
Elizabeth Warren
“C’mon – it’s mythic.”↗
Larry King
“I love The Catcher in the Rye. I read it at four different times in my life. Teenager and later.”↗
Ted Koppel
“Because it’s all but impossible to remember exactly how we felt as teenagers, Salinger’s portrait of a wiseass prep-school refugee roaming Manhattan should be as mandatory as an annual health exam. It may not create genuine understanding between generations, but it can remind an adult why his or her teenager doesn’t care.”↗
Shirley Manson
“I was a difficult teenager and turned to books as an escape. I saw my alienation and angst reflected in the story of rebellious Holden Caulfield and I would mimic him by calling everyone ‘phoney’. It made such an impression on me that in Garbage’s video for ‘Why Do You Love Me’ I’m reading my dad’s old copy. He never got it back.”↗
Shepard Fairey
“As a 13- or 14-year-old, I was insecure and felt a lot of anxiety about how I fit in socially and academically at my strict private school. Reading The Catcher in the Rye, I related very profoundly to Holden Caulfield as an intelligent but self-sabotaging high school student. I enjoyed the humor and the social observations of Holden’s character, and I felt a kinship that made my insecurities about my own dysfunction a little less paralyzing. The book was very good therapy for me and made me more comfortable sharing my own thoughts.”↗
Harry Khachatrian
“I’ve read all of these, they’re all great books”↗
Bill Gates
J. K. Rowling
Ev Williams
Gretchen Rubin
Sarah Jessica Parker
Emma Stone
Scarlett Johansson
Gwyneth Paltrow
Haruki Murakami
Kathie Lee Gifford
Jay McInerney
Chigozie Obioma
Rae Earl
Andrew Garfield
Sophie Bakalar
Tim Draper