Catcher In The Rye - A Redux

J.D. Salinger's other fiction might be largely unread, but Catcher in the Rye starring Holden Caulfield has managed to fascinate one generation of adolescents after another for a half-century and counting.

Interesting that Iam writing about this book after a long time that I’ve actually read it. Well, it was triggered when conversing with a friend and some spare time at office.

This book has been one of the most frequently challenged by would-be book banners, and one of the most misunderstood books of the 20th century. The renowned book probably has posted higher sales figures than any other serious American novel; this is as true now, at a time when it clips along at a brisk 250,000 copies a year, as it was when it appeared in 1951.
What accounts for The Catcher in the Rye's phenomenal success? No doubt it has something to do with the way that young readers identify with Holden Caulfield, the novel's confused, desperate, funny and ultimately lovable protagonist. In his war against everything that is phony and sad, he provides an etiquette book for those who see themselves reflected in his doomed situation and a point of reference for those who have, for better or worse, moved beyond the pains of adolescence to those of adulthood.

To summarize the plotline, Holden Caulfield about to be kicked out of yet another boarding school for flunking most of his courses, decides not to wait until the end of term, and takes off for his hometown, Manhattan, a few days early. He figures he'll hole up in a cheap hotel, look up a few friends, and then arrive home on time. But Holden is deeply troubled, by the death of his beloved younger brother from leukemia, as well as the suicide of a classmate and alone in an uncaring city his already fragile psyche begins to unravel.

The book has been challenged and banned for many reasons over the years in the content advisories, though by today's standards it might not even merit a PG-13 if it were a movie (and, oddly for a book this popular, it has never been filmed). But those who challenge it, fail to see the forest for the little swearword trees. They have called Holden a cynical teenager, when in fact he is such a compassionate innocent individual, that he can hardly cope with the cynical world: so innocent and so alone that he tries to get a prostitute to just chat and keep him company! Desperately lonely, adrift in what seems to him an uncaring world, he has been through some terrible experiences and no one at all seems to have noticed that he is crumbling. This explains his emotional outbursts, cynicism and poignancy.

When you are through with the book, Salinger’s genius comes through. Considering the book was written in 1951, when "teen" and "adolescent" were barely concepts in the American mind, Salinger captured the adolescent voice and way of thinking more perfectly, and more poignantly, than just about anyone before or since. Holden Caulfield holds a place in the adolescent psyche as an exquisitely rendered character with whom nearly anyone can identify.

This is an excerpt from the book, where Holden’s imagines him to be doing something that really likes because it’s sans any “phoniness” that he has come across in his life, so often.

“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 somewhere 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 really like to be.”

Catcher In The Rye, is truly, a Masterpiece.