The Catcher in the Rye

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J. D. Salinger

Literature

Jul 31, 2018

It’s been considerably more than a half century since the first angst-ridden teenager cracked the spine of The Catcher in the Rye and felt he’d found a book—or more specifically, a character—that spoke for him. In the intervening years, millions of other self-anointed outsiders have felt the same way. For such receptive readers, J. D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield is the embodiment of everything it is to be sixteen, smart, directionless, skeptical, and on the brink of adult life in mass market America. In creating a voice for his protagonist, Salinger reached back to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for a mode of address refreshing in its directness; to this he added a modern, sarcastic knowingness that was shocking in its day and even now remains conspiratorially engaging.

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