The book was published in 1951.
I read it when it first came out (I was 13) and hated it. I thought “What’s the point of it all.” The most notable thing about the book as far as I was concerned was the fact it was the first time I saw the word “fuck” in a book.
Because it was awful, is what I’d like to say, but you seem to have enjoyed it, and felt no compulsion to kick Holden is his fellas. So yeah, odd that you didn’t get through it all.
The book never connected with me on any level whatsoever. It might as well have been written in Chinese.
Thank you, thank you, thank you all! When I first read it (in the 1960s) everyone was falling over themselves saying how wonderful this book was. I found it much less than wonderful and I have always wondered what was wrong with me that everyone thought this book was a manifestation of the second coming in literary form and I thought it was a small step above a waste of ink and paper. The book had fallen into a bit of obscurity in the '80s but then it became the center point of the book “Field of Dreams,” and I was once again in the position of thinking “Why does everybody love this so much?” I was hesitant to open this thread because I just knew that once again everyone was going to be heaping compliments on the work, and I would just be hanging my head going, “I didn’t see any of that.”
so…Thank you all.
Is there a “take-a-number” system here, or are we just taking turns?
Interesting. I’ve found this book very divisive, to say the least. People either loved it or hated it. While, in my experience, the reaction is generally positive (I’d say about 3/4 of the people I know loved it), there’s plenty of dissenters out there. I know we’ve had earlier threads on the Straight Dope about this book, and I get the sense either a large majority of folks here hate the book, or only they feel like commenting in Catcher in the Rye threads.
I completely understood Holden’s take on superficiality (‘fakes’). For one thing, in high school there were certain kids who would ponitifcate on things. We called them ‘pseudo-intellectuals’ – not at all like us real intellectuals! 
But the real thing is that most of my working life has been in Corporate environments; and I spent a deal of time Behind the Orange Curtain (‘Reagan Country’). Management and many employees seemed to place a high value on status symbols and making money. In the scheme of things, I didn’t see the point. Sure, it’s good to have money. But… You know how kids will play, and they just don’t give a damn? These people, if they played, had to play the right games – and be seen doing it. They seemed, as Holden Caulfield would say, ‘fake’. And don’t get me started on the ‘team building’ stuff…
So yeah, I remember being 16 and 17 years old. I can see a little bit of myself in Holden (though I had goals), and I spent a lot of time around ‘fake’ people. But did the story go anywhere? In the end, does Holden ‘straighten up and fly right’? Or does he tell the analyst what the analyst wants to hear, with no intention of applying himself? Or does he mean what he says, but he’s not going to follow through?
Is it OK that the book doesn’t really have an ending? I think so. I often like it when things are ambiguous. I’ll have to say that the story is well-written, and that Holden’s character is well described. Definitely a good book. But I think it’s a thing of its time. What was shocking then, isn’t now. It seems to me that it gained a lot of notariety from its shock value, and it’s a ‘must read’ now because it was a ‘must read’ then.
Are you ME?? :eek:
This was my favorite book for a long time. It was the first book I had to read for high school that I actually wanted to keep reading. It came around at precisely the right time in my life and it felt really nice to know I wasn’t alone. I feel a bit sad now that I’ve outgrown it, but some parts still make me laugh.
“We tried to get old Marsalla to rip off another one, right while old Thurmer was making his speech, but he wasn’t in the right mood.” 
My defense in a recent thread:
I have to defend it, since the book singlehandedly pushed me into developing my own voice as an author. I was 15. It resonated deeply with me and still does. I try to read it as least once a year.
The way I see it, Holden is a little whiny and a little entitled because of the culture he’d been raised in, sure. But the whole point is that this elitest culture was killing him. He lost his little brother to leukemia and everyone insists on pretending things are fine. He was the victim of attempted or actual sexual assault by his teacher and he is expected to go on pretending things are fine. His room-mates regularly take advantage of women without consequence, including the one woman he genuinely loves, and again, he is powerless to do anything about it and his attempted intervention only ends with him getting his ass kicked.
Holden sees the hidden depravity of other humans and is disgusted by the way everyone chooses to look the other way. He is living in a massively fucked up world and from his perspective is the only one who seems to be willing to acknowledge it. His proclamation of everything as ‘‘phony’’ isn’t arrogance, it’s anger and helplessness. And because he is a child the only way he can find to cope with it is to behave self-destructively, which is exactly what children do when they feel powerless. When he identifies himself as a ‘‘terrific liar’’ the irony is that everyone is a terrific liar. He’s the only one with the balls to admit it.
I love Holden, every bratty inch of him.
Wow - we sync up on books and music?! I never liked the book, but I respected it immensely. It is extremely well written - you may not like the character, but it is a well-rendered character. How his Holden any different from, say, Elvis? Meaning: for his time, he challenged convention - Holden was one of the first teenagers. Its pretty interesting that Holden parallels what we are going through right now with Tweeners - before the 50’s, Teens didn’t exist; there was not a separate “demographic” nor did kids of the teen age have access to either the money or permission to do things like buy 45’s (which were also a recent innovation) or go to the Happy Days soda joint and do, well, teenager things. Now we are in an age when Hannah Montana and iCarly and a saturating surge of commercials are calling out to 11-14-year-olds and trying to legitimize their voice and make it okay for them to buy the stuff that they want to buy to stake out their individuality.
Well - look at Holden Caulfield in that light - children were supposed to be seen and not heard up to the 50’s. The fact that Salinger gave a legit voice to a teenager - even if you wanted to smack him - was a pivotal moment in establishing that teens had their own place and right to do their own thing.
Does it hold up? IMHO - not so much. But was it important at the time and for decades afterwards? Sure.
fwiw, the first edition of Catcher in the Rye is worth a ton - thousands of dollars. I used to have one and sold it - unfortunately, they are so dear that folks will go to the trouble of grabbing beat up copies and “restoring” them - mine was one of those. I had gotten more because it filled out my collection - I mean, if you can have books like Catch-22, A Separate Peace and To Kill a Mockingbird, how can you NOT have Catcher?? But between Lennon’s killer being enamored with the book and Mel Gibson’s whacked-out movie where his conspiracy-theorist nutjob is obsessed with the book, I was kinda done with it so I unloaded it in order to get guitar and never looked back.
And puly? I had a gorgeous first edition of Confederacy - lord I love that book - that I sold for practical reasons…
BTW, forgot to mention that for many years, I collected every paperback book I could find with a blurb “like Catcher In The Rye” on the cover. Trust me when I say there were lots and lots of them back then. 99% were crap…but if I am not mistaken, A Separate Peace had the blurb on it as well, and I really liked that book.
It was quite a wonderful collection of oddities, but sadly my mother gave away all of my books while I was living in Europe and they moved from the house and were packing.
Thanks----I last read it about 18 years ago so wasn’t sure about the decade, I DO know that our teacher told us one decade, where with close reading I discovered it was the last year of the previous decade…
I am glad that there are others who didn’t care for the book. I had no empathy with the protagonist and no interest in what was happening, so stopped reading it. I was in my early 30’s when I read it. In my teens the most moving book that I read was Slaughterhouse 5. So what is it about murderers who have it as their favorite book?
I totally agree with you here, DMark. I, too was a teenager in the 1960’s, and I read the book on my Freshman year in high school. Back then, I sympathized and identified with Holden Caulfield, although I honestly don’t know how I’d feel about him if I were to re-read Catcher in the Rye as an adult.
FYI: There’s now a film version
…although the efforts might have been better spent telling the Hellen Keller Story (fom Helen’s POV)