The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger (1951)
“The most banned book in American high schools is also the most honest portrait of what being sixteen actually feels like — because Holden Caulfield says what everyone thinks and nobody admits.”
At a Glance
Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old prep school dropout, spends three days wandering New York City after being expelled from Pencey Prep. He drinks in bars, hires a prostitute (then doesn't use her), reconnects with an old girlfriend, visits his beloved younger sister Phoebe, and sees his former English teacher Mr. Antolini before suffering what appears to be a mental breakdown. The novel ends with Holden in a California sanitarium, telling his story to a therapist he distrusts.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Published July 16, 1951, the novel sold 75,000 copies in its first year — enormous for a literary novel. By 2010 it sold roughly 250,000 copies annually. It created the template for the confessional teenage narrator that influenced every young-adult novel written after it. It was the most frequently banned book in American schools from the 1960s through the 1980s, appearing regularly on the American Library Association's most-challenged list, and is still challenged regularly today.
Diction Profile
Aggressively informal — contractions, slang, sentence fragments, direct address. The most sustained vernacular voice in American literary fiction.
Low