The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger You know what Id like to be? I mean, if I had my goddamn choice?

What? Stop swearing. You know that song, If a body catch a body comin through the rye? Id like Its If a body meet a body comin through the rye! old Phoebe said. Its a poem, by Robert Burns. Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobodys around nobody big, I mean, except me. And Im 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. Id just like to be the catcher in the rye and all. Holden Caulfield is not the brightest kid youve ever come across, nor the kind to be oozing charm with every five spoken words. He has this fantastic habit of flunking out of pretty much every prep school hes ever been sent to, on account of not applying himself. Hes 17, you see, and he has a rough time applying anywhere. Besides, he has a very keen eye on whatever is considered to be nauseating and perverted about the human behavior. From Holdens point of view, all that school principles seem to be good at is buttering the hot-shots parents up; his roommates either spent half their lives in front of the mirror, admiring their athletic, insanely-attractive bare torsos while their shaving razors are rusty as hell, full of lathers and hair and crap or they lock themselves in their rooms, ardently hating the whole universe of the above-mentioned hot-shots, and cursing good old Mother Nature for their pimples and their skinny bodies. Mr. Spencer, the history teacher, knows all about the Egyptians but lacks the common-sense needed so as not to start picking in his nose in front of somebody else. Laverne, Bernice and Marty arent so bad they can actually dance, as a matter of fact but they are dope enough to believe Gary Cooper is in the room, if you tell them so. Maurice is a filthy pimp and Sunny is his terrific girl, Carl Luce is an Ivy League intellectual whose best advice is go to a psychoanalyst and Mr. Antolini is the kind of flit1 who pats your head in the middle of the night if you happen to crush on his swanky couch from his swanky apartment. This is the world where waiters dont ever give your messages if you ask them to, adults dont listen to what you say (they just wait for you to get over with it so they can wish you good luck, which is depressing as hell) and taxi drivers dont know what happens to the ducks from the Central Park Lagoon when the lake freezes. Youd expect them to know that much, but they just dont. Theyre all phonies. Big phonies. The only ones that do listen to what you say, that show their pretty little ears when they put their hair behind them, that say thank you when you help them with their skateboards or when you show them the mummies in the History Museum are the kids. Holden Caulfield may seem like a foul-mouthed hypocrite, whose only talent is spending money like a madman and drinking himself into sweet, fuzzy oblivion, but all he wants is to keep the kids playing in the golden fields of rye, and catch them when they accidentally get too close to jumping off the cliff into that hole of shallowness, perverseness and sore responsibility that we call adulthood. In the end, while watching his little sister in the carrousel he realizes thats not possible, and he eventually goes home. I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, they way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I dont know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all. God, I wish you couldve been there. Maybe you dont speak like that, and you can control your hormones a little better. Youve probably never had such sever identity problems, you never dropped out of all those fancy prep
1

A 50s. slang for homosexual.

schools, you didnt use up in three days all that money your grandmother had sent you for Christmas and for your birthday which happens to be four times a year, and you never sneaked into you own house to talk to your younger sister. Whether you like Holden and agree with him or not that I cannot say, and I will not set myself up as a know-all, but maybe after reading this book you will find yourself one day, asking a cab driver: do you happen to know where the ducks go in the wintertime, by any chance?

Interesting facts: The book has been banned more times than you could count (in 1960, a teacher was fired for assigning the book in class): for 21 years, between 1961 and 1982, it was the most censored book in all the American high-schools and libraries. After 1981, it became the most censored and the most taught book in the American high-schools. It was associated with a series of shootings, because some people completely misunderstood the message of the book. The most important one is Mark David Chapmans shooting of John Lennon; at the time of his arrest, Chapman had his own copy of the book with him, in which he made the following note: Dear Holden Caulfield, From Holden Caulfield, This is my statement. Although its 100% teenage-material, it was written for adults. Holden Caulfield is an icon of teenage rebellion. The book has been translated into almost all the worlds major languages and was included in Times 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923. Modern Library and its readers also named it one of the 100 best Englishlanguage novels of the 20th century. President George H.W. Bush called it a marvelous book. Adam Gopnik (Canadian-raised American writer, essayist and commentator) said it was one of the three perfect books in American literature, along with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby. Salinger did not allow any movie adaptations of The Catcher in the Rye.