Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger's New Yorker stories ? particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme ? With Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is fully of children. The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep. ~ GR
~I was thinking of getting back to a classic novel. This particular book took me three tries to read to be able to really get into Holden's teenage angst and I admit I was frustrated to read all about his "rants" I can't really remember if I ever once felt the way he did when I was at that age, maybe I did but then conveniently forgot about it as I grew up. This classic do not have the usual young adult criteria that is populating the mass today but whatever Holden's character was feeling will probably stand true for every teenage of every generation. So I hope that you dear readers will give me your own piece of mind and what you felt after reading this novel. I will be very interested to know from your point of view ~ Laila