The Catcher in the Rye | |
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First edition cover |
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Author | J. D. Salinger |
Cover artist | E. Michael Mitchell[1][2] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Novel |
Publisher | Little, Brown and Company |
Publication date | 1951 |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Pages | 276 pp |
ISBN | 0-316-76953-3 |
OCLC Number | 287628 |
The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger.[3] Originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage confusion, angst, sexuality, alienation, and rebellion.[4] It has been translated into almost all of the world's major languages.[5] Around 250,000 copies are sold each year, with total sales of more than 65 million.[6] The novel's protagonist and antihero, Holden Caulfield, has become an icon for teenage rebellion.[7]
The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923,[8] and it was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged[9][10][11] in the United States for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and teenage angst. It also deals with complex issues of identity, belonging, connection, and alienation.
Contents |
Holden shares encounters he has had with students and faculty of Pencey, whom he criticizes as being superficial, or, as he would say, "phony." After being expelled from the school for poor grades, Holden packs up and leaves the school in the middle of the night after an altercation with his roommate. He takes a train to New York, but does not want to return to his family and instead checks into the dilapidated Edmont Hotel. There, he spends an evening dancing with three tourist girls and has a clumsy encounter with a young prostitute around his age named Sunny;[12] his attitude toward the prostitute changes the minute she enters the room, and after he tells her he just wants to talk, she becomes annoyed with him and leaves. However, he still pays her for her time. She demands more money than was originally agreed upon and when Holden refuses to pay he is beaten by her pimp, Maurice (despite her suggestion that he simply threaten the money out of Holden and leave).
Holden spends a total of three days in the city, characterized largely by drunkenness and loneliness. At one point he ends up at a museum, where he contrasts his life with the statues of Eskimos on display. For as long as he can remember, the statues have been unchanging. These concerns may have stemmed largely from the death of his brother, Allie. Eventually, he sneaks into his parents' apartment while they are away, to visit his younger sister, Phoebe, who is nearly the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate. Phoebe views Holden as a hero, and she is naively unaware that Holden's view of her is virtually identical. Holden shares a fantasy he has been thinking about (based on a mishearing of Robert Burns' Comin' Through the Rye): he pictures himself as the sole guardian of numerous children running and playing in a huge rye field on the edge of a cliff. His job is to catch the children if they wander close to the brink; to be a "catcher in the rye".
After leaving his parents' apartment, Holden then drops by to see a former, and much admired, English teacher, Mr. Antolini, in the middle of the night, and is offered advice on life and a place to sleep. Mr. Antolini tells Holden that it is the stronger man who lives humbly for a cause that he believes in, rather than dies nobly for it. This rebukes Holden's ideas of becoming a "catcher in the rye," a heroic figure who symbolically saves children from "falling off a crazy cliff" and being exposed to the evils of adulthood. During the speech on life, Mr. Antolini has a number of "highballs," referring to a cocktail served in a highball glass. Holden's comfort is upset when he wakes up in the night to find Mr. Antolini patting his head in a way that he perceives as "flitty." There is much speculation on whether Mr. Antolini was making a sexual advance on Holden, and it is left up to the reader to decide whether this is true. Holden leaves and spends his last afternoon wandering the city. He later wonders if his interpretation of Mr. Antolini's actions was actually correct.
Holden decides to move out west; he relays these plans to his sister, who decides she wants to go with him. He refuses to take her, and when she becomes upset with him, he tells her that he will no longer go. Holden then takes Phoebe to the Central Park Zoo, where he watches with a bittersweet joy as she rides a carousel. He decides, while watching Phoebe, to go home and "face the music". At the close of the book, Holden chooses not to mention much about the present day, finding it inconsequential. He alludes to "getting sick" and living in a mental hospital, and mentions that he'll be attending another school in September. Holden says that he has surprisingly found himself missing Stradlater and Ackley (his former classmates), and even Maurice the elevator operator/pimp. He says, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you'll start missing everybody".
The Catcher in the Rye is written in a subjective style from the point of view of its protagonist, Holden Caulfield, following his exact thought process (a writing style known as stream of consciousness). There is flow in the seemingly disjointed ideas and episodes; for example, as Holden sits in a chair in his dorm, minor events such as picking up a book or looking at a table, unfold into discussions about experiences. Critical reviews agree that the novel accurately reflected the teenage colloquial speech of the time.[13]
Writer Bruce Brooks held that Holden's attitude remains unchanged at story's end, implying no maturation, thus differentiating the novel from young adult fiction.[14] In contrast, writer and academic Louis Menand thought that teachers assign the novel because of the optimistic ending, to teach adolescent readers that "alienation is just a phase."[15] While Brooks maintained that Holden acts his age, Menand claimed that Holden thinks as an adult, given his ability to accurately perceive people and their motives such as when Phoebe states that she will go out west with Holden, and he immediately rejects this idea as ridiculous, much to Phoebe's disappointment. Others highlight the dilemma of Holden's state, in between adolescence and adulthood.[16][17] While Holden views himself to be smarter than and as mature as adults, he is quick to become emotional. "I felt sorry as hell for..." is a phrase he often uses.[16]
Peter Beidler, in his A Reader's Companion to J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye", identifies the movie that the prostitute Sunny refers to in chapter 13 of The Catcher in the Rye. She says that in the movie a boy falls off a boat. The movie is Captains Courageous, starring Spencer Tracy. Sunny says that Holden looks like the boy who fell off the boat. Beidler shows (see p. 28) a still of the boy, played by child-actor Freddie Bartholomew.
The novel's philosophy has been negatively compared with that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[18]
Each Caulfield child has literary talent: D. B. writes screenplays in Hollywood; Holden also reveres D. B. for his writing skill (Holden's own best subject), but he also despises movies, considering them the ultimate in "phony", and describes D. B.'s move to Hollywood to write for films as "prostituting himself". Allie wrote poetry on his baseball glove; and Phoebe is a diarist.[19] This "catcher in the rye" is an analogy for Holden, who admires in kids attributes he struggles to find in adults, like innocence, kindness, spontaneity, and generosity. Falling off the cliff could be a progression into the adult world that surrounds him and that he strongly criticizes. Later, Phoebe and Holden exchange roles as the "catcher" and the "fallen"; he gives her his hunting hat, the catcher's symbol, and becomes the fallen as Phoebe becomes the catcher.[20]
The Catcher in the Rye has been listed as one of the best novels of the 20th century. For The New York Times, James Stern wrote a negative review of the book,[21] while Nash K. Burger called it "an unusually brilliant novel".[22] George H. W. Bush called it "a marvelous book", listing it among the books that have inspired him.[23] In June 2009, the BBC's Finlo Rohrer wrote that, 58 years since publication, the book is still regarded "as the defining work on what it is like to be a teenager. Holden is at various times disaffected, disgruntled, alienated, isolated, directionless, and sarcastic."[24] Adam Gopnik considers it one of the "three perfect books" in American literature, along with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby, and believes that "no book has ever captured a city better than Catcher in the Rye captured New York in the forties".[25]
Not all reception was positive, however. The book has had its share of critics. Rohrer writes, "Many of these readers are disappointed that the novel fails to meet the expectations generated by the mystique it is shrouded in. J. D. Salinger has done his part to enhance this mystique. That is to say, he has done nothing."[24] Rohrer assessed the reasons behind both the popularity and criticism of the book, saying that it "captures existential teenage angst" and has a "complex central character" and "accessible conversational style"; while at the same time some readers may dislike the "use of 1940s New York vernacular", "self-obsessed central character", and "too much whining".[24]
In 1960 a teacher was fired for assigning the novel in class; he was later reinstated.[26] Between 1961 and 1982, The Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in high schools and libraries in the United States.[27] In 1981, it was both the most censored book and the second most taught book in public schools in the United States.[28] According to the American Library Association, The Catcher in the Rye was the tenth most frequently challenged book from 1990–1999.[9] It was one of the ten most challenged books in 2005, but has been off the list since 2006.[29] The challenges generally begin with vulgar language, citing the novel's use of words like fuck[30] and goddamn,[31] with more general reasons including sexual references,[32] blasphemy, undermining of family values[31] and moral codes,[33] Holden's being a poor role model,[34] encouragement of rebellion,[35] and promotion of drinking, smoking, lying, and promiscuity.[33] Often, the challengers have been unfamiliar with the plot itself.[27] Shelley Keller-Gage, a high school teacher who faced objections after assigning the novel in her class, noted that the challengers "are being just like Holden... They are trying to be catchers in the rye."[31] A reverse effect has been that this incident caused people to put themselves on the waiting list to borrow the novel, when there were none before.[36]
Mark David Chapman's shooting of John Lennon (Chapman was arrested with a copy of the book), John Hinckley, Jr.'s assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, Robert John Bardo's shooting of Rebecca Schaeffer, and other murders have also been associated with the novel.[37][38]
In 2009, Salinger successfully sued to stop the U.S. publication of a novel that presents Holden Caulfield as an old man.[24][39] The novel's author, Fredrik Colting, commented, "call me an ignorant Swede, but the last thing I thought possible in the U.S. was that you banned books."[40] The issue is complicated by the nature of Colting's book, 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, which has been compared to fan fiction.[41] Although commonly not authorized by writers, no legal action is usually taken[42] against fan fiction since it is rarely published commercially and thus involves no profit. Colting, however, has published his book commercially. Unauthorized fan fiction on The Catcher in the Rye has existed on the Internet for years without any legal action taken by Salinger.[41]
Early in his career, J. D. Salinger expressed a willingness to have his work adapted for the screen.[43] However, in 1949, a critically panned film version of his short story "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" was released; renamed My Foolish Heart and taking great liberties with Salinger's plot, the film is widely considered to be among the reasons that Salinger refused to allow any subsequent movie adaptations of his work.[16][44] The enduring popularity of The Catcher in the Rye, however, has resulted in repeated attempts to secure the novel's screen rights.[45]
When The Catcher in the Rye was first released, many offers were made to adapt it for the screen; among them was Sam Goldwyn, producer of My Foolish Heart.[44] In a letter written in the early fifties, J. D. Salinger spoke of mounting a play in which he would play the role of Holden Caulfield opposite Margaret O'Brien, and, if he couldn’t play the part himself, to “forget about it." Almost fifty years later, the writer Joyce Maynard definitively concluded, "The only person who might ever have played Holden Caulfield would have been J. D. Salinger."[46]
J. D. Salinger told Maynard in the seventies that Jerry Lewis "tried for years to get his hands on the part of Holden,"[46] despite Lewis not having read the novel until he was in his thirties.[36] Celebrities ranging from Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson to Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio have since made efforts to make a film adaptation.[47] In an interview with Premiere magazine, John Cusack commented that his one regret about turning twenty-one was that he had become too old to play Holden Caulfield. Writer-director Billy Wilder recounted his abortive attempts to snare the novel's rights:
Of course I read The Catcher in the Rye....Wonderful book. I loved it. I pursued it. I wanted to make a picture out of it. And then one day a young man came to the office of Leland Hayward, my agent, in New York, and said, 'Please tell Mr. Leland Hayward to lay off. He’s very, very insensitive.' And he walked out. That was the entire speech. I never saw him. That was J. D. Salinger and that was Catcher in the Rye.[48]
In 1961, J. D. Salinger denied Elia Kazan permission to direct a stage adaptation of Catcher for Broadway.[49] More recently, Salinger's agents received bids for the Catcher movie rights from Harvey Weinstein and Steven Spielberg,[50] neither of which was even passed on to J. D. Salinger for consideration.
In 2003, the BBC television program The Big Read featured The Catcher in the Rye, intercutting discussions of the novel with "a series of short films that featured an actor playing J. D. Salinger's adolescent antihero, Holden Caulfield."[49] The show defended its unlicensed adaptation of the novel by claiming to be a "literary review", and no major charges were filed.
According to a speculative article in The Guardian in May 2006, there were rumors that director Terrence Malick has been linked to a possible screen adaptation of the novel.[51]
After J. D. Salinger's death in 2010, Phyllis Westberg, who was Salinger's agent at Harold Ober Associates, stated that nothing has changed in terms of licensing movie, television, or stage rights of his works.[52] A letter written by Salinger in 1957 revealed that he was open to an adaptation of The Catcher in the Rye released after his death. He wrote: "Firstly, it is possible that one day the rights will be sold. Since there's an ever-looming possibility that I won't die rich, I toy very seriously with the idea of leaving the unsold rights to my wife and daughter as a kind of insurance policy. It pleasures me no end, though, I might quickly add, to know that I won't have to see the results of the transaction."[53]
References to The Catcher in the Rye in media and popular culture are numerous. Works inspired by The Catcher in the Rye have been said to form their own genre.[15] Dr. Sarah Graham assessed works influenced by The Catcher in the Rye to include the novels Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis,The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and Judith Guest's Ordinary People. Graham also includes the films The Graduate, Dead Poets Society, Tadpole, Conspiracy Theory, Igby Goes Down, Chapter 27, The Good Girl, The Collector and Donnie Darko. It has also been mentioned in an episode of the popular show South Park, and references to the novel form a major plot point in the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. In the decade following its publication, there were more than 70 essays on the novel printed in American and British magazines.
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