The Catcher in the Rye Mass market paperbound - 1991

Published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye has become a common part of high school and college curricula throughout the English-speaking world and has been translated into all major languages. Since its publication with a $3.00 sticker, it has reportedly sold more than 65 million copies. The novel's antihero, Holden Caulfield, has become a cultural icon for teenage rebellion. Due to its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and teenage angst, it has frequently been met with censorship challenges in the United States making it one of the most challenged books of the 20th century.

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 full 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.

Details

• Title The Catcher in the Rye
• Author J. D. Salinger
• Binding Mass Market Paperbound
• Edition [ Edition: Repri
• Pages 240
• Volumes 1
• Language ENG
• Publisher Little Brown and Company, Boston, Massachusetts, U.s.a.
• Date 1991-05-01
• ISBN 9780316769488 / 0316769487
• Weight 0.25 lbs (0.11 kg)
• Dimensions 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.8 in (17.02 x 10.41 x 2.03 cm)
• Reading level 790
• Themes
  • Catalog Heading: Classics
  • Cultural Region: Mid-Atlantic
  • Cultural Region: Northeast U.S.
  • Curriculum Strand: Language Arts/Literature
  • Geographic Orientation: New York
  • Locality: New York, N.Y.
  • Topical: Coming of Age
• Library of Congress subjects New York (N.Y.), Bildungsromans
• Library of Congress Catalog Number 51004713
• Dewey Decimal Code FIC