Sunday book pick: ‘The Catcher in the Rye' by JD Salinger, a novel I have read 11 times

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06-07-2025

'I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.'
The first time I read JD Salinger's 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye was a few weeks after my school finishing exams. That was 11 years ago. Since then, I have read the book once a year every year. Usually during the summer, when it is especially pleasurable to read about the brutal New York City winter that 16-year-old Holden Caulfield finds himself in after being expelled from school for failing his exams.
The novel ranks number one on the list of my top five books of all time.
At home nowhere
But Holden is not devastated by the expulsion. If anything, it was expected – he has never lasted for too long at any school. The boys are 'phoney', the teachers too, and he has no particular interest in academics or extra-curricular activities. He enjoys reading while considering himself 'quite illiterate.' He sounds rather mature for his age too. Almost everything he says is punctuated by expletives – 'sonuvabitch', 'goddamn', 'bastard' – and on top of that, he is a heavy smoker and already has greys in his hair. He also likes to treat himself to alcohol whenever he can get away with it.
Holden is hardly a role model for Salinger's young readers, and it is also foolish to expect him to be. Instead, the foul-mouthed, moody, and academically uninterested protagonist is a terrific portrayal of teenage angst. My own teenage years far behind me, Holden's insolence brings me great relish. This is a novel that has never failed to crack me up. This is a boy who is clearly disinterested in everything around him and has already given up at an age when children are only beginning to familiarise themselves with the ways of the world – Holden's drollness comes at the price of heightened self-awareness.
As he roams the streets of New York City (he cannot go home yet without disappointing his parents), Holden sees the megalopolis from the eyes of the unwanted. Despite coming from a wealthy family, Holden has little money in his pockets. He checks into a shady hotel where all sorts of 'perverts' have put up, gets into trouble with a prostitute and her pimp, and survives on coffee, liquor, and cigarettes. He kills time by ringing up old girlfriends and acquaintances and asking them to hang out with him, only he doesn't feel 'too hot' around them and almost every time gets 'depressed' soon after or worse, ends up picking a fight.
While only a small portion of the novel is set in Pencey Preparatory Academy, we see how ill-suited Holden is to the school. He sees the pretentious ways of the elite, how teenage boys treat girls, and the boastfulness of the rich. He is not interested in any of it. Throughout the novel, Holden holds a very cynical view of the kind of people he went to school with. While he belongs to the same social class, he maintains that he is not like them. He has no interest in fancy cars, making a lot of money, or being 'too sexy' with girls. In fact, he seems to be fond of nothing and no one except his older brother DB, his ten-year-old sister Phoebe, and his dead brother Allie.
DB is a writer in Hollywood now and though he is the best writer in the world as far as Holden is concerned, he cannot help but rue his brother's 'prostituting himself' to the movies. Phoebe is a 'smart' kid and incredibly intelligent in his eyes. In fact, it is only with her that Holden is able to speak truly of his feelings and when he makes a plan to run away, Phoebe offers to join him. Allie died of leukaemia a few years earlier and was something of a poet – he wrote poems on his baseball glove. It is his siblings that Holden views as his emotional anchors, who, unlike adults, are capable of genuine wonder, kindness, and spontaneity.
A new world
Perhaps the most obvious trait of Holden's personality is his obstinacy. He is hard to reason with and disregards almost all advice and reprimands from adults. He seems to have very little understanding of decorum and even if he did, he certainly doesn't care for it. What appears to be futile rage or impudence is not really so.
Holden is nearly of age in the years right after the Second World War. Gloom and doom are still heavy in the air, and while Holden might not have experienced the horrors of the front line, his childhood was overshadowed by times of great uncertainty and upheaval. In addition to the depressing political climate were personal losses of magnificent proportions. Losing his brother to cancer, witnessing the suicide of a classmate, and being the victim of 'perverty' men (quite likely sexual abuse) has left a deep wound on his young, impressionable mind.
Holden thinks like an adult but acts his age. There is no need for him to be good; if anything, it is a relief that Salinger just lets him be. As an adult reader, I feel sorry for Holden but I also feel no desire to rescue him – this is his rite of passage, this is everything he must suffer and overcome to get to tomorrow. By the end of the novel, Salinger does not promise that his protagonist will mature into a fine, respectable man. We are only told that he is attending another school and sometimes misses his 'phoney' classmates.
'What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it,' says Holden. I wish I had JD Salinger on my speed dial; I would call him up every year.