book review: Catcher in the Rye

Author: J.D. Salinger
Genre: Narrative Fiction
Length: 277 pgs.
Available for purchase here ($7-10)

Influencing myriad readers since its initial publication in 1945, this timeless and impossibly famous "coming-of-age" story is one that breaks the rules in a truly badass, authentic and amusing way. Shortly before Christmas break, 15-year old Holden Caulfield gets kicked out of Pencey Prep School and impulsively decides to venture around New York City before going home to face his parents. A lot of the story consists of Caulfield describing the people, places and things that he comes across--and then reflecting on his troubles. His scatter-brained ideas represent his inner turmoil and conflictedness about the past and the future.

As he narrates through his adventures, Caulfield uses terms like "flitty" to describe pervs, and "phony" to describe people who aren't worthy of his time (a.k.a. the 1950s version of a modern day 'd-bag' or 'tool'). Other staple terms include lousy, goddamn, madman and big bang. The speaker's tone, dialect and vocabulary were so amusing--and the timeline and plot kept me in suspense. Somehow, even after majoring in English, I only read this book for the first time last week at age 25. I couldn't put it down, it was so wonderful. I was reading it on the subway the other day and couldn't help but laugh out loud several times during the ride.

My favorite quote from the novel was this:

"You ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques."