J. D. Salinger dedicated The Catcher In The Rye to his mother. One wonders why? Is it a book she'd be proud of because she hated children? I think not.

Yet, Catcher is an endurable book. It never seems to go away, and it has been around since 1951 when Little Brown published it.

The appeal of the novella--like all novels that portray anti-heroes--attracts readers who favor the eccentric, the quirky, and the antisocial. Without of doubt, Holden Caufield is a sentimental adolescent who by today's standards may be diagnosed as afflicted by 'bi-polar disorder.'


Is it well written? Not very. It has patches of serious and well formed sentences, but for the the most it is a boring book. There's no elegance, beauty, or grandeur in the writing; quite the contrary, one finds crassness, grossness, and vulgarity disguised as artistic language.

Even Dickens'David Copperfield is less boring than Catcher; Copperfield being a book Holden denigrates as "all that David Copperfield kind of crap..."

What can one expect of an alienated youth who sees himself as an angel of salvation and redemption:

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. 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."
- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Ch. 22

For all of Holden's swearing and whining and attempts to be hep and jazzy and sincere, by the end of the book he remains a virgin, picked-on, abused, and not much of a thinker--a big phony. And never funny: "It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to."

Between Robert Ackley, Edgar Marsalla and Holden Caulfied, I'd vote Ackley as the most interesting character in the book--pimples and all. But even Marsalla is more interesting than Holden, despite the fact that he only speaks (or makes noise, if you wish) twice.