The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger · 1951
Holden Caulfield is impossibly irritating and completely right. Salinger invented the voice of adolescent alienation in 1951, and it still speaks to readers decades past their adolescence. The authentic disdain for phoniness is itself a philosophical position. It has been banned more than almost any other American novel, which tells you something.
The case against
Reread it past thirty and the spell can break: a prep-school kid with a dead brother and a hotel budget wanders Manhattan feeling superior to everyone he meets, and the novel mostly agrees with him. Nothing happens, twice. The voice that electrifies at sixteen reads, later, like a tic-ridden monologue you cannot politely escape.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
