The Catcher in the the Rye by J. D. Salinger

Why I picked this book up and thoughts: In Conspiracy Theory (1997), one of my favorite movies, Mel Gibson's character is programmed to buy the novel whenever he sees it, though he never actually reads it. And he says “and if I don’t see one I have to buy it so I feel normal.” This was the book he would buy which he had stacked in his apartment and he had more of them under his bed too. He was programmed to buy Catcher in the Rye so they, the government, could track him. Holden Caulfield is the narrator and main character of this book. The novel recounts Holden's week in New York City during Christmas with break, circa 1948/49, following his expulsion from Pencey Prep, a preparatory school in Pennsylvania based loosely on Salinger's alma mater Valley Forge Military Academy. Holden Caulfield tells his story with surprising honesty from a hospital in California in a cynical and jaded language. The best-known event associated with The Catcher in the Rye is arguably Mark David Chapman's shooting of John Lennon.[14] Chapman went to my wife’s first undergrad school, Covenant College in Lookout Mt. Georgia. Chapman identified with the novel's narrator to the extent that he wanted to change his name to Holden Caulfield. On the night he shot Lennon, Chapman was found with a copy of the book in which he had written "This is my statement" and signed Holden's name.[15] Later, he read a passage from the novel to address the court during his sentencing.[16] Daniel Stashower speculated that Chapman had wanted Lennon's innocence to be preserved by death, inspired by Holden's wish to preserve children's innocence despite Holden's later realization that children should be left alone.[16] People would also get mad at this character for asking “where the ducks went during winter” which to me shows his childlike immaturity (but I ask questions like that all the time).

In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City. "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"--Jacket.

I really was not into this book very much. I just saw it as a rich kid with money his grandma would sent money to, 4 times per year for his birthday because she was old maybe with dementia. He seemed immature, crass, inexperienced socially inept, did not really know what he wanted to do, did not want his parents to know he was kicked out of school, cussed, smoked and drank a lot and he said he was an atheist but showed some distain for the Catholic Church, nuns and just people. I did see his love for his little sister that he paid for to ride the merry go round and watching her sitting in the rain. This book really did not have much of a story, this book really was a book I can see recommending much to people.

I rated it at 1 out of 5 stars. ( )