"The Catcher in the Rye" is a novel by the American writer Jerome Salinger and is included in 100 world books. In it, on behalf of a 16-year-old boy named Holden, he frankly tells about his heightened perception of American reality and rejection of the general canons and morals of modern society. The work was immensely popular both among young people and among the adult population, having a significant impact on world culture in the second half of the 20th century.
"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." - J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
The novel has been translated into almost all major languages of the world. In 2005, Time magazine ranked the novel as one of the 100 Best English-Language Novels Written Since 1923, and Modern Library included it in the Top 100 English-Language Novels of the 20th Century. However, despite this, in the United States, the novel was often criticized and was banned in schools due to the large amount of obscene language.
The novel is written on behalf of seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield, who is undergoing treatment at the clinic: it tells the story of what happened to him last winter and preceded his illness. The events about which he narrates unfold in the days before Christmas in December 1949.
The first precursors to The Catcher in the Rye were Salinger's early stories, many of which outline themes that the writer later raised in the novel. While studying at Columbia University, he wrote the story "Young Guys", one of the heroines of which was described by researchers as "a barely outlined prototype of Sally Hayes." In November 1941, a story was written called "A Light Riot on Madison Avenue", which later became the seventeenth chapter of the novel: it describes Holden's quarrel with Sally after the skating rink and his meeting with Karl Luce. A Light Riot on Madison Avenue was the first Salinger novel to feature a character named Holden Caulfield. Another short story, titled I'm Crazy, contains sketches of two episodes from The Catcher in the Rye (Holden's farewell to his history teacher and his conversation with the mother of a classmate on his way from school to New York); its main character also bears the name of Holden Caulfield. In the story "The Day Before Farewell" (1944), the protagonist John Gladwaller is visited by his friend, Vincent Caulfield, who tells about his younger brother Holden, "who was kicked out of school a hundred times." From the narrative it follows that Holden served in the army and went missing when he was not even 20 years old. In 1949, The New Yorker accepted for publication a ninety-page manuscript authored by Salinger, the main character of which was again Holden Caulfield, but later the writer himself recalled the text back. The final version of the novel was published by Little, Brown and Company in 1951.
The work is clearly intertwined with the biography of Jerome Salinger. So, describing his family, Holden Caulfield talks about his older brother D. B. Apparently, this analogy applies to Salinger himself, since D. B. is a writer who "wrote stories", "studied at Columbia University", until he moved to Hollywood (the only difference is that Salinger did not make screenplays, like a prototype from a book).
It is known that the writer himself participated in the landing in Normandy and in 1945 ended up in the hospital with a nervous breakdown. Personal life is also quite remarkable, including the attitude of the author of the famous novel. Salinger was very fond of children with their naive but honest view of the surrounding reality. He put nonconformism and individualism in the first place: the eternal struggle between stereotypical views and the inner world, showing that Buddhist "contemplation" - and the writer himself was a great admirer of Eastern philosophy - is much more important than everyday problems of well-being and success. The second projection of the writer's views, perhaps the most important, was the protagonist Holden Caulfield himself.
Between 1961 and 1982, The Catcher in the Rye became the most banned book in US schools and libraries. The reasons were the "rough language" of the novel, unveiled references to sex (in particular, the scene with a prostitute). Holden was described as a "bad example" for young people, claiming that he encouraged children to rebel, drunkenness and debauchery. Prohibitive actions often led to the opposite effect: the novel only attracted more interest. Attempts to restrict adolescents' access to the novel or to exclude it from the school curriculum sometimes occur to this day.
The novel became notorious for the murder of John Lennon by Mark Chapman. A copy of the book was found with Chapman, who was captured immediately after the murder, on the inside of the cover by Chapman's hand was written: “To Holden Caulfield. From Holden Caulfield. This is my statement. " Robert John Bardot, the killer of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, also had a copy of the novel. Both criminals suffered from mental illness, although they were found sane at the trial.
You can get «The Catcher in the Rye» at "Barnes & Noble"
This article was sponsored by Sizhe Liu.
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