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I HATED this book when I read it in high school. I still don't understand what all the fuss was about.

If you have to take a class to understand a book, then it's a poorly written book, in my opinion.

This is a case where revisiting after many years pays off. I first read this when I was 12 or so. When I read it then, I was like "Wow...He's so...adult sounding." When I read it that young, I kinda pictured him as being late college age or so (I went to public school, and equated boarding school with college).

So I come back for a visit when I'm a senior in college, and lo and behold; I find out that Holden's just a whiny ass little 16 year old. By the end of the book, I really despised him for being for damn emo when he really has nothing to be emo about.

So...essentially, I disliked the book, but mostly because I hated the main character with a passion.

i read this in high school because it was supposed to be controversial, and because we weren't assigned it. (i operated on stubborn even back then.)

i related to the level of avoidance holden cultivated, that he was too disinterested to actually rebel. i found the book a mix of sad & funny, a bit of a "heart breaking work"...

then i read "franny & zooey" and the seymour stories, and fell in love. the glass family were fascinating as a whole, and i'm sure set me up to love "royal tennenbaums".

the short stories collection is still a favorite of mine and i've gone back to read the stories as an adult. "for esmé with love and squalor" still wrecks me, and "teddy" still blows me away at the end.

"catcher in the rye" is just a salinger starter kit.

I read this for the first time a few years back out of duty to "the classics". It was supposed to be so great.
It wasn't. I hated it too.

TWIG: Regarding my comment, "If you have to take a class to understand a book, then it's a poorly written book, in my opinion."

I'm referring to modern books only!

Older writings from a few hundred years ago greatly improve when you are taught about the history of the time period and about what readers of that time period already knew which modern readers don't.

As an example: When the supreme court needs to go back and review laws that were written when our country was new, they often turn to Samuel Johnson's dictionary to find out what words really meant back then. 200 years ago, the word "let" meant to prevent someone from doing something. So if you read that someone "let him take my horse," it really meant that "someone prevented him from taking my horse," and not that "someone allowed him to take my horse." It's the exact opposite meaning now.

I read this book in my mid teens because it was my best friend's favourite book in the world. I HATED it. Oh my god. It was such a chore to read. I will never understand the love. I don't know if I read it now if I would have a different reaction, and I never will know because I can't put myself through any more of that whiny ass kid's story. Ugh.

Edit: A coming of age story where the protagonist never really grows up, and is ultimately admitted to what may be a mental institution. So, yeah.

I think it really only speaks to the generation in which it was written. I know quite a few people who adore the book, but I don't think it stands as well outside of the rest of the body of work of its time. Disaffected teenagers are pretty much de rigeur these days, but then? I think it took a lot of literary courage to write from the point of view of an aimless, thoroughly unlikable teen. It validated the crappy feelings that *all* teens have.

Try reading it as a period piece, and see if you view it less harshly. I still hate it, but I it's an important enough piece of our social culture to understand what it was trying to say and why it was groundbreaking in its time.

I’m sure those ever-present English majors can provide endless reasons as to why the book is so appreciated and why I’m a dunderhead, and that really is good, because I’ve spent too many years away from English classes. I honestly believe I would’ve gotten much more out of Catcher if I had read it in a class and spent more time analyzing it as a piece of literature. Instead, I’m left underwhelmed and with some too-late insight into the boy who lent it to me.

Nope -- English major, English teacher, and I don't get it either. I mean, I get that Salinger was probably the first one to write about these topics in this way, and in particular about teens (a more modern idea -- there used to be kids and adults, and not much understood or recognized about that in-between stage) but as a pretty "together" kid, I didn't get Holden and didn't really care. Some books, and I think this one applies to that, are more significant for its social commentary and impact than for the actual writing itself, which is maybe why studying historical context becomes so important. (Sorry -- I am an English teacher!)

I love this book. Im probably the only person I know who does. Holden Caulfield is the most complex, fleshed out and real character I've ever had the fortune of discovering since Hamlet.

There, I said it.

This will always be one of my favorite books, even if it's not as cheerful as Chelsea Handler's My Horizontal Life. I first read it at an age where I was begging to be gotten, and this book did it for me. When I revisit it I realize how far along I've come and how easy it would be to fall back into all that crap.

So yeah, it's all about me.

I read CITR in high school and loved it. Like some commentator said above I felt that this was the first book that "gets it", it being a 15 year old boy. I hated people who do not care for beautiful/innocent/pure things (who writes "fuck" on a wall in an elementary school) and if I tried to hire a prostitute it would probably end the same way.

This will always be one of my favourite books, but I don't think I could ever revisit it like so many other people can. My ex used to be a bit obsessive about it, but I think I understand the intense love some people have for it. He and I used to say it was the book you had to discover on your own and take for what it was. It means much more like that than if you had to read it in English 10/12 or something like that. I just don't really enjoy dissecting it for some reason, though I definitely disagree with the commenter who said if you have to take a class to understand a book, it's bad.

Tried, and failed, to finish reading this last year. I'm a 31-year-old man. I just kept thinking "surely, this will get unbelievably good SOONER or LATER?!" but it was not to be. In Caulfield's own words, Catcher was "crumby", and can kindly go "give [itself] the time".
If you hate it as much as I do, pick up "King Dork" by Frank Portman. You won't regret it.

I'm glad people are defending this book. It and Catch-22 were my favorites of the books I read in high school, and this largely because I got it and it got me. I wasn't exactly Holden, but Salinger got what it was like to be a lost, depressed, worrying teen-aged boy. I love the humor of the book and the sweetly heartbreaking way in which Holden saw the world, like the things he imagined when he saw the prostitute's dress and heard the way she spoke. I loved the Catcher in the Rye imagery. Holden might have been a screw-up who didn't think to work with kids, as Sabrina pointed out, but he was so innocently sincere in the things he felt. I also love his language. Holden was educated, but not nearly enlightened, and as an "Honors" student growing up, I knew we all were not as mature as we were intelligent, and I liked how this book captured it. I haven't read CITR since high school, so I'm interested to see how I'll react now, but I doubt I could ever hate the book and think it pointless. There's something very real about it and Holden, whether we like them or not.

"If you first read it when you are older that sudden recognition of self won't occur, and if you were never a depressed, angsty, and yes, emo-ish teenager than you'll never really get it."

I don't think this is true at all. I love books with protagonists I can't "relate" to all the time, such as "A Confederacy of Dunces" or "Lolita." Why do we need to identify with a protagonist to appreciate a book?

"I don't think this is true at all. I love books with protagonists I can't "relate" to all the time, such as "A Confederacy of Dunces" or "Lolita." Why do we need to identify with a protagonist to appreciate a book?"

Absolutely. I just meant that that seems to be the case for particular book. People either seem to love it because they can relate to Holden, or they just don't get it because they don't understand him.

Catcher In The Rye is pretty good, but Franny And Zooey and Nine Stories are masterpieces. Salinger also managed to create in Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters what I consider one of the most unlikable fictional characters ever. She's intentionally unlikable, so Salinger is successful, but I was amazed by how much I was seething at someone in a novella. The guy is simply a great writer, and I wish he would give us more. I met his son once, but - knowing how private his dad is - I resisted the temptation to ask him anything about his father.

I read this for the first time in highschool. I didn't hate the book I hated Holden.

I saw no point in his existence as a character. I hated that while some of us were actually going through painful truly traumatic high school experiences this pussy was whining about shit that didn't really matter.

I read it again just a couple of years ago. That was when I realized that not only was Holden a pointless character but the book itself was also ridiculously pointless. Not to mention overrated.

I had a teacher who tried to tell me - this was back when I was 16 and read it for the first time- that the reason I didn't care for it was because It wasn't something I -being a black female from a working class family could relate to. I related to it just fine, I just thought it was pretentious as all get out and saw no reason for people to proclaim it a classic. I also thought the language was stilted and it sounded like a middle aged man trying to speak in a teenager's voice. Of course that could have been the fact that so much of the language was dated by the time I read it.

And now years later, I still stand by that opinion. And yes, I did major in English.

birj- can't agree more with you re: the "catch-22" love. Anytime anybody asks me for an example of irony, i tell them to read that book. I always thought it was funny that "catch-22" is still a commonly used phrase and most people don't know what it refers to.

Now I wish I had spent more time on this review. My feelings about the book are more complicated and contradictory than I let on, but hey, a girl's gotta move on. In that spirit, I'm not going to spend the next hour responding to individual comments, but in general my reaction was: yes. I agree with almost everything said here.

I'm kind of glad this got picked up, iffy reviewmanship and all, since at least I get a comment thread in place of an English class.

Wow. Until reading this thread, I wasn't aware of the hate. I must say I'm shocked.

I think it's fantastic, but it doesn't hold a candle to Salinger's masterpiece, Franny and Zooey.

It seems I'm in a minority here, but I actually enjoyed this book when I had to read it for my junior English class. Of course, my teacher was a god who could even make "Grapes of Wrath" a fascinating read, but still. We really analyzed the book in-depth, and I have to say, I probably wouldn't have loved "Catcher" as much as I did if not for that class. I never even realized that he was writing from a mental institution (it takes fairly close reading to pick up on that, and I am not a fairly close reader) or myriad other things that I found incredible in the story. The book is art, but it pretends not to be.

And I find the plot the most fascinating at all. Try re-reading it, with this in mind: It is the story of a boy who, over the course of several days, entirely loses himself.

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Kayla: Amen. Very well-put.

Catcher in the Rye is one of my all time favorite books and I too majored in English.

To all of you who picked this book up as adults, that was your first mistake. It is about a moment in life. The moment when a young person is trapped between the tormented memories of a dying brother and the empty abyss of a future never contemplated one where that beloved brother does not dwell where he is as cold as his grave. This I can tell you since I first fell in love with this book at 16 three years after my brother passed from a terminal illness. I was much like Holden as a teen and identified with him as a kindred sprit not as someone to be - a partner in my pain. As someone with the experience, Salinger hit the nail on the head perhaps too well.

Holden yes has suffered a mental brake because he has lost all sense of his identity he is spiraling out of control. Furthermore, he is screaming for someone any one to notice what he is suffering and to help him. Remember any kind of mental struggle or suffering especial at the time the novel is set is seen as a disgrace to the family. The character would never have received the treatment he needed if he didn’t act out in some way. . The question then becomes how does one deal with this loss, heal and move on to living again.

Also, remember Holden is the narrator and not a reliable one he sees for the most part what he has done as some what normal. Whereas, his family and others around him see it as a large issue often make comments about his mental stability. You need to read between the lines of what Holden says and look to what he doesn’t say specifically but what is said by his flip-flopping opinions and views on people and things. This is a book not just about teenage angst but about say teenagers deal with real issues that they are not impervious to the harsh realities of the world.

In addition think about this, the children running toward the cliff can be symbolic of Holden himself. During his three days wandering Holden is falling of that cliff. He is a man on the edge and desperate for his life to make some kind of sense.

Who is there to catch him when he falls?

I for one disagree with my esteemed colleague yoyoman. I am strongly opposed to this book for many reason including the following:
1. It should be banned.
2. It is bad.
3. ???????
4. Profit