Holden Caulfield, the Ultimate Adolescent, Is Turning 75

NYT ^ | 7/14/26 | Alexandra Jacobs

[Borges]

On July 16, “The Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger, will turn 75. Commemorating such a nice big number would surely strike its adolescent hero, Holden Caulfield, as the absolute nadir of “corny,” but maybe we could use a little corn, as the data centers invade our farmland.

Pour out a Scotch and soda — make that a malted milk — for this spry codger of a novel that’s stayed on the dance floor long past when might be expected, leaping over book bans from the right and dodging cancellation from the left. “Catcher” has somehow inspired artists as disparate as John Guare and Guns N’ Roses, its denunciation of phoniness presaging the social-media demand for “authenticity.”

Though set mostly in the sophisticated precincts of New York City where Salinger was raised but did not remain, “Catcher” might be the purest of the Great American Novels. (Partly because it has never been made into a movie, though everyone from Billy Wilder to Steven Spielberg tried to secure the rights.)

It’s also one of the dirtiest: ruffling parents and school boards with its fingernail clippings, shaving stubble, blood, flatulence, drunkenness, voyeurism, vulgarity, prostitution, profligacy and slang. Oh so much delectable lost slang.

[xp38]

All I recall is Chapman was holding a copy the day/night he killed Lennon. It just seems like an odd thing to take on an assassination to me. Whether it inspired him who knows. Insanity is a bit hard to follow some times.

[Antoninus]

What a garbage book.

This book was (and is) a vehicle for introducing young people to obscenity and "alternative lifestyles"--and making them seem normal, at least in comparison to the occasionally judgmental but always hypocritical main character. The amount of pointless vulgarity and blasphemous language contained in The Catcher in the Rye is so overwhelming, even by today's standards, that the reader quickly becomes numb to it. It was apparently one of the first mass market books to incorporate the phrase "f--k you", and no doubt that made it immediately attractive to those with an agenda of breaking down societal standards.

[NorthMountain]

When the main character is an uninteresting (to me), boring, brainless, mentally weak, contemptible little slug ...

IMO, the novel is utter rubbish.

It’s not the only novel I have seen that way, just the most famous one.

[Antoninus]

Why on Earth did they think that teenagers wanted to read a book about a teenager trying to get laid?

If you read the "Current Communist Goals" of the early 1960s, it makes perfect sense.

[Antoninus]

Holden is mentally ill and having a nervous breakdown.

RedBadger's question remains valid. Why should high school students read a novel about a vulgar, blasphemous loser kid having a breakdown?

[Red Badger]

Another book we had to read was Hemingway’s godawful “The Sun Also Rises...............

[Antoninus]

Agree. In fact there were more than a few of these so called literary pieces we were forced to read with nothing good in them but that sort of thing. Creepy.

Being forced to read that kind of junk in a very exclusive private Catholic high school is among the reasons my wife and I decided to homeschool our kids -- and give them things to read where the characters are worthy of admiration, and emulation. Like this...

[Antoninus]

Another book we had to read was Hemingway’s godawful “The Sun Also Rises...............

Yup. Hated that one, too.

Also Slaughterhouse Five and Cuckoo's Nest.

It's almost like they wanted their students to turn out nuts.

[Flaming Conservative]

I purchased a copy from my high school bookstore back in the stone age. Never could figure out what all the book banning fuss was about, until it dawned on me that it was an abridged edition. The only barely scandalous thing in that version was his male teacher getting a little too close to him. I say “barely scandalous” because the way the book was cut up, the idea of the teacher trying to hit on him was pretty much non-existent.

[Red Badger]

I read Slaughterhouse Five just recently as a Science Fiction book, it’s not too bad. It wasn’t one of the books we had to read in HS, but I remember the ‘cool kids’ that listened to Bob Dylan and read Henry David Thoreau talking about it.........

[Beowulf9]

👍

I loved Men of Iron. Howard Pyle.

[Persevero]

To be fair to me when I read it I was in my teens!!!

[mikey_hates_everything]

Only 75? They made us read it in HS in the late 70’s. We thought the story was set in the 20’s or 30’s, not the late 40’s or 50’s because Holden’s controversial “rebelliousness” didn’t seem to be any big deal to us or what we knew of our parents’ adolescence. We thought that kids who acted that way prior to WWII would be considered mentally ill by adults.

[NorthMountain]

No judgment ... people enjoy different things. I’m blanking on the names, but there are a couple of sci-fi or fanatasy novel series in which the main character is a really wretched person. They’re quite popular (or were), but they did absolutely nothing for me.

“de gustibus non disputandam”

[ek_hornbeck]

Catcher in the Rye isn't just about a pretentious, angtsy teenager, it's written for pretentious, angtsy teenagers. It's one of those books that many people think is great when they read it as teens, but then outgrow it just like they (hopefully) outgrow Holden Caulfield-like behaviors and attitudes.

Content aside, I also don't find Salinger to be a great stylist.

[Disambiguator]

The only book I hated worse than that one was “Death of a Salesman.” To me that was the literary equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

[dfwgator]

It was Anti-Capitalist garbage.

[Antoninus]

I loved Men of Iron. Howard Pyle.

Different book, but same idea. Howard Pyle also wrote one of the classic versions of Robin Hood and his merry men.

[Red Badger]

Have you ever met anybody named ‘Biff’?............

[Red Badger]

“Catcher in the Rye” is the most horrid book ever used to kill a tree!...................