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The man convicted of killing John Lennon more than four decades ago is up for parole for a 12th time. Mark David Chapman, 67, pleaded guilty to shooting Lennon as the Beatles icon returned to his Manhattan apartment building in December 1980. He was first eligible for parole in 2000 — and has previously been denied release 11 times. Chapman — an inmate at the Wende Correctional Facility in upstate New York — was a 25-year-old religious fanatic when he traveled from Hawaii to New York City armed with a .38 Special handgun, 14 hours of Beatles recordings, and a...

Tuesday is J.D. Salinger’s 100th birthday, but Holden Caulfield is still 17. The iconic teenager of “The Catcher in the Rye” is forever suspended in the amber of our youthful alienation. Although a few pious schools continue to ban Salinger’s only published novel, for millions of adults, a faded copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” is a sweet teenage treasure, as transgressive as a trophy from band camp. Ninth-graders who secretly read the book with a flashlight when it came out in 1951 are now in their 80s. To read it again as an adult is to feel Holden’s...

Is Stranger in a Stranger Land by Robert Heinlein the Catcher in the Rye for the science-fiction set? Yes, I think you could say that about the 1962 Hugo winner in one important sense. When author J.D. Salinger died this past Wednesday, I must confess it was convenient for me (if not for him), because it got people talking about his most famous novel. The Catcher in the Rye occupies an interesting position in the literary landscape: It's inarguably a classic, and inarguably a popular classic at that — a book that a lot of people have not only heard...

Holden Caulfield Goes Home Malcolm A. Kline, January 28, 2010 The writer who created the angst-ridden teenage hero of Catcher in the Rye has passed away at the age of 91. Teenagers in the six decades the novel has been in publication devoured the story, first as contraband, later as required reading. None of his handful of books were filmed. The infamously reclusive Salinger resisted such offers from Hollywood producers and directors, many of whom he outlived....

Reclusive author J.D. Salinger took legal action today over what he says is a copycat of his seminal work, The Catcher in the Rye, the Associated Press reports. Salinger’s lawyers filed suit in Manhattan federal court to recall the book 60 Years Later, thought to be a Catcher sequel by pseudonymous writer John David California. Salinger’s lawyers maintain that he retains sole rights to the Holden Caulfied character, and that in regards to any sequels, Salinger has “decidedly chosen not to exercise that right.”

Abstract Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use...

NORTH BERWICK, Maine — Plans for freshman at Noble High School to read J.D. Salinger’s "The Catcher in the Rye" in January may be in jeopardy following Thursday night’s School Administrative District 60 Board of Directors meeting. Andrea B. Minnon, a Lebanon parent whose 14-year-old son, Spencer, is a freshman at the high school, demanded the book be pulled from the curriculum because of its content. She submitted a Citizen’s Challenge of Educational Media form to the board outlining her problems with the book’s place in public schools. Minnon explained she never read the book but scanned through it and...

Precisely how old I was when I first read "The Catcher in the Rye," I cannot recall. When it was published, in 1951, I was 12 years old, and thus may have been a trifle young for it. Within the next two or three years, though, I was on a forced march through a couple of schools similar to Pencey Prep, from which J.D. Salinger's 16-year-old protagonist Holden Caulfield is dismissed as the novel begins, and I was an unhappy camper; what I had heard about "The Catcher in the Rye" surely convinced me that Caulfield was a kindred spirit....

<p>A FORMER staffer at Harold Ober Associates, which represents reclusive literary legend J.D. Salinger, is peddling a memoir that lifts the lid off Salinger's secretive life.</p> <p>The juiciest bits of Jaime Clarke's "O What Fun We'll Have! O The Times!" - leaked to publishers this week - involve the author of "The Catcher in the Rye," who lives in seclusion in Cornish, N.H.</p>

<p>A Chantilly High School student says his English teacher instructed the class to repeat a common two-word profanity 10,000 times as a way of desensitizing them to its appearance in the novel "Catcher in the Rye."</p> <p>Jeff Daybell, 17, a senior at Chantilly, said he brought the incident to the attention of school administrators because he was shocked at the teacher's instructions.</p>