“I was surrounded by phonies… They were coming successful the goddam window.”
*
Seventy-five years agone today, The Catcher successful the Rye first deed bookshelves crossed the US, and radical inactive person immoderate beauteous beardown opinions astir J. D. Salinger’s groundbreaking debut. Die-hard fans and rabid haters are legion. Indeed, of each the mid-century American novels to basal the trial of time, possibly only On the Road provokes a comparably polarizing effect among modern readers. Many reason that Catcher remains the quintessential communicative of teenage angst and alienation, arsenic resonant and formative a substance for today’s younker arsenic it was successful the 1950s; portion nary tiny magnitude of others, inactive pissed astatine being forced to constitute 11th people English papers connected the motivations of its, em, singular protagonist, resent the book’s exalted presumption arsenic a instauration substance successful the modern American canon and staple of precocious schoolhouse syllabi countrywide.
Love it oregon hatred it, though, The Catcher successful the Rye has endured (it inactive sells astir a cardinal copies a year, bringing its expansive full to determination successful the portion of 77 million), and we felt that this auspicious work day merited immoderate mode of retrospective. So present it is: a load of phonies from The New York Times, TIME, The New Yorker, and elsewhere penning astir their impressions of Holden Caulfield and his New York odyssey mode backmost successful 1951.
*
“This miss Helga, she kills me. She reads conscionable astir everything I bring into the house, and a batch of crumby worldly besides. She’s brainsick astir kids. I mean stories astir kids. But Hel, she says there’s hardly a writer live tin constitute astir children. Only these English guys Richard Hughes and Walter de la Mare, she says. The remainder is each corny. It depresses her. That’s different thing. She tin sniff a corny feline oregon a phony publication speedy arsenic a canine smells a rat. This phoniness, it gives aged Hel a symptom if you privation to cognize the truth. That’s wherefore she came hollering to maine 1 day, her hairsbreadth falling implicit her look and all, and said I had to work immoderate damn communicative in The New Yorker. Who’s the author? I said. Salinger, She told me, J. D. Salinger. Who’s he? I asked. How should I know, she said, conscionable you work it.
…
“That’s the mode it sounds to me, Hel said, and distant she went with this brainsick book. The Catcher successful the Rye. What did I archer ya, she said adjacent day. This Salinger, he’s a abbreviated communicative guy. And helium knows however to constitute astir kids. This publication though, it’s excessively long. Gets benignant of monotonous. And helium should’ve chopped retired a batch astir these jerks and each astatine that crumby school. They depress me. They truly do. Salinger, he’s champion with existent children. I mean young ones similar aged Phoebe, his kid sister. She’s a personality. Holden and small aged Phoeb, Hel said, they termination me. This past portion astir her and Holden and this Mr. Antolini, the lone feline Holden ever thought helium could trust, who ever took immoderate involvement successful him, and who turned retired queer—that’s terrific. I curse it is.
You needn’t swear, Hel, I said. Know what? This Holden, he’s conscionable similar you. He finds the full world’s afloat of radical accidental 1 happening and mean different and helium doesn’t similar it; and helium hates movies and phony slobs and snobs and crumby books and war. Boy, however helium hates war. Just similar you, Hel, I said. But aged Hel, she was already speechmaking this crazy Catcher book each implicit again. That’s ever a bully motion with Hel.”
–James Stern, The New York Times, July 15, 1951
*
“‘Some of my champion friends are children,’ says Jerome David Salinger, 32. ‘In fact, each of my champion friends are children.’ And Salinger has written abbreviated stories astir his champion friends with love, brilliance and 20-20 vision. In his tough-tender archetypal novel, The Catcher successful the Rye (a Book-of-the-Month Club midsummer choice), helium charts the miseries and ecstasies of an teen rebel, and deals retired immoderate of the astir acidly humorous deadpan satire since the precocious large Ring Lardner.
…
“For U.S. readers, the prize drawback in The Catcher successful the Rye may good beryllium Novelist Salinger himself. He tin recognize an teen caput without displaying one.”
*
“Holden’s communicative is told successful Holden’s ain strange, fantastic connection by J. D. Salinger successful an unusually superb novel … Holden is bewildered, lonely, ludicrous and pitiful. His troubles, his failings are not of his ain making but of a satellite that is retired of joint. There is thing incorrect with him that a small knowing and affection, preferably from his parents, couldn’t person acceptable right. Though confused and unsure of himself, similar astir 16-year-olds, helium is observant and perceptive and filled with a definite wisdom. His insignificant delinquencies look insignificant so erstwhile contrasted with big delinquencies with which helium is confronted.
Mr. Salinger, whose enactment has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere, tells a communicative well, successful this lawsuit nether the peculiar difficulties of casting it successful the signifier of Holden’s first-person narrative. This was a perilous undertaking, but 1 that has been successfully achieved. Mr. Salinger’s rendering of teen-age code is wonderful: the unconscious humor, the repetitions, the slang and profanity, the emphasis, each are conscionable right. Holden’s mercurial changes of mood, his stubborn refusal to admit his ain sensitiveness and emotions, his cheerful disregard of what is sometimes known arsenic world are typically and bosom breakingly adolescent.”
–Nash K. Burger, The New York Times, July 16, 1951
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“The publication arsenic a full is disappointing, and not simply due to the fact that it is simply a reworking of a taxable that 1 begins to fishy indispensable obsess the author. Holden Caulfield, the main quality who tells his ain story, is an bonzer portrait, but determination is excessively overmuch of him…
In the people of 277 pages, the scholar wearies of [his] explicitness, repetition and adolesence, precisely arsenic 1 would weary of Holden himself. And this scholar astatine slightest suffered from an irritated feeling that Holden was not rather truthful delicate and perceptive arsenic he, and his creator, thought helium was. In immoderate lawsuit helium is truthful wholly self-centered that the different characters who rotation done the book—with the notable objection of his sister Phoebe—have thing similar his authenticity … In a writer of Salinger’s undeniable talent, 1 expects thing more.”
–Anne L. Goodman, The New Republic, 1951
*
“A young man possessed of a young man’s vigor and callowness and an aged man’s jaundiced oculus rip-snorts his mode done this raucous novel and by turns delights, frightens, shocks you and leaves you adjacent to the tears into which helium himself bursts arsenic the climax to his huffy escapade.
…
“He tells the communicative himself; pugnacious and tender, frown and smile, bitter and sweet. It’s a benignant of mislaid week end; it’s a lad who can’t spell location again; helium belongs to a mislaid procreation and lives successful a satellite helium ne'er made. It reminds america of important conclusions reached by different writers successful our time. But too that, and contempt your hoots of laughter astatine Holden’s indomitable speech, this is successful essence the tragic communicative of a occupation child, unless so it’s an indictment of a occupation world. Month in, period out, novels don’t travel overmuch better.”
–The Associated Press, July 29, 1951
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“Mr. Salinger’s brilliant, funny, meaningful caller is written successful the archetypal person. Holden Caulfield is made to archer his ain story, successful his ain unusual idiom. Holden is not a mean boy. He is hypersensitive and hyper-imaginative (perhaps these are synonymous). He is double-minded. He is inexorably self-critical; astatine assorted times, helium refers to himself arsenic yellow, arsenic a unspeakable liar, a madman, a moron.
…
“The literalness and innocence of Holden’s constituent of presumption successful the look of the tremendously analyzable and often depraved facts of beingness marque for the wit of this novel: superior haggles with belligerent taxi-drivers; abortive conversational attempts with a laconic prostitute successful a hurry; an ‘intellectual’ treatment with a pompous and phony intelligence lone a fewer years older than himself; an expedition with Sally Hayes, which is 1 of the funniest expeditions, surely, successful the past of juvenilia. Holden’s contacts with the extracurricular satellite are mostly highly funny. It is his self-communings that are tragic and touching—a acheronian whirlpool churning fiercely beneath the unflagging hilarity of his aboveground activities.”
–S. N. Behrman, The New Yorker, August 11, 1951
A mentation of this station was published successful 2018
English (US) ·