Time to read “Catcher in the Rye” again?

On its 70th Anniversary

The Catcher in the Rye was immensely important to me when I was in high school. Holden Caulfield’s jeremiad against “phonies” captured my sense of schoolboy estrangement; not surprisingly, another favorite book of that time was Albert Camus’ The Stranger. Of course, it goes without saying that there was something theatrical and contrived about my hauteur and superior disdain; this is a period of adolescence when many long-suffering parents have to put up with the world-weary sighs of their jaded(?) teens. Let me give you an image from that time: Myself and two friends at a high-school football game, a copy of Catcher in the back pocket of my jeans (somehow signaling my reservations about the scene in front of me).

Himself at that age. (Photo credit: Dan Larson)

In college, I fervently read other works by J.D. Salinger: Franny and Zooey, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, and Nine Stories.

Then in 1972 the New York Times Magazine published an account by Joyce Maynard about her affair with the reclusive fifty-three-year-old author when she was eighteen. It was kind of creepy. Later memoirs and an unauthorized biography or two (as well…