The Catcher In The Rye :: Salinger, Literary Analysis

Although The Catcher in the Rye caused considerable controversy when it was premiere published in 1951, the bookthe account of three disoriented days in the life of a troubled sixteen-year-old boywas an instant hit. Within deuce weeks after its release, it was listed number one on The New York Times best-seller list, and it stayed there for thirty weeks. It remained immensely popular for many years, especially among teenagers and young adults, largely because of its fresh, highly strung style and anti-establishment attitudestypical attributes of many people emerging from the physical and psychological turmoil of adolescence.      It also was the bane of many parents, who objected to the main characters obscene language, erratic behavior, and antisocial attitudes. Responding to the irate protests, numerous school and public libraries and bookstores removed the book from their shelves. Holden simply was not a good role model for the youth of the 1950s, in the v isual sense of many conservative adults. Said J. D. Salinger himself, in a rare published comment, "Im aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over round of the chapters in The Catcher in the Rye. Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. Its almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf out of their reach." The clamor over the book undoubtedly contributed to its popularity among the young It became the forbidden fruit in the garden of literature. For some reasonperhaps because of the swirling controversies over his written worksSalinger retreated from the New York literary scene in the 1960s to a bucolic