A big letdown after all the cultural hype.


This is quite possibly the most honest book ever written.   January 28, 1999
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

The Catcher in the Rye is a book about the forces that pull us towards conformity and away from individuality, and the problems that ensue when they are resisted. Holden Caulfield has been expelled from another school for failing to appear as the firm jawed, bright eyed, all-american kid that society wants. His resistance to this antagonises his friends and teachers. Anybody conforming or encouraging him to conform is labelled a 'phoney', a contemptible human being. Caulfield sees his friends falling away; his brother, whom he once respected as a free-thinking writer, has joined the Hollywood machine; the girls he used to know have all got phoney boyfriends. Like Camus' Outsider, Caulfield has no desire to fit in. Unlike this other anti-hero, however, he is acutely aware of the pressures placed on him by his school, his parents and his society, and he knows that it would be easier, maybe even right, to submit. The book is the story of a bewildering two days spent in New York before he faces his parents. He is free, terrifyingly free of these pressures. He comes across as being mature and confident and yet hopelessly lost and confused. He is searching for something but he doesn't know what. People frighten and depress him, and he is very alone, teetering on the brink of some awful chasm that left me with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I read. Salinger's book is about the other ways of life, the scary, dangerous ones. It is about that fine line between freedom and insanity, if that line even exists. It is a brutally honest appraisal of what our choices are in life, about how much freedom we can have, and how much we should want. Some people may find Caulfield annoying or irrelevant, but I felt for him desperately as his attempts to do his own thing merely caused him to slide closer to his own personal abyss. This is not a happy book to read, but it is a wonderful one. It is, I feel, part of the whole human experience laid starkly naked. Read it and understand.


again.   November 29, 1998
 0 out of 1 found this review helpful

I read the book again (well, now six times and rising) and its the best book i've ever read. its inspired me and it gives me a bang every time i read it. Read it again and again- you'll never tire of it! Oh- and aren't there anymore than 5 crowns?


It's just a book, for chrissakes.   October 21, 1998
 128 out of 198 found this review helpful

The first thing you'll probably want me to say is how great'The Catcher in the Rye' is, and how it changed my life, and all that existential angst crap - but I don't feel like saying that, if you want to know the truth. It's just a book, for chrissakes, about some lousy goddamn kid who goes to New York for a few days. If there's one thing I hate, it's phoney books. Don't even mention that Holden Caulfield guy to me. So he's a bit screwed up and all. So what? And don't start talking about the human condition, either - I'm touchy as hell about that. We've all gone through that madman stuff; I don't need some goddamn crazy author telling me how it feels. I know how itfeels. I swear to God, if I ever saw that JD.Salinger I'd go right up to him and tell him what a corny book he's written. I'd really get a bang out of that. You know, I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw. If I read a great book and somebody asks me if I liked it, I'm liable to say I hated it. It's awful. 'Catcher in the Rye' - a masterpiece of American vernacular and all.