By ARMAND NARDI Register Publisher
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
More teenagers in the past 60 years may have read that opening line from J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye than just about any other book.
Narrator, Holden Caulfield, a 16-year-old from a well-off family in the post-World War II boom, identifies to teenagers as he wanders the streets of New York City after being expelled from prep school.
Much like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye has always been tagged with controversy and viewed by young minds as a right of passage and introduction into the world of adult themes.
You don’t have to be Depression-era poor to be alienated and anxious, struggling between the innocence of childhood and the perceived corruption ("phoniness") of the adult world. J.D. Salinger assembled language that spoke directly to teenagers – and still does today.
Book critic Jonathan Yardley, believes the novel “created adolescence as we now know it, a condition that barely existed until Salinger defined it.” Referring to it as: “A James Dean Movie in print.”
Since the original publication of “Catcher”, countless novels, movies and rock ‘n’ roll songs have echoed J.D. Salinger’s message of kids under siege.
In 1980 Tragedy surrounded the novel when Mark David Chapman shot and killed famed Beatle, John Lennon citing his life’s inspiration from the book.
According to the American Library Association, Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in high schools and libraries between 1961 and 1982. – still selling over 250,000 copies a year and remains a staple read on school curriculums.
Salinger died Wednesday at the age of 91. He lived as a recluse in New Hampshire from the mid-1950s. He did what great writers do – conjuring a world provoking limitless thought and inspiration using words alone.
Armand Nardi is the publisher of the Gainesville Daily Register. He can be contacted at anardi@ntin.net.
