Name: Vojtech's review of The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Item: The Catcher in the Rye
Rating: 5
Author: Vojtech

J. D. Salinger

Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger's New Yorker stories--particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme With Love and Squalor--will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is full of children. The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield.

Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it.
There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.

The Catcher in the Rye

It's Christmas time and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school. Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters - shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning. The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

kemi

“Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles.”

Veronica Palmieri

«Ciò che contraddistingue l'uomo imnmaturo è che vuole morire nobilmente per una causa, mentre ciò che contraddistingue l'uomo maturo è che vuole vivere umilmente per essa.

Non faccio che ripetere «è stato un piacere» a gente con cui non è stato un piacere per niente. Ma se vuoi sopravvivere certa roba devi dirla.

 Si chiamava comandante Blop o qualcosa del genere. Era uno di quelli che pensano di sembrare delle checche se stringendoti la mano non ti spaccano una quarantina di dita. Dio, è roba che odio.

Sensibile. A momenti ci resto secco. Morrow era sensibile piú o meno come un asse del cesso.

 Mio fratello Alie aveva questo guanto da baseball da esterno mancino. Era mancino anche lui. Si prestava alla descrizione perché c'erano scritte delle poesie sulle dita, nel palmo e dappertutto. Con l'inchiostro verde. Se le era scritte lui da solo, per avere qualcosa da leggere quand'era in campo e nessuno batteva. Poi è morto. Gli è venuta la leucemia ed è morto mentre eravamo nel Maine, il 18 luglio 1946. Vi sarebbe piaciuto, lui. 

Ci ha detto di pensare a Gesú come a un amico o roba del genere. Che lui con Gesú parla sempre. Perfino mentre guida. M’ha fatto morire. Me lo vedo, quel bastardo ipocrita, mentre ingrana la prima e intanto chiede a Gesú di farne secco qualcun altro. 

- Ma la vita è una partita, caro ragazzo. È una partita che va giocata secondo le regole.

Partita un cazzo. Alla faccia della partita. È una partita se stai dalla parte di quelli forti, allora sí, te lo concedo. Ma se stai dall'altra parte, dove di forte non c'è nessuno, che razza di partita è? Non lo è. Non c'è gara.

La partita con il Saxon Hall era una specie di affare di stato, lì a scuola. Essendo l'ultima dell'anno, se la vecchia Pencey non vinceva sembrava dovessi come minimo suicidarti. 

Come se lí uno non facesse altro che giocare a polo dal mattino alla sera. Io non ci ho mai visto un cavallo nemmeno per sbaglio. E sotto la foto del fenomeno a cavallo e'è sempre la scritta: «Dal 1888, forgiamo magnifici giovani con le idee chiare». Beato chi ci crede. Alla Pencey non forgiano un accidente, come in tutte le altre scuole. E io, lí, di gente magnifica e con le idee chiare eccetera, non ne ho mai conosciuta. Forse due tizi. Ma al massimo. E probabilmente erano cosí già prima di arrivarci, alla Pencey,

“My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. He was left-handed. The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up at bat. He's dead now.”

“Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”

Avarni B

Here's what he said: 'The mark of the inmmature man is that he wants to die nobly fora cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.'

Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it.

All I did was, I got up and went over and looked out the window. I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.

It was a very good book. I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

i'm not saying that this novel inspired the prose style of my immortal, but also.....

"Boy!" I said. I also say "Boy!" quite a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and party because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen. It's really ironical, because I'm six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. 

why did nobody tell me how fucking funny this book is? can't believe i had to discover this myself after years of procrastination 

It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win

Kdo chytá v z̆itĕ

Lucik

The Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves- the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection. Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it's a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventional terms, there is hardly any plot at all). Salinger's style creates an effect of conversation, it is as though Holden is speaking to you personally, as though you too have seen through the pretences of the American Dream and are growing up unable to see the point of living in, or contributing to, the society around you. Written with the clarity of a boy leaving childhood, it deals with society, love, loss, and expectations without ever falling into the clutch of a cliche

Gertrud Sofie

Vojtech

I couldn't finish this book when I read it 

Lexy 

The catcher in the rye

alexandra

i don't know why but i cried, like, three times. holdon is such a strange character to read from but you could clearly see that he's an extremely complex and thorough characters. this book made me think and think and think. i haven't read one that's given me that type of experience for a while so it was really refreshing. i love this not because the writing was good or plot was or even characters were good; i love this this because it is so in-depth and the layers in the meaning are endless. symbols! metaphors!

El guardián entre el centeno

Marianela Arevalo

It was a good book even if it is not the style that I am used to reading.

This new edition reproduces, for the first time in Penguin Books, the original American text.

Rosamund Mather

Still really good.
"Don't tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

El Guardian Entre el Centeno/ The Catcher in the Rye

Daniel Carril

Sin dudar de su icónico carácter, el caso es que no me pareció tan extraordinaria como mucha gente afirma. Quizá la leí demasiado tarde. Quizá la leí en un momento poco adecuado. Quizá sea yo un insensible.

I‘m not sure if I understood.. it was as if you were listening to a person with ADHD jump from one topic to the other, lots of swearing, seemingly unconnected yet somehow connected, quite quirky eventually depressing. It was quite stretched, i had to force myself to finish reading it (though I have to say I am happy to have finished it, the meaning of the title seems very deep).

Valentina

dilara sener

Gavin

Mostly annoying, but I can see how it was important (for at least lending an actual voice, at least pointing at the real deal hyperactive aimlessness of many young adults).

if it wasn't a literature classic i would have dnfed it 2 chapters in. 

claire cheah

Joana da Silva

“i have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. but i don’t honestly know what kind.”

holden caulfield is the rightful poster boy for teenage angst and disillusionment, but reading this novel again after a few years and in the wake of a depressive episode made me respect his character much more. his recurring question of where ducks go in wintertime, after their lakes have frozen over, can also be read as: "where do we go when things get tough? where do we go when there's nothing to turn to?" god knows we could all use a straight answer, but holden is never actually given one. he has to venture into the literal/metaphorical dark to find it himself, and i hope it comes someday.

“i have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. but i don’t honestly know what kind.”

holden caulfield is the rightful poster boy for teenage angst and disillusionment, but reading this novel again after a few years and in the wake of a depressive episode made me respect his character much more. his recurring question of where ducks go in wintertime, after their lakes have frozen over, can also be read as: "where do we go when things get tough? where do we go when there's nothing to turn to?" god knows we could all use a straight answer, but holden is never actually given one. he has to venture into the literal/metaphorical dark to find it himself, and i hope it comes someday.

The "brilliant, funny, meaningful novel" (The New Yorker) that established J. D. Salinger as a leading voice in American literature--and that has instilled in millions of readers around the world a lifelong love of books. "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." The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caufield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days.

Interesting the different take I have on it now as opposed to my middle school take. In middle school it was more so a strong contrarian influence, and now it’s seeing a boy in a difficult state, who accurately sees the overwhelming injustice in society but who also participates in his own way in some injustices (as far as I can tell). He is himself phony sometimes when he lies, though maybe not in the same sense in which he calls other people phony.

Zeke Taylor

This book was not what I was expecting. People were saying it's 'problematic' and all that bad stuff so that was one of the reasons why I wanted to read it. The thing is it's actually really wholesome I mean I expected some dark twist towards the end, but it didn't happen. I really felt at home reading this book and I get it why people say it's 'problematic' beacuse of the language book uses. But it teaches good lessan and how I understood it it's that you will always have someone you can rely on even if you feel all alone on this world like Holden had Phoebe. Also their relationship is another thing I like in this book.

This book is really good and easy to read. It's also pretty short so you can read it in a day or two. And I'm glad I bought it.

Wirt

This book was not what I was expecting. People were saying it's 'problematic' and all that bad stuff so that was one of the reasons why I wanted to read it. The thing is it's actually really wholesome I mean I expected some dark twist towards the end, but it didn't happen. I really felt at home reading this book and I get it why people say it's 'problematic' beacuse of the language book uses. But it teaches good lessan and how I understood it it's that you will always have someone you can rely on even if you feel all alone on this world like Holden had Phoebe. Also their relationship is another thing I like in this book.

This book is really good and easy to read. It's also pretty short so you can read it in a day or two. And I'm glad I bought it.

Der sechzehnjährige durch New York irrende Holden Caulfield ist zu einer Kultfigur ganzer Generationen geworden. 'Der Fänger im Roggen' war J. D. Salingers erster Roman, mit dem er weltweit berühmt wurde.

Roman

Der Fänger im Roggen

Ein Buch über die Wachstumsschmerzen beim Erwachsenenwerden. So universell wie beliebig. Es bietet in seiner Einfachheit alles und nichts an. Man kann die Sprache und Wandlung des Protagonisten sezieren und endlos interpretieren oder es einfach zum verschenken rauslegen: beides würde dem Buch gerecht werden. 

Martin Meyer

This is a great book with super interesting characters. I enjoyed that it was set over such a short period of time and was written from the point of view from the main character. 

Maddy Ritchie

Maria Flowers

** spoiler alert **
           This "Catcher and the Rye" was engaging throughout the entire novel. When I first started reading it, I became obsessed with the characters, most particularly Holden and Stradlater. Interesting characters paired with a teenager-in-distress vocabulary made the book so intriguing and enjoyable. However, through the course of the novel, we notice minor changes throughout the way Holden thinks and speaks and how others interact with him. As readers, we start to lose the initial love we had for him and begin to realize something may be seriously wrong with Holden; after all, he did lose a brother and is coupling with post-WWII depression. This increasing annoyance with Holden's character may be because he starts to lose his patience with not only the other characters in the novel but himself also. This growing depression of solitude is what makes this book so relatable to some and perplexing to others. With a myriad use of symbolism, imagery, and interesting characters, the readers are also on a mission to figure out why the heck Holden is so goddamn distressed all of the time; especially at phonies. I gave this book five stars because it really hits home on a historical and personal level. While the entire book is focused on one character, Holden, the readers are shown what Post-WWII can do to society as well. Let's just hope Holden doesn't end up as a phony one day.

Anna Ureta

What did I just read?
…
 …
 …
Seriously, what did I just read?
 I’m an adult. I think I can read between the lines and figure out the underlying message.
 But this. They make people read this in high school.
WHAT!?
 This is a classic? Maybe back in the day when it was written…
But serious, what was this book about?

Here’s the part where I usually write my own summary about what the book was about, but here’s the thing…
I have no idea what this book is about.
 All I can say is they’re the angry/self-righteous thoughts of a seventeen year old boy (I think he’s seventeen – they said that in the book or I figured it out).
 Maybe because this book was written in a much different time period than our own but….what????

Holden Caulfield seems to be a very, complicated, human being.
 He doesn’t apply himself in school, he doesn’t have any friends, and all the while he just thinks badly of everyone around him (except for maybe his siblings).
 Honestly, he seemed like a pretentious prick, who gives cynic a whole other meaning.
 Was this book supposed to be about how some people are different, how they think differently and that teenagers rebel?

“I think that one of these days,” he said, “you’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you’ve got to start going there. But immediately. You can’t afford to lose a minute. Not you.”

If there is anyone out there who can explain this book to me I would really like to sit down and discuss it.
 (And this was some sort of revolutionary coming-of-age/loss of innocence novel)?
 I honestly had a hard time pushing through this book – waiting for something to jump out at me and make all of this cynicism make sense.
 Please, high schools, have students read books by John Green, or even “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” it’s SOOOOO MUCH BETTER than this.

Honestly, if I had read this in high school, and thank god I wasn’t part of the group of students that did, I would have had no idea what this book was about and would have had to BS my way through the essays like….majorly BS.

This is probably the worst book I’ve read to date – and yes, people probably will criticize me for it. But I would invite them to please explain this book to me and what exactly the message was.

**Note: A friend and I decided to read this book together as we both highly enjoyed “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and this book happened to be the main character Charlie’s, favourite book. It’s a classic and on the banned list which we figured couldn’t be that bad right? Wrong….oh so very wrong**

1/5 Hearts of Love

livs

i thought it was gonna be my year of rest and relaxation only a guy instead. it was not.

luna

honestly this is more of a 3.5 stars, this book was great. but since i read it in hebrew, and the translation back in the 50's wasn't that great, i feel like i got a different experience from the book than what i should've. i don't think i could actually say my honest opinion or give this book the rating it deserves until i read it in english.

alex

amber baardsen

3,5⭐️
i actually liked it? Holden is basically a sad boy™️ and i’m positive he has repressed homosexuality(unrelated)
do i sorta hate him? yes, he is a teenage boy, so he is required to be slightly insufferable. is he also my babygirl? yeah. he is me i am him. 
anyways the book is pretty pretentious, in some aspects, but when it all comes down to it, the book shows the effects society and trauma can have on childhood innocence and what the effects of lack of support can cause.
Holden is extremely traumatised for many reasons, and i think people need to take that into account when we hear his inner monologue etc. 
but, is it the best book i’ve ever read? no, absolutely not. but is it the worst? not by a long shot.

(Holden would’ve loved radiohead🤞)

Kimber Severance 

The Catcher in the Rye has always been a book revered by literature,and because of this I had assumed that the book was of some substantial literary merit. But even after reading the first couple chapters, I found this to be untrue. The entire book is told from the singular view of an extremely biased, complaining man who would probably have a negative opinion about baby kittens. 
Regardless of the synical outlook of the main character, the writing itself is extremely poor. The author repeats sentences up to three times or more, and his vocabulary is practically nonexistant. I think the most intelligent word I have read thusfar, was "intelligent." 
This may be a must read in literature, but definately not a very intellectual experience on my part.

Nicole

I hate how much I enjoyed this lit bro book

Vojtech &
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

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