J. D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye
In the 1940s, Salinger confided to several people that he was working on a novel featuring Holden Caulfield, the teenage protagonist of his short story "Slight Rebellion off Madison," and The Catcher in the Rye was published on July 16, 1951, by Little, Brown and Company. The novel's plot is simple, detailing 16-year-old Holden's experiences in New York City following his expulsion and departure from an elite college preparatory school. Not only was he expelled from his current school, he had also been expelled from three previous schools. The book is more notable for the persona and testimonial voice of its first-person narrator, Holden. He serves as an insightful but unreliable narrator who expounds on the importance of loyalty, the "phoniness" of adulthood, and his own duplicity. In a 1953 interview with a high school newspaper, Salinger admitted that the novel was "sort of" autobiographical, explaining, "My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book ... [I]t was a great relief telling people about it."
J. D. Salinger-18