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.