Catcher in the Rye

I originally read J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye sometime during high school. I remembered loving it then, but couldn’t remember why. I could hardly remember the plot, even. So I read it again.

It didn’t make much more sense the second time, really. I still enjoyed it, but I still don’t entirely know why. A story of a maladjusted teenager with a habit for getting kicked out of boarding schools. No real climax or strong story structure. Just a kid struggling through adolescence.

After I finished reading, I consulted with Wikipedia to see if they had any more information as to why the book is such a widely enjoyed classic, and what made it big in the first place. And it turns out I was already on the right path: the widely accepted purpose of the book was to give an accurate snapshot of adolescent life in America at the time.

If you’ve never read this book, you probably should. It’s one of those that’s easy to read and practically required reading for any educated American, if for nothing else than all the cultural references that followed.