The catcher in the rye

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.