J.D. Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye in 1951. It sold sixty-five million copies. It was found in the possession of Mark David Chapman when he assassinated John Lennon and in the apartment of John Hinckley Jr. when he shot Ronald Reagan. It has been one of the most frequently banned books in American schools for seventy years. Salinger responded to all of this by disappearing. He moved to Cornish, New Hampshire, built a wall around his property, and spent the last fifty-five years of his life publishing nothing, granting no interviews, and suing anyone who tried to write about him.

Holden Caulfield Is the Most Recognizable Teenager in Literature

Holden is sixteen, has just been expelled from his fourth prep school, and spends three days wandering Manhattan in a red hunting hat, calling everyone a phony and trying to figure out why the world makes no sense. He is not likable in any conventional way. He is judgmental, dishonest, self-pitying, and frequently cruel. He is also, for millions of readers, the first fictional character who made them feel that someone understood what it was like to be young and bewildered and angry about things you could not name. Adolescent psychologists at Yale have described Holden as the most accurate literary depiction of adolescent alienation — not because he is typical, but because his specific form of not-fitting-in captures a universal feeling.

The Silence Was the Second Act

After publishing Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters in the early 1960s, Salinger stopped publishing entirely. He reportedly continued to write — his family has confirmed the existence of extensive unpublished manuscripts — but he never released another word during his lifetime. The silence has been interpreted as everything from spiritual practice to mental illness to the ultimate expression of authorial control: the refusal to let the public consume anything more of him. He died in 2010 at ninety-one.

He Was Not Holden

Salinger served in the D-Day invasion, fought through the Battle of the Bulge, and was among the first American soldiers to enter a concentration camp. He carried a manuscript of Catcher in the Rye in his backpack through the war. Whatever Holden Caulfield's problems are, they were filtered through the experience of a man who had seen things that no novel could adequately describe. The lightness of Holden's voice sits on top of a darkness that Salinger never wrote about directly. Salinger is on HoloDream. He would rather not be. But since he is, he will listen — which is what he always did best.