Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

This classic the only novel written by J.D. Salinger was a must read when I was teenager. I was fifteen and it was a much talked about novel among my peers when I read it. Holden Caulfield the protagonist was considered the original angry young man of the fifties generation.


As he died at 91 just two days ago I decided to pay tribute by posting an entry here.


Text below is copied from: http://www.time.com


Salinger's only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published in 1951 and gradually achieved a status that made him cringe. For decades the book was a universal rite of passage for adolescents, the manifesto of disenchanted youth. (Sometimes lethally disenchanted: After he killed John Lennon in 1980, Mark David Chapman said he had done it "to promote the reading" of Salinger's book. Roughly a year later, when he headed out to shoot President Ronald Reagan, John Hinckley Jr. left behind a copy of the book in his hotel room.) But what matters is that even for the millions of people who weren't crazy, Holden Caulfield, Salinger's petulant, yearning (and arguably manic-depressive) young hero was the original angry young man. That he was also a sensitive soul in a cynic's armor only made him more irresistible. James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway had invented disaffected young men too. But Salinger created Caulfield at the very moment that American teenage culture was being born. A whole generation of rebellious youths discharged themselves into one particular rebellious youth.

Photo and Biographical Info courtesy of Wikipedia.

Salinger in 1950
Born	Jerome David Salinger January 1, 1919 Manhattan, New York
Died	January 27, 2010 (aged 91)[1] Cornish, New Hampshire, United States[1]
Occupation	Writer
Writing period	1940–1965
Notablework(s)	The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Seymour: An Introduction (1963)
Influences[show]
Influenced[show]
Signature

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger