Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)

Katherine Anne Porter's long life and career encompassed several eras. Her first success, the short story "Flowering Judas" (1929), was set in Mexico during the revolution. The beautifully crafted short stories that gained her renown subtly unveil personal lives. Often she reveals women's inner experiences and their dependence on men.

Porter's nuances owe much to the stories of the New Zealand-born story writer Katherine Mansfield. Porter's post-war story collections include Collected Stories (1965). In the early 1960s, she produced a long, allegorical novel with a timeless theme - the responsibility of humans for each other. Titled Ship of Fools (1962), it was set in the late 1930s aboard a passenger liner carrying members of the German upper class and German refugees alike from the Nazi nation.

Not a prolific writer, Porter nonetheless influenced generations of authors, among them her southern colleagues Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor.

 

Jerome David Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.

Jerome David Salinger (born January 1, 1919) is an American author best known for The Catcher in the Rye, a classic novel that has enjoyed enduring popularity since its publication in 1951. A major theme in Salinger's work is the strong yet delicate mind of "disturbed" adolescents, and the redemptive capacity of children in the lives of such young men. Salinger is also known for his reclusive nature; he has not given an interview since 1980, and has not made a public appearance, nor published any new work (at least under his own name), since 1965.

Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan, New York, to a Jewish father of Polish origin and a half-Scottish, half-Irish mother. His father, Solomon, worked for a meat importer. The young Salinger attended public schools on the West Side, the private McBurney School in ninth and tenth grades, and then was happy to get away from the over-protectiveness of his mother by entering the Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania. He started his freshman year at New York University (NYU), but dropped out the next spring to work on a cruise ship. The next fall, he was prevailed upon to learn the meat-importing business and was sent to work at the company in Vienna, where he could also perfect his French and German skills.

He left Austria only a month or so before the country fell to Hitler, on March 12, 1938. That fall, he attended Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, but for only one semester. Salinger attended a Columbia University evening writing class in 1939. The teacher was Whit Burnett, longtime editor of Story Magazine. During the second semester of the class, Burnett saw some degree of talent in the young author. In the March-April 1940 issue of Story, Burnett published Salinger's debut short story, entitled "The Young Folks."

In 1941, Salinger started dating Oona O'Neill, daughter of Eugene O'Neill, writing long daily letters to her. This ended when Oona began a relationship with Charlie Chaplin. Salinger was drafted into the Army in 1942, where he saw combat with the U.S. 4th Infantry Division in some of the fiercest fighting of World War II, including action on Utah Beach on D-Day and in the Battle of the Bulge. During the campaign from Normandy into Germany, he met Ernest Hemingway, then a war correspondent, in Paris. Salinger was assigned to Counter-Intelligence, in which he interrogated prisoners of war, putting his foreign language skills to use. He was among the first soldiers to enter a liberated concentration camp. He told his daughter later, "You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live."

His experiences, perhaps, scarred him emotionally (he was hospitalized for a few weeks for combat stress reaction after Germany was defeated), and it is likely that he drew upon his wartime experiences in several stories, such as "For Esmé with Love and Squalor," which is narrated by a traumatized soldier. He continued to publish stories in magazines, such as Collier's and the Saturday Evening Post, during and after his war experience. After the defeat of Germany, he signed up for a six-month period of "de-Nazification" duty in Germany. Among those Nazis he arrested was a low-level official, Sylvia, whom he married and brought back to the States. The marriage fell apart after a few months and Sylvia returned to Germany.

By 1948, with the publication of a critically-acclaimed short story entitled "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Salinger began to publish almost exclusively in The New Yorker. "Bananafish" was one of the most popular stories ever published in the magazine, and he quickly became one of the publication's best-known authors. It was not his first experience with the magazine; in 1942, Salinger had received his first acceptance from The New Yorker for a story entitled "Slight Rebellion off Madison," which featured a semi-autobiographical character named Holden Caulfield. The story was held from publication until 1946 because of the war. "Slight Rebellion" was related to several other stories featuring the Caulfield family, but perspective shifted from older brother Vince to Holden.

Salinger had confided to several people that he felt Holden deserved a novel, and The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951. It was an immediate success, although early critical reactions were mixed. While never confirmed by Salinger himself, it is believed that several of the events in the novel are semi-autobiographical. A novel driven by the nuanced, intricate character of Holden, the plot is quite simple. The book became famous for Salinger's extensive and exceptional eye for subtle complexity, detail, description, ironic humor, and the depressing and desperate atmosphere of New York City. The novel was banned in some countries, and some US schools, because of its bold and (to some) offensive use of language; "goddam" appears 255 times, and a hand full of "fuck"s (which the would-be censors seldom notice he was trying to erase from the school wall), plus a few seamy incidents such as the encounter with a prostitute (even though it was a chaste encounter). The book is still widely read, particularly in the United States, where it is considered an especially skillful depiction of teenage angst. It is not unusual to see The Catcher in the Rye on a "required reading" list for American high school students. It still sells about 250,000 copies per year as of 2000.

In July 1951, his friend and New Yorker editor William Maxwell in Book of the Month Club News asked Salinger about his literary influences. Salinger said, “A writer, when he's asked to discuss his craft, ought to get up and call out in a loud voice just the names of the writers he loves. I love Kafka, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Proust, O'Casey, Rilke, Lorca, Keats, Rimbaud, Burns, E. Brontë, Jane Austen, Henry James, Blake, Coleridge. I won't name any living writers. I don't think it's right."

In 1953, Salinger published a collection of seven short stories in The New Yorker ("Bananafish" among them), as well as two that they had rejected. The collection was published as Nine Stories in the United States, and For Esmé with Love and Squalor in the UK (after one of the most beloved stories). It was also very successful, although Salinger had already begun to tightly regulate publicity. He would not allow publishers to illustrate the dust jacket, so that his readers would have no preconceived notion of how the characters looked.

Salinger published Franny and Zooey in 1961, and Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction in 1963. Each contained a pair of related short stories or novellas. Some of the material had been originally published in the The New Yorker.

After the notoriety of The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger gradually withdrew into himself. In 1953, he moved from New York to Cornish, New Hampshire. Early in his time in Cornish he was relatively sociable, particularly with the high school students who treated him as one of their own. However, after one interview for the high school newspaper ended up in the city paper, Salinger felt betrayed. Salinger withdrew from the high schoolers entirely and was seen less frequently around the town, only seeing one close friend regularly, jurist Learned Hand.

In 1955, when he was 36, he married Claire Douglas, a Radcliffe student. He insisted that she drop out of school, only four months shy of graduation, and live with him, which she did. They had two children, Margaret and Matthew. Due to their isolated location and Salinger's proclivities, they hardly saw other people for long stretches of time. Margaret reports that her mother admits living with Salinger was not easy, due to the isolation and his controlling nature, and the jealousy of Margaret replacing her in Salinger's affection. Margaret was sick much of the time, but Salinger refused to take her to a doctor as he had embraced Christian Science. In later years, Claire confessed to Margaret that she, Claire, went "over the edge;" she had made plans to murder the thirteen-month-old Margaret and then commit suicide. It was to happen during a trip to New York with her husband. The marriage with Claire ended in divorce in 1965.

In 2000, Salinger's daughter Margaret Salinger, by his second wife, Claire Douglas, published Dream Catcher: A Memoir. In her "tell-all" book, Ms. Salinger dispelled many of the Salinger myths established by Ian Hamilton's book. Foremost among these challenges is that Salinger's experience with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder somehow means that he is a psychologically scarred individual who cannot deal with the traumatic nature of his war service. Ms. Salinger paints a picture of J. D. as a man immensely proud of his service record, maintaining his military haircut, service jacket, and moving about his compound (and town) in an old Jeep. Ms. Salinger offered many insights into the Salinger myths, including her father's supposed long-time interest in macrobiotics and involvement with what is today known as "alternative medicine" and Eastern philosophies.

Salinger had been a follower of Zen Buddhism, and had met the scholar D. T. Suzuki. Then he became a life-long student of Advaita Vedanta Hinduism. This has been described at length by Som P. Ranchan in his book, An Adventure in Vedanta: J. D. Salinger's the Glass Family (1990). Sri Ramakrishna and his student Vivekananda were important contemporary figures he studied. In this tradition, celibacy and detachment from human responsibilities such as family are emphasized for those seeking enlightenment. Margaret Salinger says that she may have never been born if her father had not read Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda who brought the possibility of enlightenment to those following the path of the "householder" (i.e., married person with children). J. D. and Claire were initiated into this path of Kriya yoga in a small store-front Hindu temple in a lower-middle class neighborhood of Washington, DC. They received a mantra and breathing exercises that they were to practice for ten minutes twice a day. Salinger had sudden jumps of enthusiasm for different belief-systems that he then insisted Claire also follow. Salinger tried Dianetics (later called Scientology), even meeting L. Ron Hubbard himself, according to Claire. This was followed by a number of spiritual/medical/nutritional belief systems including Christian Science, teachings of Edgar Cayce, homeopathy, accupuncture, macrobiotics, fasting, megadoses of Vitamin C, vomiting to remove impurities, solar reflectors for tanning, drinking one's own urine (this is part of the folk-medicine of several cultures around the world; see urine therapy), "speaking in tongues" (glossolalia) which he learned at a Charismatic church, and sitting in a Reichian "orgone box" to accumulate "orgone energy."

Salinger's third wife is Colleen O'Neill (b. June 11, 1959), a nurse and quiltmaker. She is 40 years younger than her husband. Colleen told Margaret that she and Salinger were trying to have a child.

Major works

· The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Holden Caulfield

· Nine Stories (1953)

· Franny and Zooey (1961)

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by J.D. Salinger. First published in the US in 1951, the novel remains controversial to this day for its liberal profanity and portrayal of sexuality and teenage angst; it was the thirteenth most frequently challenged book of the 1990s according to the American Library Association.

The novel has become one of the most famous literary works of the 20th century, and a common part of high school curricula in many English-speaking countries, such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Around 250,000 copies are sold each year, with total sales of more than 60 million.

The novel's protagonist, Holden Caulfield, has become an icon for teenage alienation and fear. Written in the first person, The Catcher in the Rye relates Holden's experiences in New York City in the days following his expulsion from Pencey Prep, a college preparatory school.

Holden Caulfield is the protagonist and narrator of the story. Holden is a sixteen year old with a bit of grey hair making him look more mature, who has just been expelled (for academic failure) from a school called Pencey Prep. He is intelligent and sensitive, but Holden narrates in a cynical and jaded voice. He finds the hypocrisy and ugliness of the world around him almost unbearable, and through his cynicism he tries to protect himself from the pain and disappointment of the adult world. However, the criticisms that Holden aims at people around him are also aimed at himself. He is uncomfortable with his own weaknesses, and at times displays the exact phoniness, meanness, and superficiality of the people he says he despises. Holden fails to view himself as the child that he is.

The novel covers a few important days in the life of the protagonist Holden Morrissey Caulfield, a tall, lanky, highly critical and depressed sixteen-year-old who academically flunked out of Pencey Prep boarding school. Because he is so critical of others, and points out their faults only to exhibit them himself later, Holden is widely considered to be an unreliable narrator, and the details and events of his story are apt to be distorted by his point of view. Nonetheless, it is his story to tell. Many flashbacks throughout the entire book create a feeling of knowing Holden.

On the first page of the book, the reader is given a clue that Holden is narrating the book from a psychiatric hospital in California: " I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.... D.B. [Holden's brother] comes over and visits... practically every week end. He's going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. "

His story starts on Holden's last day at Pencey Prep. He is standing on the crest of a hill that overlooks the football field. It is the final game of the season, but Holden has never cared much for established tradition. He instead runs across the street to the residence of Mr. Spencer, his history teacher. It is revealed here that Holden has been expelled, and that he doesn't particularly care. Mr. Spencer is disappointed in Holden, and lectures to him about the importance of hard work and education. Holden becomes annoyed and lies about having to remove some equipment from the gym to get out of the discussion.

Back at the dorm, Holden talks to his roommate, Stradlater, a tall, good-looking ladies' man. Holden sees him very differently, describing him as a "secret slob" because he would shave and groom himself for women, but doesn't bother to clean the dirty, rusty razor he uses to do so. Stradlater returns home early from a date with Jane Gallagher, one of Holden's childhood friends with whom he has had a long-standing infatuation. During Stradlater's date, Holden had been told by Stradlater to write an essay for him on "a room or something", as the exact topic was never explicitly stated, but as long as it was descriptive Stradlater says. Holden finds inspiration in writing about his late brother Allie's baseball mitt. Allie was Holden's younger brother who died of leukemia and had written poetry in green ink on his mitt so that in the outfield he could have something to read. When Stradlater returns and finds what Holden has written about, he gets annoyed. Holden tears up the essay out of anger. A short while later, Holden inquires Stradlater what he did on his date. Stradlater refuses to answer his questions, but more specifically whether or not he had sex with Jane Gallagher. Holden becomes infuriated and tries to hit his unsuspecting roommate. Stradlater easily wins the fight, as Holden himself is not particularly strong, but also in part claims to be a pacifist.

His socially inept neighbor, Robert Ackley (called Ackley for short), is also introduced. Ackley's relationship with Holden is fairly complex: On one hand, Holden expresses disgust at his hygiene, acne, and personality, yet spends time with him of his own free will; he is drawn to Ackley because there is nobody else, going to movies and having snowball fights with him even though he comments on how abrasive Ackley is.

That night, considering everything, especially the fact that he will be leaving Pencey very soon anyway, Holden packs a suitcase and leaves Pencey before the actual last day of school, and decides to stay in New York for the remainder of the period. En route, Holden meets the mother of one of his schoolmates, Ernest Morrow. This schoolmate is an antisocial bully, but Holden decides to lie to the mother because she was seemingly very attractive despite her age. He tells her that her son is a terrific young man and very friendly, and that when other students wanted to nominate him for class president, he humbly refused the honor. Holden tells Mrs. Morrow that his name is Rudolf Schmidt, who in reality is the dorm janitor. She is also the first person Holden asks out for a drink since his exodus from Pencey. However, like most of his encounters, she declines the offer.

Arriving at New York, Holden checks into the Edmont Hotel where he becomes increasingly disappointed by his surroundings, "screwballs all over the place." Having nothing much to do, he calls up a girl, Faith Cavendish, whom he was totally unaquainted with (a friend of a friend), to meet her for a drink, despite it being very late. She also says no. Unable to get comfortable, Holden goes down to the lobby downstairs in the Lavender Room to relax, trying his best to fit in with most of the older people. He makes a move on the young women sitting in the table nearest him, but they only laugh at him. Eventually they give in and Holden dances with each one of them. He enjoys the night but notes many times to himself they have almost nothing in common, thus plugging any opportunity to further a relationship.

Holden continues to wander New York City encountering more people in the midst, each escapade leaving him somewhat more depressed than before. Many times in between chapters, he remembers nostalgically of him and Jane doing various things to keep himself calm. As he becomes increasingly lonely and depressed, he takes another cab to a different bar, Ernies, to get drunk. Typically he derides this one too saying there were too many phonies in there. He is forced to leave when he accidentally runs into his brother's annoying ex-girlfriend.

Back at the hotel, Holden encounters the elevator boy, Maurice, who offers to send up a prostitute to his room for five bucks. In a rather rash decision, he accepts the offer hoping the experience will cheer him up. But when the the young girl, Sunny, comes to his room, Holden cannot bring himself to have sex with her, feeling much too depressed. He tells Sunny he is recuperating from a surgical operation on his clavichord, an obvious play on clavicle and spinal cord, and pays her, instead, to sit down and keep him company for a while. Later, she leaves, only to return with Maurice shortly after, who intimidates Holden and uses brute force to hustle an extra five bucks from him.

The next day, he makes a date with one of his previous girlfriends, Sally Hayes. They attend a matinee performance of The Lunts and later go ice skating at Rockefeller Center, but retire indoors to talk once their ankles tire. Their conversation soon turns into a fight and the experience leaves him more depressed, as he realizes that they do not have much in common. Holden in a final attempt to make peace with Sally gets a sudden idea to leave and go Northeast, live off of the land and build a cabin, offering Sally a chance to go with him — get "married or something". Sally rejects him and his idea, especially after Holden plaintively blurts out that she's "a royal pain in the ass." At that point, Sally becomes offended and walks out on the date.

After he gets drunk at a bar and almost drowns looking for ducks in a pond in Central Park, Holden then decides to surreptitiously visit home to see his younger sister Phoebe. During a short conversation with Phoebe, Holden reveals the meaning of the novel's title. The idea is based on a misreading of a line in the song "Comin' Thro' the Rye," by Robert Burns, which Holden heard a young boy singing. The young boy mistakenly substituted "When a body catch a body, comin' thro' the rye" for "When a body meet a body, comin' thro' the rye." Holden interpreted the line literally, imagining a field of rye at the edge of a cliff, in which children constantly wandered, and that someone had the job of catching any who might fall. Thus, he says that he wants to be the catcher, because it serves a real purpose in a world that is otherwise so often phony/trivial. Holden quickly leaves the apartment as his parents come home from a party.

Holden goes to a former teacher's house, Mr Antolini, where his teacher gives him a speech about life and how, in order to live happily, Holden has to be prepared. Holden views Mr. Antolini as a father-figure and holds much respect for him. Mr. Antolini speaks as if he has been in Holden's situation before, hopelessly hating every person he ever sees. After preparing the pull out couch with Mr. Antolini, Holden awakes to find him stroking his head. Holden, taken aback by this, interprets this as a sexual advance, and runs out of the apartment to sleep in Grand Central Station, against the wishes of Mr. Antolini who says he was just admiring him.

In the morning, he decides to hitchhike west and build a cabin for himself away from the people he knows. However, he can't leave without saying goodbye to Phoebe first. Holden gives someone at her school a message to give to Phoebe explaining the situation. He tells her to meet him outside the nearby museum at lunchtime so he can give her back her money she had lent to him. At the same time, Holden witnesses several "Fuck You" messages graffitied on the walls, and worries what effect it would have if the children were to see it.

When Phoebe finally arrives at lunchtime, she is carrying one of Holden's old suitcases full of clothes. Phoebe tells Holden that she is going with him. He angrily refuses, feeling that he has influenced her to want to go with him instead of staying in school. She cries and refuses to speak to him. Knowing that she will follow him, Holden walks to the zoo, letting her anger lift. After walking through the zoo, with a short distance between them, they visit a park across the street. Phoebe starts talking to Holden again, and Holden promises to forget about his plan to run away and return home on Wednesday. He buys her a ticket for the carousel in the park and watches her ride an old horse on it. As Holden watches her ride the carousel, his own mood lifts. Soon he is nearly moved to tears with remorse, longing, and bittersweet happiness.

At this point in the book, the reader is given more clues that Holden is narrating the book from a mental hospital. He explains that he will be going to another school in the fall again but doesn't know for sure if he will start applying himself. He finishes talking with the words, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody".

Major themes

Given that Salinger has never commented on the work and its intended meanings, interpretations are fractured and vary from reader to reader. However, there are certainly a few themes which are discussed in the book — it is what Salinger actually meant that is under contention.

Phoniness

A major theme is what Holden calls "phoniness." He feels surrounded by dishonesty and false pretenses, and throughout the book is frequently picking out the "phonies" he sees around him. There is evidence that Holden exhibits much of the same "phoniness" he denounces in others. Holden also puts on pretenses, lies, and makes irrational and contradictory assumptions to mask his feelings and actions from others, which further alienates him from society. However, many others say that this is a misinterpretation of Holden's use of "phoniness", and that while he lies and exhibits other flaws, he doesn't fall into his own category. Possibly, the "phoniness" is about not being honest with yourself about your feelings of pain and disappointment. Holden's "phonies" rarely give the impression of admitting their flaws and insecurities, and this could be what he has in mind when he labels them as such. In contrast, though Holden labels other people as "phonies," Holden reveals much of his own carnality, showing himself to the readers as being self-righteous and judgmental. Sometimes, he himself can be a bit phoney, such as the time he decides he's going to pretend to be a deaf-mute so he doesn't have to speak to anyone. Either way, Holden believes that he is honest with himself, and the reader, throughout the book.

A reoccurring event in this book is Holden’s disdain for anything that robs the innocence from children. After he awakens to his favorite teacher Mr. Antolini rubbing his head, Holden even admits that he was previously taken advantage of by adults. Child exploitation is seen by Holden as another way how adults destroy childhood innocence. Holden's fascination with young children deals with his deeper desire to return to the innocence and truth that only children have. In a world where he considers adults and phonies to be equivalent, children are considered to be a fresh escape from Holden's middle-class background.

Loss of innocence

One more significant theme is that the loss of innocence might be unavoidable. Holden's idea of a "catcher in the rye" illustrates how he wishes to wipe out corruption from the world and protect children, such as his sister, from becoming like the many "phonies" he hated; e.g., adults. This is clearly illustrated by Holden's attack on Stradlater after the date with Jane Gallagher. Nevertheless, Holden finds it impossible to maintain innocence. After seeing some vulgar graffiti (saying "Fuck You") on the walls in his sister Phoebe's elementary school, a bastion of learning and culture, he tries to rub them off. In disgust, he states "If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the "Fuck You" signs in the world." To Holden, the "Fuck You"s represent the things that remove the innocence of people. Thus he realizes that he won't be able to protect children from the world indefinitely. Holden believes that society will never get better, and it will always have some sort of flaw.

Also, in Holden's scheme of moving west and building a cabin, he mentions that he may have children, but hide them, probably to maintain their innocence.
Throughout the story Holden tries to maintain innocence. One situation Holden finds himself in is his dorm at Pencey Prep and is ready to leave for the movies and he begins to "[pack] a snowball with [his] bare hands…," and then admits "I didn’t throw it at anything, though. I started to throw it. At a car that was parked across the street. But I changed my mind. The car looked so nice and white. Then I started to throw it at a hydrant, but that looked too nice and white, too. Finally I didn’t throw it at anything."

Adolescence

Running contrary to the desire to maintain innocence is Holden's obviously strong desire to be an adult and live in the adult world, for which he is not prepared. He probably doesn't want to be a kid anymore, but still feels like the adult world is cruel and unfair. He's stuck in between child and adulthood. He is immensely frustrated by his repeated attempts to fit into adult society, foiled by his saying something wrong, or simply being seen as an adolescent by the adults around him. He spends much of the novel pursuing women, attempting to lose his virginity. He also tries to drink alcohol in every bar he can, but is turned away because he is too young. Having been rejected, Holden's response is an even stronger rejection of the people with whom he was trying to fit in. This resentment, combined with his observations of "phoniness" in many of the people around him, cause him to be outcast by society and to sometimes view himself as a loner with outsider status. Holden also changes his mind at the end of the book when he lets Phoebe grow up.

Education

Another theme in the book is whether or not Holden's education is important. Holden has failed out of several schools in his career, and exhibits no signs of remorse or promise of change. In the final chapters of the book, his former teacher, Mr. Antolini, tells Holden that it is imperative to his future that he apply himself at school, that he believes that education helps to arrange the ideas of brilliant and creative people — a group to which he presumably believes Holden belongs. Whether this speech is intended to be considered true is convoluted by the ambiguous actions of Mr. Antolini shortly after Holden goes to sleep. At the end of the book, Holden states that he thinks he will apply himself in the next school he's going to, but that he isn't sure and that he won't be until he gets there.

Style

Stream of consciousness

This style, used throughout the novel, refers to the use of seemingly disjointed ideas and episodes used in an apparently random medley, but in fact in a highly structured way, that is used to illustrate a theme. For example, as Holden sits in a chair in his dorm, minor events (such as picking up a book or looking at a table) unfold into long discussions about past experiences.

Controversy

The Catcher in the Rye has been shrouded in controversy since its publication. Reasons for banning have been the use of offensive language, premarital sex, alcohol abuse, and prostitution.

Mark David Chapman, murderer of musician John Lennon, was carrying the book when he was arrested immediately after the murder and referred to it in his statement to police shortly thereafter. John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was also reported to have been obsessed with the book.

Critics see Holden as a disturbing influence on youths they consider to be "social outcasts". Holden is portrayed as a juvenile who rejects and is rejected by many peers and individuals. Critics hold that people like Chapman and Hinckley come to relate themselves to Holden, the person that nobody understands and that cannot understand anybody else.

Thirty years after its first publication in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye was both the most banned book in United States as well as the second most taught book in public schools.

It was number 13 on the American Library Association's list of most frequently challenged books from 1990-2000. It was one of the ten most challenged books in 2005.

Notwithstanding the above, the story remains required reading in many U.S. public school English literature curricula.

Dating the story

The Catcher in the Rye takes place in the late 1940s to the early 1950s, which is about the time the novel was written. World War II was over and the atomic bomb, which was mentioned in the book, had already been invented. The death of Allie, Holden's younger brother, is given to be July 18, 1946, and it is stated Holden was 13 at that time. It follows, therefore, that the bulk of the story takes place in approximately December of 1949 and the story's "present" is the summer of 1950. Given that Christmas fell on a Sunday in 1949, the two days that consume most of the novel are most likely December 18 and 19; if it were one week later, the second day of Holden's romp would be Christmas, and if it were one week earlier, Pencey would be letting its students out two full weeks before Christmas.

 

The canon of the Beat Generation: poetry by Allen Ginsberg, On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

The Beat Generation was a group of American writers who came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), and William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959) are often considered their most important works.

Kerouac introduced the phrase Beat Generation sometime around 1948 to describe his friends and as a general term describing the underground, anti-conformist youth gathering in New York at that time to the novelist John Clellon Holmes (who published an early novel about the beat generation, titled Go, in 1952, along with a manifesto of sorts in the New York Times Magazine: "This is the beat generation"). The adjective beat (introduced to the group by Herbert Huncke) had the connotations of "tired" or "down and out," but Kerouac added the paradoxical connotations of upbeat, beatific, and the musical association of being "on the beat."

Calling this relatively small group of struggling writers, students, hustlers, and drug addicts a "generation" was to make the claim that they were representative and important—the beginnings of a new trend, analogous to the influential Lost Generation.

In trying to define the "Beat Generation" it's important to note that "Beat Generation" was originally a reference, not only to Kerouac's inner-circle, but to the burgeoning counter-culture. The press attached to the name "Beat Generation" as a reference to only a small group of writers, friends of Ginsberg, Kerouac or Burroughs. Thus the joke among Beat writers (attributed to both Gregory Corso and Gary Snyder) persisted in various forms: "Three friends do not make a generation." The press also mistakenly pointed to Ginsberg and Kerouac as leaders. This often leads to confusion about who actually belongs in the so-called "Beat Generation." Writers who may qualify as part of the "Beat Generation" may deny they were ever a part of it based on this limiting definition the press had given it. For example, they'll say they're friends with Ginsberg and Kerouac, not followers. This leads to two ways to identify writers as members of the "Beat Generation," a broad and narrow definition. A narrow definition of the Beat Generation would include only the closest friends who relatively consistently defined themselves as "Beat" writers; this list may include: Ginsberg, Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky. If "Beat Generation" is defined broadly, this smaller group is often just called "The New York Beats," though Orlovsky had little connection with New York. William S. Burroughs, one of the most important figures of this group, always adamantly denied he was a part of the "Beat Generation," but an accurate list of the close inner-circle would have to include him. Even Kerouac in his later career denied he was part of the "Beat Generation." In this sense movements like the San Francisco Renaissance and the Black Mountain poets would be completely separate movements.

The members of the Beat Generation were new bohemian ecstatic epicureans, who often engaged in a spontaneous creativity. The style of their work may seem chaotic, but the chaos was purposeful; it highlighted the primacy of such Beat Generation essentials as spontaneity, open emotion, visceral engagement in often gritty worldly experiences. The beat writers produced a body of written work controversial both for its advocacy of non-conformity and for its non-conforming style.

Jack Kerouac (pronounced [dʒæk kɛrwæk]) (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist. He is perhaps the best known of a group of writers and friends who came to be known as the Beat Generation.

Kerouac enjoyed some degree of popular appeal but little critical acclaim during his lifetime. He is now, however, considered to be one of America's most important and influential authors. His spontaneous, confessional prose style has inspired numerous other writers and musicians, including Tom Robbins, Lester Bangs, Richard Brautigan, Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. Kerouac's best known works are On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur and Visions of Cody.

Kerouac divided most of his young adult life between roaming the vast American landscape and life at home with his mother. Faced with a changing post-war America, he sought to find his place, but came to eventually reject the values and social norms of the Fifties. His writing often reflects a desire to break free from society's structures and to find higher meaning.

This search led Kerouac to experiment with drugs and to embark on trips around the world. His writings are often credited as the catalyst for the 1960s counterculture. Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Florida, at the age of forty-seven from an internal hemorrhage, the result of chronic alcoholism.

Kerouac is considered by some as the King of the Beats as well as the Father of the Hippies, although it must be said that he actively disliked such labels, and, in particular, regarded the Hippie movement with some disdain. Kerouac's method was heavily influenced by the prolific explosion of Jazz, especially the Bebop genre established by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and others. Later, Kerouac would include ideas he developed in his Buddhist studies, beginning with Gary Snyder. He called this style Spontaneous Prose, a literary technique akin to stream of consciousness.

Kerouac's motto was "first-thought=best thought", and many of his books exemplified this approach including On the Road, Visions of Cody, Visions of Gerard, Big Sur, and The Subterraneans. The central features of this writing method was the idea of breath (borrowed from Jazz and from Buddhist meditation breathing), improvising words over the inherent structures of mind and language, and not editing a single word (much of his work was edited by Donald Merriam Allen, a major figure in Beat Generation poetry who also edited some of Ginsberg's work as well). Connected with his idea of breath was the elimination of the period, preferring to use a long, connecting dash instead. As such, the phrases occurring between dashes might resemble improvisational jazz licks. When spoken, the words might take on a certain kind of rhythm, though none of it pre-meditated.

On the Road is a novel by Jack Kerouac, written in April 1957. This largely autobiographical work, written as a stream of consciousness and based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America, is often considered a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation that was inspired by jazz, poetry, and drug experiences. As the inspiration came from real life, hundreds of references in On the Road have real-world counterparts.

The book became an overnight success, and gathered an epic mythos that was worthy of its fame. As the story goes, On the Road was written by Kerouac in three weeks while living with his second wife, Joan Haverty, in an apartment at 454 West Twentieth Street in Manhattan, which he typed on one long scroll of teletype paper, which Kerouac called "the roll." The roll does exist — it was purchased in 2001 by Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, for $2.4 million — and it was indeed typed in a blazing three weeks, with no margins, single-spaced, and no paragraph breaks. But the myth of the story overlooks some of the finer points of the novel's composition. Much of the book was actually written as it happened, over the seven years of Kerouac's travels, in the small notebooks that he always carried with him and wrote in during his spare time. The myth also overlooks the tedious organization and preparation that came before Kerouac's creative explosion, as well as the fact that Kerouac revised the novel several times before Malcolm Cowley of Viking Press agreed to publish it.

As of 2006, the book is to be the subject of a forthcoming film, also titled On the Road. Walter Salles is signed to direct, and casting is scheduled to begin later in the year.

Viking Press hopes to publish an uncensored version of the book, containing elements that were deemed unsuitable when it was first published, by the end of 2007, the 50th anniversary of its original publication. Also, Viking plans to fulfill Kerouac's unrealized desire to "...reinsert my pantheon of uniform names..." or in other words remove the pseudonyms used for the characters throughout the book, thus the opening sentence, "I first met Dean Moriarty..." would be changed to "I first met Neal Cassady..."

Michael McClure, a poet in San Francisco who was involved with the Beats said that "the world that [they] trembling stepped out into in that decade was a bitter, gray one." In his article "Scratching the Beat Surface," he describes the time as "locked in the Cold War and the first Asian debacle," in "the gray, chill, militaristic silence...the intellective void...the spiritual drabness."

This is the world in which Kerouac takes his journeys that become the material for On the Road. Salvadore (a.k.a. Sal) Paradise, the narrator of On the Road and the character identified as Kerouac's alter ego, is a literate keeper of American culture. We become intimately aware of an elusive narrator, but fixated upon the epic hero of the novel, Dean Moriarty (a pseudonym for Neal Cassady, who was also a part of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters). The narrator tells us in the opening paragraph that "with the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of [his] life you could call [his] life on the road." Dean is the instigator and the inspiration for the journey that Sal will make, the journey that he will record.

The characters are introduced to us in brief vignettes, in a way reminiscent of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; New York City is the starting point, and Sal wants us to understand the people we will be dealing with. The arrival of Dean is the catalyst; Sal describes him as “simply a youth tremendously excited with life.” He also sees “a kind of holy lightning...flashing from his excitement and his visions." When Dean meets Carlo Marx (a pseudonym for Allen Ginsberg), Sal’s closest friend in the city, Sal tells us that a “tremendous thing happened," and that the meeting of Dean and Carlo was a meeting between “the holy con-man with the shining mind [Dean], and the sorrowful poetic con-man with the dark mind that is Carlo Marx." Sal remarks that “everything that was to come began then”, in their meeting. Carlo tells Dean about the friends around the country, their experiences, and Sal is telling us that he is following them “because the only people for [him] are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a common place thing, but burn burn burn...”

Sal describes Dean’s criminal tendencies as “a wild yea-saying overburst of American joy...something new, long prophesied, long a-coming (he only stole cars for joy rides).” The early descriptions of Dean establish a religious motif; people and their personalities are regularly referred to as holy or prophesied. Dean is “a western kinsman of the sun”, and this pagan comparison is yet another supernatural moment in the description of Dean Moriarty. Sal introduces him as the savior of his generation; Sal says that “all [of his] New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired...reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love.”

Sal’s journey continues with his arrival in Chicago. He dates the narrative at 1947, marking it as a specific era in jazz history, “somewhere between its Charlie Parker Ornithology period and another period that began with Miles Davis,” and it inspires Sal to think of his friends “from one end of the country to the other…doing something so frantic and rushing about.” Sal doesn’t say what they are frantically doing, and this is the premise of the narrative. Sal is hardly immune from this. After napping in Des Moines, he wakes up, “and that was the one distinct time in [his] life...when [he] didn’t know who [he] was.”

In San Francisco, Sal confronts social expectations. He takes a job as a night watchman at a boarding camp for merchant sailors waiting for their ship. When he finds the work distasteful, he tells his supervisor that he “wasn’t cut out to be a cop.” In response, Sal is reminded that “it’s [his] duty.... [He] can’t compromise with things like this.” Sal’s aversion to commitment and duty ensure that he does not hold this job for long, and he is soon on the road again, where he meets one of his biggest temptations.

Her name is Terry, and he meets her on the bus to LA. She is a Mexican who has run away from her husband. They spend “the next fifteen days…together for better or for worse.” Sal spends the better part of a week with Terry and her family in a migrant worker’s camp. The agrarian lifestyle initially appeals to Sal, and he says that he “thought [he] had found [his] life’s work.” The economic reality sets in and Sal begins to pray “to God for a better break in life and a better chance to do something for the little people [he] loved.”

The next significant character that Sal meets is the “Ghost of the Susquehanna”. His role “is to complete the triad” (Goldstein) of symbolic structure in the narrative.

Sal’s continued journey on the road is entwined with the making of Dean as the epic hero: Dean Moriarty, the “son of a wino”. Dean has spent time in prison, for stealing cars. Sal discusses what effect this experience had on Dean saying, “only a guy who’s spent five years in jail can go to such maniacal helpless extremes.... Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live.” Dean’s imprisonment, according to Sal, is when his heroic personality was solidified. Prison had the effect of fueling his obsession with the road. What makes him heroic to Sal is his free nature, and his reluctance to tie his spirit to social demands. This self-centered personality causes Dean to “[antagonize] people away from him by degrees.” The institution of marriage is particularly difficult for Dean, and by the end of the novel he is “three times married, twice divorced, and living with his second wife.” This decline of Dean makes up the second part of the novel, and culminates in the end of Sal’s journeys.

Sal’s travels erode into disappointment. He slowly becomes more dissatisfied with what he finds on the road, and he begins to look back on his previous travels in a more cynical way. His companions begin to be people from lower classes, old Negroes and Mexican whores. Back in Denver, and very alone, he speaks in verse saying, “Down in Denver, down in Denver/All I did was die.” We begin to confront the possibility that this journey and Sal’s hero Dean were both failures.

After reuniting with Dean, Sal begins to sense Dean’s decline and labels him “the HOLY GOOF”, when earlier he was called holy in a reverent tone. Dean’s abilities falter. When confronted with his abandonment of wife and child, he is silent. Sal explains, “where once Dean would have talked his way out, he now fell silent.... He was BEAT.”

Sal’s last attempt at finding an answer to his problems is a trip through the Mexican countryside to Mexico City with Dean and a hanger-on picked up in Denver. The travelers perk up as soon as they hit the Mexican border, and some of the novel's more memorable scenes depict their marijuana-fused introduction to Mexican culture, including a vivid (but expensive) sojurn to a bordello offering mambo music and underage prostitutes. (Indeed, throughout the book, both Sal and Dean betray a robust attraction to extremely young girls.)

Upon arriving in Mexico City, he immediately develops dysentery, and the final betrayal occurs when Dean leaves him behind, feverish and hallucinating. Sal reflects that “when I got better I realized what a rat he was, but then I had to understand the impossible complexity of his life, how he had to leave me there, sick, to get on with his wives and woes.”

The novel ends a year later in New York. Dean comes back to New York to see Sal and arrange for Sal and his girlfriend to migrate to San Francisco with him. The arrangements to move fall through and Dean returns to the West alone.

Sal closes the novel sitting on a pier during sunset, looking west. He reminisces on God, America, crying children, and the idea that "nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old," and ends with “I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty."

 

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: a link between the "beat generation" of the 1950s and the "hippies" of the 1960s.