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Original Essays | September 23, 2009

Jonathan Lethem: IMG Stops: On Those Things My New Novel Forgot to Be About, Maybe

0 comments By Jonathan Lethem

For me, there's a weird, unfathomable gulf — I almost wrote gulp — between the completion of a novel and its publication. Some days this duration feels interminable, as though the book has... Continue »
  1. $19.56 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

    Chronic City

    Jonathan Lethem

The Catcher in the Rye

by J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye Cover

ISBN13: 9780316769174
ISBN10: 0316769177
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Ever since it was first published in 1951, this novel has been the coming-of-age story against which all others are judged. Read and cherished by generations, the story of Holden Caulfield is truly one of America's literary treasures.

Review:

"Repetitive, indecent, often very funny, it is wonderfully sustained by the author, who achieves all those ancient effects to be got from a hero who is in some ways inferior, and in some ways superior, to the reader....Why, then, with all this to admire, do I find something phoney in the book itself?....[T]he adult view of adolescence, insinuated by skillful faking, is agreeable to predictable public taste....[It] is what the consumer needs....The boy's attitudes to religion, authority, art, sex and so on are what smart people would like other people to have, but cannot have themselves, because of their superior understanding." Frank Kermode, Review from Spectator, 05/30/1958

Synopsis:

J.D. Salinger's classic of adolescent angst is now available for the first time in trade paperback. Holden Caulfield, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what he did and suffered there.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
BGP, October 10, 2009 (view all comments by BGP)
This is, without question, the most overrated book that I have had the grave misfortune to encounter. I will grant that, in its day, the book was probably read as a refreshing challenge to the generally accepted understanding of what it means to be a youth, but, by today's standards, Holden is a seventeen year old kid struggling through a sixth grade existential crisis.

This book has not aged well.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780316769174
Author:
Salinger, J. D.
Publisher:
Back Bay Books
Location:
Boston
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Classics
Subject:
New york (n.y.)
Subject:
New York
Subject:
Runaway teenagers
Subject:
Caulfield, Holden
Subject:
American fiction (fictional works by one auth
Subject:
Bildungsromans
Subject:
Teenagers
Edition Description:
1st Back Bay paperback ed.
Series Volume:
105-708
Publication Date:
January 2001
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
288
Dimensions:
802x531x80 53
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