The Catcher in the Rye Pages

Some Background Information

The highly successful Catcher is J. D. Salinger's only published novel. It is narrated by seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield, a schoolboy in rebellion against the dubious values of the adult world.

In 1949, while "recovering" in a California sanitorium, 17-year-old Holden relates events that occurred during three December days in 1948--when he was sixteen. Within this part of the story, Holden frequently flashes back to experiences and people from earlier in his life.

Much like Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Catcher could be described as an American Bildungsroman: a picaresque novel that illustrates the moral development and attitudes of its nonconformist protagonist.
 

Jerome David Salinger

• born January 1, 1919, in the city of New York
• educated at Valley Forge Military Academy (the model for Pencey Prep)
• attended New York and Columbia universities
• published approximately 21 short stories in the Saturday Evening Post and other magazines during the 1940s
• served in the US infantry in World War II
• published The Catcher in the Rye in 1951
• lives in seclusion in Cornish, New Hampshire

Other Works

• March-April 1940: "The Young Folks"
  Salinger was 21 when he published his first short story in Story magazine.
• 1953: Nine Stories (in England, For Esme, With Love and Squalor)
  In this collection, Salinger introduces the Glass family.
• 1961: Franny and Zooey
  Two stories about a brother and sister in the Glass family.
• 1963: Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction
  Buddy Glass is the narrator in both collections.
• June 1965: "Hapworth 16, 1924"
  Salinger's last published short story appeared in the New Yorker.

TCITR in a Nutshell

Tune in to Evan Dorkin's Fisher Price Theater to see the Little People Players and their moving rendition of TCITR: Part One | Part Two.