Is The Catcher in the Rye actually any good?

My experience re-reading one of my favorite titles from high school.

I had great joy re-reading those two books from my past, and in September of that year I was at it again, re-reading and discussing another favorite book from my past, one I read at the beginning of my junior year of high school in 2001. Three books that have stuck with me the most since my teen years: To Kill a Mockingbird, Boy’s Life, and J.D. Salinger’s masterpiece, The Catcher in the Rye.

The Catcher in the Rye floored me when I read it in August 2001, right before school commenced. I was used to reading my high school books slowly, and sometimes reluctantly, but I sped through The Catcher in the Rye in two days, completely absorbed by this new, unique prose style I had never encountered before. So many of the books I had read before were written so formally, often with language I didn’t fully understand. The Catcher in the Rye freed me as a reader, allowing me to fall under the spell of not the words on the page necessarily, but the voice of the main character, Holden Caulfield.

I was also taken with the sprawling, rambling narrative, which went against the norm of the books I’d read before that had clear three-act structures and protagonists with undeniable goals. In Catcher in the Rye, Holden is like a feather blowing through the wind, going where he wants and doing what feels right, and I loved this element to the novel. This book stayed with me over the years, I still think about it from time to time, and in 2015 I felt it was time to re-visit the world of Holden Caulfield.

I didn’t know what to expect on this second go-around. I’m a lot more well-read than I was in high…

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