R.I.P J.D Salinger- Thanks for Making 9th Grade Literature Class Badass

By Odemaris Byrd

Sadly, J.D Salinger died Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at the age of 91. It’s amazing that Salinger’s only novel, The Catcher and the Rye, published in 1951, has stood the test of time despite its controversial content and narrator. Salinger lived a good portion of his life as a hermit and his book was promoted by some of the most notorious assassins in American History, Mark David Chapman and John Hinkley Jr.

Charles McGrath wrote about Catcher and the Rye in Salinger’s obituary saying,

“Though not everyone, teachers and librarians especially, was sure what to make of it, “Catcher” became an almost immediate best seller, and its narrator and main character, Holden Caulfield, a teenager newly expelled from prep school, became America’s best-known literary truant since Huckleberry Finn.

With its cynical, slangy vernacular voice (Holden’s two favorite expressions are “phony” and “goddam”), its sympathetic understanding of adolescence and its fierce if alienated sense of morality and distrust of the adult world, the novel struck a nerve in cold war America and quickly attained cult status, especially among the young. Reading “Catcher” used to be an essential rite of passage, almost as important as getting your learner’s permit.”

Salinger’s son announced the death, saying it was of natural causes. “Despite having broken his hip in May,” he said, “his health had been excellent until a rather sudden decline after the new year. He was not in any pain before or at the time of his death.”