The Catcher in the Rye

“I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.”

About this book

The Catcher in the Rye (1951) is J. D. Salinger's landmark novel of teenage alienation. Its narrator, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, has just been expelled from Pencey Prep. Instead of going straight home, he drifts through New York City for a few days—hotels, bars, a date with Sally Hayes, a visit to his sister Phoebe—while railing against phoniness and trying to protect what still feels innocent. The title comes from Holden's fantasy of standing in a rye field catching children before they fall off a cliff. Compact, colloquial, and fiercely intimate, the book became a modern classic of American coming-of-age fiction.