‘I felt Holden was talking to me alone’: The Catcher in the Rye at 75
JD Salinger’s wry, subversive classic inspired novelist Joseph O’Connor to be a writer. He reflects on why this story of a disaffected teenager remains as
JD Salinger’s wry, subversive classic inspired novelist Joseph O’Connor to be a writer. He reflects on why this story of a disaffected teenager remains as fresh and transgressive as ever In 1981, when I was 17, my first girlfriend gave me a paperback of her dad’s favourite novel.
I’d never heard of it despite living in a home full of books. My parents loved the work of Edna O’Brien, Muriel Spark, John le Carré, Dickens. So did I. But encountering the first sentence of JD Salinger’s
The Catcher in the Rye made the world burst into colour. “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was
like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” Continue reading...
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