Original Review: 'Catcher in the Rye'

Holden Caulfield, the sixteen-year-old protagonist of J. D. Salinger's first novel, “The Catcher in the Rye,” which has been published by Little, Brown and chosen by the Book-of-the-Month Club, refers to himself as an illiterate, but he is a reader. One of the tests to which he puts the books he reads is whether he feels like calling the author up. He is excited about a book by Isak Dinesen and feels like calling her up. He would like to call up Ring Lardner, but an older brother has told him Lardner is dead. He thinks “Of Human Bondage” is pretty good, but he has no impulse to put in a call to Maugham. He would like to call up Thomas Hardy, because he has a nice feeling about Eustacia Vye. (Nobody, evidently, has told him the sad news about Hardy.) Mr. Salinger himself passes his unorthodox literary test with flying colors; this reader would certainly like to call him up.