[In The Catcher in the Rye,] Salinger sharply accentuates the portrayal of Holden with a symbolic structure of language, motif, episode, and character; and when the complex patterns are discovered, the effect is to concentrate our scrutiny on a masterpiece that moves effortlessly on the colloquial surface and at the same time uncovers, with hypnotic compulsion, a psychological drama of unrelenting terror and final beauty. (p. 6) Salinger has employed neurotic deterioration, symbolical death, spiritual awake...

[Can] a decade be labeled with the name of one writer? During the 1950s, Jerome David Salinger published his single novel to date, The Catcher in the Rye, and eight rather long stories—all but one of them connected at least thematically with the saga of a family named Glass…. This small body of work enjoyed a popularity unparalleled during the decade. (p. 23) Salinger's significant writing was almost entirely confined to the 50s. (p. 24)

It is clear that J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye belongs to an ancient and honorable narrative tradition, perhaps the most profound in western fiction. The tradition is the central pattern of the epic and has been enriched by every tongue; for not only is it in itself exciting but also it provides the artist a framework upon which he may hang almost any fabric of events and characters. It is, of course, the tradition of the Quest. (p. 129)

Holden's sensitivity is the heart of [The Catcher in the Rye]; that which animates the story and makes it compelling. Events are laden with affect for Holden. He cannot speak of an experience for long in a neutral way, apart from judgment and feeling. And of course those judgments and feelings are largely negative. Not so entirely negative as Phoebe says—"You don't like anything that's happening"—but this novel is first the story of a young man so displeased ...

Last spring I taught a course in contemporary fiction at New York University. When I was drawing up the reading list, a veteran teacher whom I consulted mildly questioned the inclusion of J. D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye." "It's the one book," he said "that every undergraduate in America has read." I think he was pretty nearly right about that, but, for my own sake, I'm glad I decided to teach the book. To most of my students, I discover...

What meaning, if any, can one attach to the expression 'a key book of the present decade'? It is used as a blurb in a … reprint of [The Catcher in the Rye]…. Whoever remembers the book will suppose that this is a serious claim, implying perhaps that The Catcher, as well as being extremely successful, is a work of art existing in some more or less profound relationship with the 'spirit of the age.' It is, anyway, quite different from saying that No Orchids for Miss B...

[One] can say, in dubious celebration of Salinger, that The Catcher in the Rye is the one book that the adolescent novel comes from. It is a difficult, deceptive heritage; satirical and ostensibly designed to offer a clearer mode of life and thought than that which the heroes witness. But certainly in Salinger's case …, there really are no alternatives. One's only salvation is to remain a child. Even in his works about the Glass Family, where he has turned to the adult world, Salinger i...