The Catcher in the Rye Archive
The best piece of writing I’ve ever read about The Catcher in the Rye is Charles D’Ambrosio’s “Salinger and Sobs.” The essay is about D’Ambrosio’s brother’s death by suicide and about the underlying threat of suicide that runs through so many of Salinger’s stories.
Complicated bad guys are nothing new. There’s something delicious about complex entertainment; we’re able to envision ourselves in the shoes of the antihero and exact revenge or serve righteous justice, but we’re also able to vicariously live through their actions that lie outside the boundaries of acceptable behavior. When
When we speak of a story as “voice-driven,” that typically means it’s written in first person and that the narrator has attitude. Instead of quietly striving towards general objectivity, the narrator—à la Holden Caulfield—gives us a unique angle on the world that keeps our eyes fixed to the page.