Yes, The Catcher in the Rye Is Banned!

J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel follows Holden Caulfield, a 16-year-old who’s just been expelled from his fourth prep school, as he wanders through New York City over three days. Holden’s voice, dripping with contempt for “phonies” and aching with grief he can’t name, became the definitive portrait of teenage disillusionment. The novel has sold over 65 million copies and continues to move about 250,000 copies a year.

Between 1961 and 1982, The Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in American high schools and libraries. It was pulled from classrooms in Boron, California in 1989 after parents complained about profanity and “anti-family values.” In Issaquah, Washington in 1978, three school board members alleged the book was part of an “overall communist plot.” The challenges have ranged from concerns about profanity (the word “goddam” appears frequently) to sexual references to a scene involving a prostitute. Between 1986 and 2000, at least nine separate removal attempts targeted the book for profanity and sexual content alone.

Why You Should Read This

Holden Caulfield is annoying. He’s whiny, hypocritical, and judgmental. He’s also 16 years old, grieving his dead brother, and falling apart. Every adult who calls him insufferable has forgotten what it felt like to be that age and that lost.

The book’s profanity was shocking in 1951. By today’s standards, it’s tame enough to make you laugh. What hasn’t aged is Holden’s desperate wish to protect innocence, his fantasy of catching children before they fall off a cliff. That’s the whole book in one image: a kid who can’t save anyone, least of all himself.

Salinger wrote one perfect novel about loneliness and then spent the rest of his life refusing to talk about it. The silence was the loudest part.