SALINGER, JD

First edition finely bound copy of Salinger’s seminal text.

• J.D. Salinger (American).
• Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951.
• [6], 277 pages.
• Octavo.
• Bound in full red morocco, all edges gilt, by Weitz-Coleman in 1989.

"In American writing, there are three perfect books, which seem to speak to every reader and condition: Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye. Of the three, only Catcher defines an entire region of human experience: it is… the handbook of the adolescent heart" (New Yorker). Catcher in the Rye "captured the hearts of several generations… with its very first sentence, the book, which came out in 1951, introduced a brand-new voice in American writing" (New York Times). "A 20th-century classic… Salinger's novel was, and continues to be, a phenomenal success" (Parker, 300). "This novel is a key-work of the 1950s in that the theme of youthful rebellion is first adumbrated in it, though the hero, Holden Caulfield, is more a gentle voice of protest, unprevailing in the noise, than a militant world-changer… The Catcher in the Rye was a symptom of a need, after a ghastly war and during a ghastly pseudo-peace, for the young to raise a voice of protest against the failures of the adult world. The young used many voices—anger, contempt, self-pity—but the quietest, that of a decent perplexed American adolescent, proved the most telling" (Burgess, 99 Novels, 53-4).

Starosciak A30.

Bixby A2.