“This unusual book,” it reads, as though no more specific adjective were available, “may shock you, will make you laugh, and may break your heart—but you will never forget it.” And, of course, that is how Salinger’s novel has been thought of since it was published in 1951: not in terms of its literary merits, but as a book that has enabled generations of adolescents to feel more like human beings and less like visitors from another planet. Scarcely anyone reads it after age twenty-one, which is irrelevant, perhaps even desirable, to readers under the age of eighteen who find in it proof
...more
