This very popular novel was published in 1951 by young J. D. Salinger.
Its popularity arose very fastly, and from a
novel adult-oriented it turned into a work which represents the teenage spirit of rebellion and angs, punctually anticipating the 1968's protest movements.
The book is still obtaining commercial success nowadays: every year 250,000 copies of the books are sold, all around the world.
Written in first-person, it's told about the experiences in New York City by a young guy named Holden Caulfield. This one gets expelled from Pencey Prep, a college preparatory school in a city of Pennsylvania.
Holden shares encounters he has had with students and faculty of Pencey, whom he accuses to be superficial. After his expulsion Holden packs up and leaves the school in the middle of the night after arguing with his roommate. He catches a train to New York, but instead returning to his family's
apartment, he points to a creepy place named Edmont Hotel. Here he spends a night dancing with three tourist girls, and then meets a
prostitute. At the first, he plans to have sex with her, but then he changes his mind, even if he already has paid the woman. But the prostitute asks for more money, Holden refuses and gets struck by the pimp.
Holden remains two days in the city, drunk and lonely. At a certain point he ends up at a museum, where he contrasts his life with the statues of Eskimos on display. It gets clear that Holden is afraid and nervous about the process of change and growing up. This feeling is mainly caused by the death of his brother, Allie. After all this, he sneaks into his parents apartment while they are away, to visit his younger sister Phoebe, who is nearly the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate.
Holden shares a fantasy he has been thinking about: he imagines himself as the sole guardian of numerous children running and playing in a huge rye field on the edge of a cliff. His job is to catch the children if they wander close to the brink; to be a "catcher in the rye".
Other meetings and situations represent Holden as a figure of "anti-hero". His actions and movements look to be merely meaningless and without any intention to reach a goal.
The success among the teenage readers can be alo explained thanks to the stylistic choice of the author's writing: as it's easy to notice, the writing reflects the colloquial teenage speech of the Sixties.