The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye is a story by J. D. Salinger, partially published in serial form in 1945–1946 and as a novel in 1951.

At first I started to read this novel in Armenian, but then fortunately I found the novel in English. I could read it very easily and without worrying about unfamiliar words. The very first chapters were interesting, but then I lost my interest in the book and couldn’t go on. After founding the book in English I started from where I had stopped. The middle chapters weren’t interesting, just only the end was really worth to read. So what I can say about the book is just read it. It speaks for everything, in some parts it makes you think, it makes you analyze the heroes. When I was just starting to read it I thought it was a modern writer who had written about modern people, but I knew it wasn’t so. Holden was a boy in a search. You know, we all are in a search. Some of us admit it, some of us don’t. I think there is Holden in every of us. I can’t say he was a fool, because he wasn’t, but he wasn’t that smart.

Just read it, think, analyze every step, every word, everything.

• And of course I had some notes from this novel.

⁃ I am quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

⁃ All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

⁃ I don’t care it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.

⁃ Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

⁃ People always clap for the wrong things.

⁃ People are always ruining things for you.

⁃ When you’re feeling very depressed, you can’t even think .

⁃ The thing is, it drives me crazy if somebody gets killed -- especially somebody very smart and entertaining and all--and it's somebody else's fault. Romeo and Juliet, at least it was their own fault.

⁃ When they got up to go, the two nuns, I did something very stupid and embarrassing. I was smoking a cigarette, and when I stood up to say good-by to them, by mistake I blew some smoke in their face. I didn't mean to, but I did it.

⁃ The funny part is, I felt like marrying her the minute I saw her. I’m crazy. I didn’t even like her much, and yet all of a sudden I felt like I was in love with her and wanted to marry her. I swear to God I’m crazy. I admit it.

⁃ If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.

⁃ Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.

⁃ It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.

⁃ That because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them, for God’s sake — especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that are alive.

/ Lusine Aleksanyan /