'Catcher in the Rye' Author Leaves Behind Tales of Teen Angst

Author Jerome David Salinger died Wednesday at the age of 91. Better known by his initials, J.D. Salinger wrote several books, but his most famous was "The Catcher in the Rye."   

A staple of many high school literature classes, the novel is about troubled 16-year-old Holden Caulfield who resists growing up and personifies common feelings of teenage angst.    

The book's explicit language and themes of isolation made it controversial, but it was loved from the moment it was published. "The Catcher in the Rye" reached No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list only two weeks after its 1951 release and has sold more than 60 million copies worldwide.    

Despite the book's popularity, Salinger lived in voluntary isolation for decades in a remote house in Cornish, N.H., explaining that he loved to write but wanted "to be left alone to do it."  

Holden Caulfield personifies teen angst

	Holden Caulfield's personal voice still resonates with teenagers today.

"Catcher in the Rye" captured "the zeitgeist, a particular way of looking at the world we share," professor Nicholas Delbanco of the University of Michigan told the NewsHour.   

"The novel bears a certain degree of lineage from kinship to Huck Finn…. the voice in the opening beat announces early on and absolutely authoritatively that we're in the presence of not so much an outcast of society as someone who hasn't yet found his comfortable place within it, who looks at it keenly, though, through the eyes of an adolescent, and who is, you know, preternaturally alert to that repeated word phoniness," Delbanco explains.   

After Salinger's death, Stephen Metcalf of Slate Magazine wrote, "I hit adolescence only to discover my autobiography had already been written; plagiarized, in fact, by a man named J.D. Salinger who, in appropriating to himself my inner mass of pain and confusion, had given me the unlikely name of Holden Caulfield." Holden's struggle with identity and belonging continues to be a familiar story with teens.  

Controversy and censorship

	John Lennon's killer said that "Catcher" would explain the reasons behind his crime.

Holden's tale of adolescent angst struck a different chord with censors. In 2008, Time Magazine put together a tribute to free speech by spotlighting some of the most banned books of all time. "The Catcher in the Rye" was No. 6 on that list.  

In 1960, school officials in Tulsa, Okla., fired an English teacher for assigning the book to an 11th grade class. The teacher was eventually reinstated, but over the past few decades the American Library Association recorded several bans and challenges to the book.  

The book's critics also say it incites anti-social behavior. In December 1980, "Catcher"-obsessed Mark David Chapman shot and killed Beatles star John Lennon -- a possible Salinger-style "phony" whose celebrity lifestyle conflicted with his message of non-materialism, Chapman contended. The killer, who once tried to change his name to Holden Caulfield, sat down and started reading the novel until police arrived.  

The novel has been linked to other high-profile crimes as well, including the assassination attempt of President Ronald Reagan. "Psychotics are drawn to Salinger's work," Linton Weeks wrote in the Washington Post in 2000.  

Counterculture hero turned curricula staple

	Literary critics are hoping that Salinger left behind more books to be published posthumously.

Yet thanks to anti-censorship advocates, the novel eventually made its way onto syllabi across the country.  

In 1981, "Catcher" was both the most-censored book and the second-most-taught book in U.S. public schools, according to University of Maryland Professor Herbert Foerstel's book, Banned in the USA.   

Whether Holden would appreciate this irony is difficult to tell. But Salinger once said, "Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf out of their reach."   

Now that Salinger has passed, the literary world is hoping that he left behind a closet full of manuscripts that can be published.  

Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, says Salinger's popularity is still high.    

"Here's a guy where fame is falling into his lap, and he builds a wall around it. He is the antithesis of 'American Idol,' the antithesis of reality TV. And, in an odd way, that makes him really, really cool," Thompson said.