About the author
J. D. Salinger was an American writer known above all for The Catcher in the Rye and the stories of the Glass family. His fiction listens closely to adolescent speech, spiritual hunger, performance, grief, and the defensive uses of irony.
Salinger makes Holden's voice funny, repetitive, judgmental, and vulnerable at once. What he calls phoniness often hides a more difficult fear of change, grief, intimacy, and the adult world's failure to protect children.
Where to start
Start with The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield gets expelled and spends a lost weekend in New York, raging at everything phony.
