J.D. Salinger: Voice of America

"In "Catcher," every motif of America's famously adolescent national character burns bright: the moral absolutism, the inchoate chafing at any manifestation of authority, the romanticizing of innocence and childhood, a certain prudishness, and the conviction of personal exceptionalism. All of these traits are problematic, obviously; you can see the seeds of countless political mistakes and miscalculations in Holden's self-righteousness and rigidity, his ability to feel persecuted in the lap of privilege.

Yet for all these insufferable qualities, Holden spoke in an authentic American voice: frank, funny and with an infectious vernacular swagger. Salinger admired Hemingway, but he was in large part responsible for liberating American fiction from the austere, humorless sobriety of the Hemingway cult. No contemporary, first-person narrator would ever be the same after "Catcher" -- and thank God for that. Writers ranging from Pauline Kael to Michael Chabon have roamed freely across the frontier that Salinger opened up.

Above all, Holden is a believable teenager, a character who has shown young readers throughout the world that they can find their gripes, their restlessness, their idealism, and their lives breathing in the pages of a book. Though Salinger connoisseurs often swear to the superiority of the Glass Family stories, this is rightly regarded as the author's greatest gift to literature. Holden never grew up, and perhaps his creator never accomplished that either, but most of his readers did. Thanks to "The Catcher in the Rye," they did it with the certainty that a battered paperback tucked in the back pocket of your jeans is an indispensable ally for anyone heading out into the world."