Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Salinger, J. D. - Sanford Pinsker （essay date Winter 1986）

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Sanford Pinsker （essay date Winter 1986）

SOURCE: “The Catcher in the Rye and All: Is the Age of Formative Books Over?,” in Georgia Review, Vol. XL, No. 4, Winter, 1986, pp. 953-67.

[In the following essay, Pinsker reflects upon the enduring popularity and cultural significance of The Catcher in the Rye and on the role of formative adolescent novels in contemporary American literature.]

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. … Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.

—Holden Caulfield¹

I first read these lines about Holden's recollections in anxiety long before I could have identified the allusion to Wordsworth, long before I fell half in love with easeful death and Keats's “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” long before I would scrawl “stasis” on the blackboard...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Anne Marple （review date 18 September 1961）
   2. J. D. O'Hara （essay date Winter 1963-1964）
   3. Bernice and Sanford Goldstein （essay date Autumn 1966）
   4. Kerry McSweeney （essay date Spring 1978）
   5. Edwin Haviland Miller （essay date Winter 1982）
   6. Sanford Pinsker （essay date Winter 1986）
   7. Max F. Schulz （essay date 1987）
   8. Helen Weinberg （essay date 1987）
   9. John Wenke （essay date 1987）
   10. Terry Teachout （essay date September 1987）
   11. Joyce Rowe （essay date 1991）
   12. Peter Shaw （essay date 1991）
   13. Pamela Steinle （essay date 1991）
   14. Susan K. Mitchell （essay date December 1992）
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. J. D. Salinger