Sources

Bloom, Harold, ed. Holden Caulfield. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990.

Bryan, James. "The Psychological Structure of The Catcher in the Rye." In PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 89, no. 5, 1974, pp. 1065-74.

Burger, Nash K. "Books of The Times." In New York Times, July 16, 1951, p. 19.

Engle, Paul. "Honest Tale of Distraught Adolescent." In Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books, July 15, 1951, p. 3.

Faulkner, William. "A Word to Young Writers." In Faulkner in the University: Class Conferences at the University of Virginia 1957-1958, edited by Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph L. Blotner. University of Virginia Press, 1959, pp. 244-15.

French, Warren. J. D. Salinger, Revisited. Boston: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1988.

———. J. D. Salinger. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1963.

Green, Martin. Re-Appraisals: Some Commonsense Readings in American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1963.

Grunwald, Henry Anatole, ed. Salinger: A Critical and Personal Portrait. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962.

Gwynn, Frederick, and Joseph L. Blotner. The Fiction of J. D. Salinger. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1958.

Hamilton, Ian. In Search of J. D. Salinger. New York: Random House, 1988.

Hamilton, Kenneth. J. D. Salinger: A Critical Essay. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1967.

Laser, Marvin, and Norman Fruman. Studies in J. D. Salinger: Reviews, Essays, and Critiques of The Catcher in the Rye and Other Fiction. New York: The Odyssey Press, 1963.

Longstreth, T. Morris. "New Novels in the News." In Christian Science Monitor, July 19, 1951, p. 11.

Miller, James E., Jr. J. D. Salinger. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1965.

For Further Study

Baumbach, Jonathan. "The Saint as a Young Man: A Reappraisal of The Catcher in the Rye." In Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 25, no. 4, December 1964, pp. 461-72. This defense of The Catcher in the Rye praises Holden's childlike innocence as a form of saintly idealism.

Bloom, Harold. "Introduction." In Major Literary Characters, edited by Harold Bloom. Chelsea House, 1996, pp. 1-4. A general analysis of the character Holden Caulfield, positioning him among other literary figures.

Costello, Donald P. "The Language of The Catcher in the Rye." In American Speech, Vol. 34, no. 3, October 1959, pp. 172-81. An examination of how Salinger's language authentically captures American teenage slang of the 1950s.

Edwards, Duane. "Holden Caulfield: Don't Ever Tell Anybody Anything." In English Literary History, Vol. 44, no. 3, Fall 1977, pp. 556-67. This analysis highlights Holden Caulfield's irony, showing he embodies the same phoniness he criticizes in others.

French, Warren. J. D. Salinger, Revisited. Twayne Publishers, 1988. This book offers an overview of Salinger's life and works, with a chapter providing an excellent introduction to the themes and issues in The Catcher in the Rye.

Furst, Lilian. "Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye." In Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Vol. 5, no. 1, Winter 1978, pp. 72-85. An exploration of the parallels between The Catcher in the Rye and Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground.

Heiserman, Arthur, and James E. Miller, Jr. "J. D. Salinger: Some Crazy Cliff." In Western Humanities Review, Vol. 10, no. 2, Spring 1956, pp. 129-37. This piece examines The Catcher in the Rye, highlighting its place within the western literary tradition of epic quest narratives.

Howell, John M. "Salinger in the Waste Land." In Critical Essays on J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, edited by Joel Salzberg. G. K. Hall & Co., 1990, pp. 85-91. This essay explores the connections between The Catcher in the Rye and the poetry of T. S. Eliot.

Kaplan, Charles. "Holden and Huck: The Odysseys of Youth." In College English, Vol. 18, no. 2, November 1956, pp. 76-80. This article compares The Catcher in the Rye with Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.

Lee, Robert A. "'Flunking Everything Else Except English Anyway': Holden Caulfield, Author." In Critical Essays on J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, edited by Joel Salzberg. G. K. Hall & Co., 1990, pp. 185-97. This analysis delves into Holden's character, emphasizing his artistic creativity.

Ohmann, Carol, and Richard Ohmann. "Reviewers, Critics, and The Catcher in the Rye." In Critical Inquiry, Vol. 3, no. 1, Autumn 1976, pp. 15-37. A Marxist critique that examines how capitalist social and economic strategies shape Holden's development.

Salzman, Jack. "Introduction." In New Essays on The Catcher in the Rye, edited by Jack Salzman. Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 1-22. This introduction provides an overview of various critical interpretations of The Catcher in the Rye.

Schriber, Mary Suzanne. "Holden Caulfield, C'est Moi." In Critical Essays on J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, edited by Joel Salzberg. G. K. Hall & Co., 1990, pp. 226-38. A feminist critique of the novel's reception, arguing that male critics overemphasize its importance because they see Holden as a reflection of their own adolescent experiences, often neglecting female viewpoints.

Weinberg, Helen. The New Novel in America: The Kafkan Mode in Contemporary Fiction. Cornell University Press, 1970. This book analyzes the similarities between The Catcher in the Rye and the works of Franz Kafka.

Alsen, Eberhard. Salinger's Glass Stories as a Composite Novel. Troy, NY: Whitson Publishing, 1983. This is a recent and enlightening analysis of all of Salinger's works.

Beacham, Walton, ed. Research Guide to Biography and Criticism. Washington, DC: Beacham Publishing, 1985. A valuable factual resource, the article on Salinger is brief but highly effective as a research tool.

Bruni, Domenic. "J. D. Salinger." In Critical Survey of Long Fiction, edited by Frank N. Magill. Vol. 6. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, 1983. This entry offers a concise biography of Salinger along with an insightful discussion of The Catcher in the Rye.

French, Warren. J. D. Salinger. 1963. Reprint. Boston: Twayne, 1976. Provides substantial biographical details and thorough, perceptive analyses of Salinger's works.

Galloway, David D. The Absurd Hero in American Fiction. 1966. Reprint. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970. Offers a detailed analysis of Salinger's fiction as a reflection of the primary intellectual and literary climate of the post-World War II era. Galloway examines existentialism, religious doubt, and Salinger's response to his era. The book includes a highly useful chronological bibliography documenting publications by and about Salinger.

Hamilton, Ian. In Search of J. D. Salinger. New York: Random House, 1988. This is the most recent and comprehensive documentation of Salinger's life. It provides historical and biographical insights into Salinger's works and delves into the legal issues surrounding publications about him.

Hamilton, Kenneth. J. D. Salinger: A Critical Essay. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman's, 1967. This is a serious and informative examination of Salinger's art as a quest for religious meaning in contemporary times.

Laser, Marvin, and Norman Fruman, eds. Studies in J. D. Salinger: Reviews, Essays, and Critiques. New York: Odyssey Press, 1963. A compilation of articles that showcase the critical and scholarly reception of Salinger's works and the public's fascination with the author during the 1950s and early 1960s.

Lundquist, James. J. D. Salinger. New York: Ungar, 1979. This volume is a concise critical biography within a multi-volume series on major English-language writers.

Miller, James E., Jr. J. D. Salinger. Pamphlets on American Writers No. 51. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1965. A brief but highly useful essay in a significant series of studies on American authors.

Following the publication of The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger released several significant books focusing on a more extensive family: the Glass family. These subsequent works delve into the same themes introduced in The Catcher in the Rye but in a more sophisticated and philosophical manner. In Nine Stories, Salinger first introduces the Glass family, highlighting the profound spiritual disillusionment experienced by Western artists due to the Great Depression and World War II.

Franny and Zooey centers on the youngest members of the Glass family, continuing Salinger's incisive critique of contemporary society, pseudo-intellectuals, and the East Coast academic and literary culture. The character of Franny personifies a theme Salinger explored throughout the 1950s: the tension between alienation from a world deemed meaningless by European existentialist philosophers and a neo-mystical, religious psychology. Franny's desire to escape this world reflects this conflict.

Salinger suggests that the mysticism and quest for perfection, which Franny inherits from her brilliant but suicidal older brother Seymour, is an inadequate remedy for modern humanity's condition. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction depict Seymour as a visionary and seeker of Eastern religious wisdom. However, he is so deeply wounded by the world and frustrated by his inability to achieve perfect consciousness within its grim reality that he finds no peace.

Scholars argue convincingly that Salinger's later works are profoundly philosophical and crucial in conveying the spiritual and psychological anxieties of artists and intellectuals in the post-World War II era.