To give "The Catcher in the Rye" 5 stars is like giving "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare" 5 stars. I'm not kidding.



I read "The Catcher in the Rye" in the 8th grade. And, okay, I was a little bit more than entranced by the (shocking!) use of profanity. This was, after all, 1968.



But even more, I was mesmerized and enthralled, I was even swept off my little flat feet, by Holden's sensitivity, his absolute purity of heart. Okay, he does wrong things, he engages a prostitute, he flunks out of a very expensive private school when he knows his poor parents have already been put through absolute hell (his younger brother Allie dies of leukemia at the age of 13 and this has already happened at the time the book is being narrated). But at the same time, he is an innocent. He is caught up in place and time that he can't make sense of, simply because he is who he is. He cares, and he tries to take care of others who are lost and floundering. It is so obvious that he is a diamond among rhinestones.



So he doesn't fit in anywhere, and neither do most of us. We're just trying to find our way. This is one of the most brilliant studies of adolesence ever written. Holden feels, he lives and breathes, he is, for all his flaws, or maybe even because of them, almost a Christlike figure.



J.D. Salinger wrote a book about an adolescent who was, in his way, much like an archetype of innocence. For this he is should be lauded as a literary genius. This book should be taught everywhere as a sort of guidebook to values clarification for the youth of America.



Totally aside from that, it is very funny and compulsively readable. No one can possibly be bored with this book, despite its seeming lack of plot.



"The Catcher in the Rye" is a life-changing book. Read it. You will never be the same.