July 16, 1951: "The Catcher in the Rye" Is Published

A rare photo of J.D. Salinger in later life.

Rarer still because he's smiling.

July 16, 1951: The Catcher in the Rye is published by Little, Brown and Company. The author, J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger, was then 32 years old, a native of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and had already published several short stories.

The novel tells the story of Holden Caulfield, a name that Salinger had used in earlier stories based on his experiences serving in World War II. In this novel, taking place during the Christmas season of 1948, Holden, obviously a different character, is 16 years old.

He has been expelled from a private prep school in Pennsylvania, and goes home to New York to see his family, especially his younger sister, Phoebe, to whom he is close. While there, he has a number of disappointing experiences, with people he ultimately describes as "phonies."

He hears a boy singing, "If a body catch a body comin' through the rye." He begins to imagine himself as a protector of children playing in a field of rye near the edge of a cliff, and catching them when they start to fall off.

But Phoebe, only 10 years old, correctly reminds him that the line in Robert Burns' 1782 poem is, "If a body meet a body... " His beautiful illusion shattered by the last person who still matters to him, Holden starts crying. He ends up in a psychiatric ward, and tells conflicting stories of his goals: Either he will live with his brother, D.B., a Hollywood screenwriter, or go to another private school.

Some schools, including East Brunswick High School in New Jersey, which I attended in the mid-1980s, have included the novel in their English Department curriculum. Other schools have banned it, because Holden mentions seeing graffiti reading, "FUCK YOU." (Ironically, Holden might have agreed with them: The graffiti was near an elementary school, and he didn't want small children finding out the words' meaning.)

The novel has never been filmed. Salinger was furious with the way one of his stories was adapted for a film, and shut down attempts to film CITR. He stopped writing in 1965, and retreated to a house on a hilltop in New Hampshire, seeing as few people as possible.

In 1962, as part of his parody album Allan Sherman's Mother Presents My Son, the Celebrity, Sherman sang:

Do not make a stingy sandwich.

Pile the cold cuts high.

Customers should see salami

coming through the rye.

On December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman, having read the novel, bought a new copy in New York, went to the Dakota Arms Hotel at 72nd Street and Central Park West, waited for former Beatle John Lennon, shot him, and then sat down on the sidewalk, pulled out the new copy of the book, and started reading it. Lennon died within minutes. Chapman claimed that Lennon, by abandoning what he had once been, had become "the ultimate phony." Chapman was convicted, has been in prison ever since, and the book will always have that cloud over it.

In 1982, W.P. Kinsella published Shoeless Joe, in which a farmer in Iowa tracks Salinger down, rekindles Salinger's love of baseball, and takes Salinger with him on a journey that ends at the Iowa farm with the baseball field built into it. In 1989, the film Field of Dreams was released, based on the novel. However, to avoid a lawsuit, the author character was changed to the fictional Terence Mann, his race from white to black, the character's favorite baseball team from the New York Giants to the Brooklyn Dodgers, and his peak years of writing from the 1950s to the 1960s.

The character of William Forrester, played by Sean Connery, in the 2000 film Finding Forrester is also based on Salinger. In 2017, Nicholas Hoult played Salinger in the film Rebel in the Rye, which may be as close as we ever get to a film version of CITR.

A rare photo of an older Salinger. Rarer still because he's smiling.

Salinger married 3 times, and died in Cornish, New Hampshire in 2010, at the age of 91. He had 2 children, both with his 2nd wife, Claire Douglas. His daughter Margaret Salinger wrote a memoir of him, titled Dream Catcher.

His son Matt Salinger became an actor, and played superhero Captain America in a 1990 film, before moving into producing plays and films. He has said of his sister's memoir, "I can't say with any authority that she is consciously making anything up. I just know that I grew up in a very different house, with two very different parents from those my sister describes."

*

July 16, 1951 was a Monday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Giants, Salinger's favorite team, beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-6 at the Polo Grounds. Wes Westrum hit 2 home runs, including 1 in the 8th inning that provided the margin of victory. Willie Mays went 0-for-2 with 2 walks. George Spencer was the winning pitcher, in relief of Larry Jansen.

* The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 8-6 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (It was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.) Frank "Spec" Shea was the winning pitcher, in relief of Art Schallock. Yogi Berra and Joe Collins hit home runs. Joe DiMaggio was given the day off, and Mickey Mantle was in the minor leagues at the time.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Cincinnati Reds, 11-2 at Ebbets Field. Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider homered in support of Carl Erskine. Jackie Robinson went 1-for-4 with 2 RBIs.

* The Boston Braves beat the Chicago Cubs, 9-4 at Braves Field in Boston.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 5-2 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Stan Musial went 1-for-5.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 8-2 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 9-5 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* And the St. Louis Browns beat the Boston Red Sox, 9-5 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Ted Williams went 2-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBIs.