Simon Stern is Professor of Law and English at the University of Toronto. This article was originally published in 2009. Nevertheless, Catcher in the Rye is widely regarded as one of the most important contributions to American literature since the end of World War II. In recent years, the novel has also been blamed for promoting alienation among students responsible for high-school shootings. Antolini, who gets drunk and makes what Holden interprets as a sexual advance. These include an episode with a pimp and a prostitute (with whom Holden does not have sex) and a visit to an old teacher, Mr. Holden Caulfield, the main character and narrator of The Catcher in the Rye, is a teenager growing up in the 1950вЂ™s in New York. School boards and parent-teacher associations have been hostile toward the novel because of HoldenвЂ™s profanity-laden speech and his sexual adventures following his expulsion from prep school. Although The Catcher in the Rye was put on the banned book list shortly after its first publication in 1951, it is a fascinating and enlightening classic that everyone should have the opportunity to read. 1978), a high school English teacher was dismissed for insubordination when he refused to drop the book from his curriculum. Mechanicville Central School District (N.Y. In some instances, school boards banned the novel, while others removed it from school reading lists or вЂњrestrictedвЂќ it, requiring students to obtain parental permission to read it. School boards have restricted the novel for its profanity and content Since the early 1960s, disputes over Catcher in the Rye have arisen in more than seventy communities across the United States. SalingerвЂ™s Bildungsroman about sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, is one of the most controversial novels in recent U.S. Published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye, J.

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