A teenager reads The Catcher in the Rye, then decides to read Franny and Zooey, then wants to read everything ever written by J.D. Salinger — only to discover that there’s nothing left after Nine Stories and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. Such “Salingermania” may be a cliche, but it is so for a reason: Salinger’s work has been able to speak to the lost and angsty for generations. The Catcher in the Rye (to use the most well-known example) is one of the few classic novels that can sit a 14-year-old down and say to him or her, “Shit sucks, but I’ve been there too.”
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