"Don't give a damn about my bad reputation..."

As a first time reader of Catcher in the Rye, I knew more about the book’s reputation going in to this than it’s actual content. While reading the book, I couldn’t help myself from scrutinizing it especially closely for any possibly offensive or inappropriate content. Though the book itself didn’t exactly live up to its notoriety (which is hardly surprising), the fact that I was even approaching it in such a manner gave me something to think about. Before having read a single word of it, I already had a perception of Catcher in the Rye in my mind, based largely on the fact that many adults have found it objectionable for their children to be reading it. It reminded me of how many of the school board members in the Harry Potter censorship case we read about hadn’t even read the Harry Potter books and, therefore, didn’t actually know the content they were restricting access to. I was extremely offended by that fact in the case of Harry Potter, but then I found myself thinking of Catcher in the Rye in a similar way. It struck me how easily the banning or attempted censorship of a book (or anything) can so easily become part of its identity.

In the case of Catcher in the Rye, it seems almost possible to me that the book has gained its standing as a classic almost because of its reputation for being frequently banned or censored. I don’t know enough to say how popular the book already was when it first began being challenged, but it doesn’t seem to me to be quite the same situation as Harry Potter: that it was found threatening largely because of its popularity. Instead, it seems more like a lot of the book’s popularity stems from the fact that it is seen as so controversial. It even made me wonder how conscious Salinger and authors in general are of the way putting objectionable things in their work can actually make them more widely read. Though one would hope that the author would only write what they feel belongs in and adds to their story, I could easily see a wily author inserting some more controversial things into their work simply to draw attention.