J. D. Salinger

The novel is the only novel-length work by J.D. Salinger the most censored, banned and challenged book

between 1966 and 1975. According to the ALA, it dropped to #10 on the list of most banned and challenged books by 1999. As of 2009, it has fallen to #19.

Viewed as a quintessential post-modern novel Mark David Chapman was a Caulfield fan. He was

arrested carrying a copy of it after he killed John Lennon. John Hinckley, jr. (tried to kill Ronald Regan in 1981) also said he identified with Caulfield

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The 1950s, referred by poet Robert Lowell as "the tranquilized fifties," has been ridiculed as a smug, irresponsible, and materialistic decade. (see Paul Reuben, http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap10/10intro.html)

This second loss of belief was even more profound and pervasive than the first one that the Modernists had experienced. Everything was dead to this generation: traditional values; marriages (with the sexual revolution); God (as major news publications constantly proclaimed); and, when it came to literature, even the novel and the author were proclaimed dead.

Other influential events include:– August 6, 1945 - atomic explosion over Hiroshima, Japan – The conclusion of World War II – The Korean War– The Cold War of the 1950s – McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee

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Postmodernism celebrates the meaningless of the world as if to say “Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense”

Postmodernism is "post" because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody - a characteristic of the so-called "modern" mind.

Postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person

In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually (relativism)

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Whereas Modernism places faith in the ideas, values, beliefs, culture, and norms of the West, Postmodernism rejects Western values and beliefs as only a small part of the human experience and often rejects such ideas, beliefs, culture, and norms.

Whereas Modernism attempts to reveal profound truths of experience and life, Postmodernism is suspicious of being "profound" because such ideas are based on one particular Western value systems.

Whereas Modernism attempts to find depth and interior meaning beneath the surface of objects and events, Postmodernism prefers to dwell on the exterior image and avoids drawing conclusions or suggesting underlying meanings associated with the interior of objects and events.

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Whereas Modernism focused on central themes and a united vision in a particular piece of literature, Postmodernism sees human experience as unstable, internally contradictory, ambiguous, inconclusive, indeterminate, unfinished, fragmented, discontinuous, "jagged," with no one specific reality possible. Therefore, it focuses on a vision of a contradictory, fragmented, ambiguous, indeterminate, unfinished, "jagged" world.

Whereas Modern authors guide and control the reader’s response to their work, the Postmodern writer creates an "open" work in which the reader must supply his own connections, work out alternative meanings, and provide his own (unguided) interpretation.

For more on the transition from Modernism to Post Modernism, see source http://vc.ws.edu/engl2265/unit4/Modernism/all.htm

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Implementation of irony, black humor, & playfulness Meta-fiction: Writing about writing, often used to

undermine the authority of the author and to advance stories in unique ways.

Paranoia: The belief that there is something out of the ordinary, while everything remains the same.

Death of the subject or of the author: things are so shaken up that the postmodernist novelist might not even be able to count on having a stable main character to present or on having a stable identity as author

“Literature of exhaustion”: boredom; cultural helplessness; the idea that “I’ve seen it all” and that “I’m above it all”; the sense that nothing means anything anymore (without the accompanying angst of the modernists); the belief that there are no stories left to tell.

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How does narrative voice as conveyed through diction and syntax aid in character development?

How does the first person protagonist affect the narrative?

How do dialogue and imagery create verisimilitude? How do certain symbols evolve throughout the text? Explain the significance of the title? What is its function

within the text? How do we critically interpret this text from a

psychoanalytic perspective? (see handout online) How does The Catcher in the Rye function as a

postmodern novel?

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