The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger's beloved novel, once banned and full of frank four-letter words, will continue to be assigned to high school reading lists this year.
But Anne Trubek, a professor of English at Oberlin College, argues that it's time to update Salinger's coming-of-age tale.
"It was published in 1951 and it's not so contemporary anymore," Trubek tells Scott Simon. "I think that most American teenagers will find it rather tame and sort of laughable the things that were once considered so controversial."
Catcher has become outdated in its sociological particulars, but it's still one of best books ever at capturing teenage angst and the self-indulgent sense of isolation of those years. I think teens today -- however else they've changed -- still settle on some form of phoniness when they start thinking about what's most wrong with the world. That's why teens still get something out of the book, even if parts of it do make them laugh.
